San Jose Diridon station

The main waiting room

The depot is in the Italian Renaissance Revival style, with a three-story central section flanked by two-story wings. The building, a compilation of rectangular sections, is 390 feet (118 m) long and 40 feet to 78 feet (12 to 24 m) wide. The central section, which contains the passenger waiting room, measures 40 by 80 feet (12 by 25 m) and is 33 feet (10 m) high. The high center pavilion housing the waiting room is constructed of steel columns and trusses. The side wings are framed with wood. The exterior walls are clad with tapestry brick or varied colors and arranged in an English bond pattern. The depot is in an industrial area formerly dominated by warehouses and related commercial businesses. Several vernacular sheds, a water tower, butterfly passenger sheds and the nearby Alameda underpass are all contributing buildings and structures within the railroad station.[9]

The building was designed by Southern Pacific architect, John H. Christie, who had worked on the Southern Pacific remodeling of the Fresno depot in 1915 and later, in 1939, worked on Union Station in Los Angeles. This depot is one of only four Italian Renaissance Revival style depots in California, and the largest surviving depot of the San Francisco–San Jose line. The only other large depot built in California during the 1930s was the Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal.

The Coast Daylight at San Jose in 1970

Aerial view of Diridon station and vicinity

A rail station at this location was established in 1878, when the narrow-gauge South Pacific Coast Railroad opened their San Jose Depot on the site. When Southern Pacific gained control of the railroad in 1887, the station was folded into the system and referred to as the West San Jose Depot.[10]^:25

The current station opened in December 1935 as Cahill Depot. The opening of the depot was the culmination of a 30-year effort to relocate 4.5 miles (7.2 km) of the Coast Line of the Southern Pacific Railroad away from the heavy traffic of the downtown area around the Market Street Depot, formerly located at Market and Bassett Streets, to the eastern edge of Willow Glen. The new depot replaced the Fourth Street line's station for passengers,[10]^:26 though freight operations persisted for some time at the old facility.

The Cahill Depot was a stop for several Southern Pacific passenger trains, including the famous San Francisco–Los Angeles train, the Coast Daylight. Other "named" trains that used the station were the all first-class Lark, seasonal Suntan Special, and the Del Monte. It was also a major station on the Peninsula Commute, the SP's commuter service between San Jose and San Francisco.

Amtrak took over long-distance passenger train service in 1971. Fourteen years later, Caltrans took over the Peninsula Commute and renamed it Caltrain.

Restoration of the station was finished in 1994,[10]^{:125, 126} when the station was renamed Diridon Station after former Santa Clara County Supervisor Rod Diridon.[11]

In 1996, Santa Clara County voters approved a half cent sales tax to fund the 1996 Measure B Transportation Improvement Project. Part of this project was the construction of the Vasona Light Rail extension which included a VTA light rail platform at the Diridon train depot.[12] The official opening date for this light rail extension was October 1, 2005, however, revenue service at the San Fernando and Diridon Stations began on July 29, 2005 to accommodate attendees of the inaugural San Jose Grand Prix race.

The passenger platform was featured in the opening scene of Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (1964) representing the Hartford, Connecticut, train station.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to San Jose Diridon station.

• San Jose – Amtrak
• Caltrain – San Jose Diridon Station
• ACE – Stations
• VTA – Diridon Station
• Amtrak – Great American Stations: San Jose (SJC)
• San Jose multimodal transportation terminal: environmental impact statement (Report). US Department of Transportation, Urban Mass Transportation Administration. September 1984. Retrieved 15 July 2016.

 This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Park Service.