The $20M restoration of Union Station's main hall is complete, and dozens of special guests gathered in the hall Thursday evening to celebrate its opening.

The focus of the restoration was the hall's 92-foot ceiling, which got new structural support and was repainted and regilded with 120,000 sheets of 23-karat gold leafing.

The project was financed in part by a $300k grant from the American Express Foundation, facilitated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

National Trust president/CEO Stephanie Meeks, above, says the main hall restoration effort was part of the larger plan at Union Station, which includes a redesigned Amtrak concourse aimed at doubling ridership and the 3M SF development planned above the rail yard, Akridge's Burnham Place.

"We originally got involved because of all this development happening here and that is proposed for Union Station," Stephanie tells Bisnow. "We were concerned if this part, the historic part of Union Station, didn’t have a preservation plan that it could get lost in the shuffle."