| The Palo Alto History Project |
| The Palo Alto Train Station 95 University Avenue |
| The Palo Alto Train Station: A Streamline to the Past In 1941, in the final years before the great decline of the railroads, Palo Alto got itself a new train station. The Southern Pacific Railroad, then still going strong as a popular way to travel the country’s western coast, decided to replace Palo Alto’s aging depot with a sleek, modern station worthy of the city’s hard-earned hub status. The new station was constructed in the ultra-hip “Streamline Moderne” style, a look that raced with the energy of a new age and looked toward the machines of the future. It turned out to be an ironic twist. While the station’s architecture may have spoken to modernity, the transportation it served would soon nearly become a relic of the past. The base of University Avenue at Alma Street has long been the transportation center of Palo Alto. In the city’s infancy, an original sheltered station --- no more than a bench and overhanging roof really --- was constructed for an auction sale of town lots. In 1896, a second larger, yellow-tinged station was constructed around the original, built with archways and some of the spectacle of the nearby university. As the start of the local line to San Francisco, the new station served Stanford’s 400 students and Palo Alto’s 318 residents. But this second edition was never particularly admired by locals. In a 1934 column, Palo Alto Times editor Dallas E. Wood criticized the station’s “antiquity, architectural unloveliness and other deficiencies.” And as early as the 1920s, his paper had been calling for a more “pretentious depot.” Eventually in conjunction with the construction of the University/Alma Street underpass, Southern Pacific announced plans for a new station for Palo Alto. On March 8th, 1941 a grand parade of 2,000 people, 400 horses and a 40 by 75 foot flag marched down University Avenue to the new station. As it happened, the blueprints for the station were laid out during the height of the Streamline Moderne architectural craze. Closely related to Art Deco, the Streamline Moderne style had a kind of “flash and gleam” beauty. Its look at the time --- and remarkably, even six decades later --- surges with progress and motion. As professor David Gebhard has written, “Streamline Moderne offered a glimpse of the future. What it portended was a fully automated world in which machines, controlled by man, were everywhere invisible.” With its dramatic rounded corners, narrow horizontal layering, glass brick windows and metal doors, Streamline Moderne conjured up a sense of movement and speed. In some cases, Streamline Moderne buildings were actually constructed to resemble the purpose they served --- for instance the Palo Alto station was designed to resemble a streamlined train while the local Sea Scout Building, with its porthole windows, has an intentional ship-like appearance. But as the style for a building that was to serve as a railroad station, Streamline Moderne actually pointed to a future that was increasingly moving away from rail travel. Streamline Moderne had an automobile- centered outlook that was often street or highway-oriented. And indeed as the 1950s wore on, the popularity of passenger trains declined. A combination of the construction of the Eisenhower Administration’ s Interstate Highway System and a surge in commercial air travel, left few Americans looking to ride the rails. By the 1960s, legal obligations were the only thing keeping many passenger trains running. Old streamliners such as the Daylight, Starlight, and Lark, which once stopped day and night in Palo Alto, were now part of railroading history. The only trains that stopped in Palo Alto now were ridden by commuters too fed up with the Peninsula’s clogged freeways to get behind the wheel. By 1970, the railroads accounted for just 7% of passenger travel in America. And the following year, the major railroads were eaten up by Amtrak, a national railroad monopoly that has never been able to revitalize the passenger train business. With those changes, the University Avenue Station became increasingly focused on serving commuters. These days the Palo Alto depot serves Caltrains, the commuter train service that carries workers heading for the office towers of San Francisco and the office parks of Silicon Valley. The train station itself, however, remains much as it was in 1941. Now residing on the National Register of Historic Places, the station originally designed by Southern Pacific company architect J.H. Christie is a modern-day classic. As one of the few true Streamline Moderne buildings in the area, the 7,000 square foot depot also boasts a number of unique features, including a 26 foot long painting. John McQuarrie’s grand --- perhaps bordering on grandiose --- mural depicts Leland Stanford surveying the progression of America’ s expansion into the West. Renovation projects in 1981 and 2000 restored the station’s classic seating and lighting while expanding its functionality. It now serves as a transportation hub for buses, shuttles and even renting bicycles. Recently the city announced its hopes to entice a local café to set up shop in the depot to service thirsty commuters. Today the University Avenue Depot still stands in the same spot where a train station has stood before even the city itself existed. And as such, it remains an ode to both an architectural style that looked forward and a railroading history rooted in our past. -Matt Bowling |
| A wonderful shot of Palo Alto in 1894. The El Palo Alto tree is in the far distance along with the Palo Alto Hotel on Alma street (PAHA) |
| A woman waits for a train in 1912 at the old Palo Alto Train Station. (PAHA) |
| The first shed-like Depot in 1895 with a Southern Pacific locomotive passing by. (PAHA) |
| A train rushes past debris, after the old station was torn down and a new one was about to be constructed. (PAHA) |
| The Palo Alto Depot in the 1930s, complete with shoeshine stand. (PAHA) |
| Costumed mason march in 1941 to celebrate the opening of the underpass and depot. (PAHA) |
| Palo Alto: Then & Now |
| 2007 |
1941 |
| An enormous flag was part of the festivities in the March 1941 celebration of the opening of the underpass. (PAHA) |
| The Southern Pacific Daylight Limited pulls into the new Palo Alto station in 1942. (PAHA) |
| The new station and University Avenue underpass shortly after completion. (PAHA) |
| The new station with '40s-era cars (PAHA) |
| Sources: Palo Alto Times, Palo Alto Weekly, San Francisco Weekly, Palo Alto Historical Association, Wikipedia, The National Trust Guide to Art Deco in America by David Gebhard |
| Above left is the Southern Pacific Palo Alto Railroad Depot shortly after its opening in 1941. A steam locomotive and train approaches from the north. Today the station has changed little from this angle --- most of the changes have been in the back where a bus depot has been established. |
| The underground tunnels that take passengers to the opposite side of the tracks can be a bit unnerving. |
| The station today with the old Southern Pacific logo. |
| The map below shows the Lower University Avenue area |
| A train pulls into the station. |
| "I was about 12 yrs old and rode my bike to the Sunday afternoon dedication of the new train station and the new underpass. I bought an ice cream sandwich and the weather was hot. To get a better view of the temporary platform, I climbed up a foot or two at the back of the outdoor stage and used my elbows to keep me steady on the wood railings. The officials who spoke were seated in folding chairs, with their backs just inches from me. I didn't realize the ice cream was melting and dripping on the shoulders of a man who was the next speaker, and he didn't see the ice cream all over his shoulders. The man was former President Herbert Hoover. I finally realized what I'd done, and got down and got away so I wouldn't get caught. I'm now 82 yrs old. I also rode my bike to the Stanford campus one Sunday afternoon when the huge Stanford "War Memorial Library" was being built. The exterior was nearly done, but had scaffolding which I climbed up high. Shortly, a security guard saw my bike and heard me climbing and yelled for me to come down. He couldn't see me as it was dark inside. I was scare! d I would be arrested and sent to jail so I remained silent for a long time and waited. Finally he got in his car and drove away and I climbed down in the darkness and went home." -Marshall |
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