Old Kaohsiung Station Building

The Old Kaohsiung Station Building (舊高雄車站), completed on June 20, 1941, was one of the last major railway stations completed in Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period. Built by Shimizu Corporation as part of the Greater Kaohsiung Urban Plan, the station replaced the earlier Takao Station (打狗停車場) that had been in use since 1908. The building's design exemplifies the Imperial Crown Style (帝冠様式), a distinctive architectural movement that fused Western modernist structural forms with traditional Japanese roof elements, symbolizing Japan's imperial confidence during the Greater East Asia War period.

The station's most striking feature is its four-sided pyramidal (攢尖) Japanese-style roof with gabled dormers crowning a Western-style reinforced concrete body, creating what locals described as resembling an emperor's crown — hence the style's name. The interior featured a grand Western-style passenger hall designed for efficient crowd flow, while the exterior projected Japanese imperial authority. Together with the Old Kaohsiung City Hall (now the Kaohsiung Museum of History), the station is among the best-known Imperial Crown Style buildings surviving in Taiwan.

During World War II, Kaohsiung Station served as the primary military transportation hub for southern Taiwan. The Japanese Imperial forces used the station extensively for troop deployments, military supply logistics, and the movement of war materials through southern Taiwan's rail network. Kaohsiung's strategic importance as a major port city and industrial center — with its aluminum smelting, shipbuilding, and petroleum refining facilities — made the railway station a vital node in Japan's wartime infrastructure. The station and surrounding rail yards were targeted during Allied air raids on Kaohsiung in 1944-1945.

After the war, the station continued to serve as Kaohsiung's main railway terminal through the remainder of the 20th century. In 2002, when the Kaohsiung Underground Railway Project necessitated demolition of the station site, the Kaohsiung City Government chose to preserve the historic building. In an remarkable engineering feat, the entire 2,500-tonne structure was moved in one piece 82.6 meters to a temporary location, where it was repurposed as the Kaohsiung Vision Hall (高雄願景館), an exhibition space showcasing the city's urban development plans.

In 2003, the building was officially registered as a historic building (歷史建築) by the Kaohsiung City Government Bureau of Cultural Affairs. In 2021, the station was moved back to its original location as the centerpiece of the newly completed Kaohsiung Main Station complex, designed by Dutch architectural firm Mecanoo. The heritage building, which housed an exhibition on the railway-undergrounding project from 2013 until it closed in 2020, now stands at the entrance to the new station's south plaza as a symbolic bridge between the city's colonial past and its modern transit future.