Ollie: Dear Bet: A few hours ago we pulled into Union Station in Los Angeles. It’s a big, beautiful building — tall ceilings, impressive wood beams, beautiful Spanish tiles…
L.A.’s famous train station — where a newly arrived Ollie takes note of a beautiful girl named Elle — was only three years old in 1942.
The station has a terrific website. The excerpts (in quotation marks) below are from its History Page.
Union Station was “designed by the father-and-son architect team of John and Donald Parkinson with an innovative blend of Spanish Colonial, Mission Revival and Art Deco architecture now commonly referred to as Mission Moderne. The stunning facility was completed in 1939 for a reported $11 million and opened with a lavish, star-studded, three-day celebration attended by a half million Angelenos.”
“Within just a few years of opening, Union Station transformed into a bustling 24-hour, seven-day-a-week operation with as many as 100 troop trains carrying tens of thousands of servicemen through the terminal every day during World War II.”
A personal note
When I was teenager with a driver’s license in the late 1960s, a friend and I would drive around at night, visiting Los Angeles landmarks. When we went to Union Station, we found it empty and neglected. When we asked a station employee where all the trains were, he replied: “There are no trains.” That was an exaggeration, but one based in truth: At that time train travel had reached a nadir and only a few trains arrived at or departed from Union Station on a daily basis. Union Station’s glory days had long passed and it was more a relic than a critical transportation center.
Fortunately, over the past couple of decades, Union Station has become the hub of Los Angeles’ growing subway and commuter rail network. And so it’s once again a lively, energetic place that reflects a unique city. It also remains a stunning piece of architecture that takes one back to the 1930s. CB
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