in 1886 by the Charles Street Union Station, which featured a three-story brick building situated below street level with a sloping driveway that led to its entrance and a train shed that measured 76 by 360 feet (23.16 by 109.73 meters). It was demolished in January 1910, for construction of the present edifice. In the 1920s-1940s, Savarin Restaurants provided full-service dining rooms at Baltimore's Pennsylvania Station and Washington's Union Station, among others. The Savarin Restaurant, located at the west end of Baltimore's station, was originally decorated with Chesapeake Bay-themed murals and had an entrance and exterior signage directly fronting Charles Street. By the early 1960s, the Savarin had ended table service and offered counter-service only. Penn Station has been the region's primary intercity railroad station since the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad ended all passenger service north of Baltimore in 1958, subsequently closing Mount Royal Station in 1961 and eventually reducing service at Camden Station to local commuter trains only by 1971. Checkers speech During what became known as the Checkers speech, on September 23, 1952, Richard Nixon, then a U.S. Senator from California and the Republican Party's nominee for Vice President, cited Penn Station as the place where a package was waiting for him, containing a cocker spaniel dog his daughter Tricia would name "Checkers." Nixon referred to the station by its former name, "Union Station in Baltimore." Male/Female sculpture controversy In 2004, the City of Baltimore, through its public arts program, commissioned sculptor Jonathan Borofsky to create a sculpture as the centerpiece of a re-designed plaza in front of Penn Station. His work, a -tall aluminum statue entitled Male/Female, has generated considerable controversy ever since, with The Baltimore Sun reporting what it called a "maelstrom of criticism". Its defenders cite the contemporary imagery and artistic expression as complementing an urban landscape, while opponents criticize what they decry as a clash with the station's Beaux-Arts architecture and detracting from its classic lines. The Baltimore Sun editorially characterized it as "oversized, underdressed, and woefully out of place". Development around station Several proposals have been made to convert the upper floors of the station into a hotel. Proposals from 2001 and 2006 were announced but never completed. In 2009, Amtrak reached an agreement with a developer for a 77-room hotel to be called The Inn at Penn Station. This project stalled along with many other hotel proposals in Baltimore. In December 2017,