American Hustle | Worcester Union Station — Where the Limousines Pulled Up to a Fake Sheikh's Party

The white marble towers on Washington Square are fiberglass. The originals went up with the station in 1911 and came down in 1926 because 175 feet of marble was pulling the building apart. Watson & Huckel designed the place in French Renaissance Revival, and by the 1970s — the decade American Hustle inhabits — it had gone dark and sour. David O. Russell used the restored exterior for the arrivals: cars sliding to the curb, doors opening, the whole con turning up in formal wear.

Stand at that curb and the geometry still reads. The forecourt is wide enough for a motorcade. The entrance is theatrical. The towers frame anyone walking between them like a proscenium arch, which is precisely what a scene about staged importance needs. Inside, the 1994–2000 restoration brought back the elliptical stained-glass ceilings, the interior marble columns, the mahogany trim.

It is a working transit hub — commuter rail and intercity buses — so you can walk in without a ticket and stand in the Grand Hall under that glass. The film argues that a convincing front is mostly confidence and good lighting. Worcester makes the same point without a word: the towers everyone photographs are not marble at all.