Union Station (Los Angeles)

In 1926, a measure was placed on the ballot giving Los Angeles voters the choice between the construction of a vast network of elevated railways or the construction of a Union station to consolidate the city's two mainline railroad stations (Central Station and La Grande Station). The election took on racial connotations and became a defining moment in the development of Los Angeles.[7] One proposed location for Union Station was located in the heart of what was Los Angeles' original Chinatown. Reflecting the racial prejudice of the time, Los Angeles Times, a lead opponent of elevated railways, argued in editorials that Union Station would not be built in the "midst of Chinatown" but rather would "forever do away with Chinatown and its environs." The Times also attacked the elevated railways for blocking out the California sun and in general being antithetical to the ethos of Los Angeles.[7]

Two questions were put to vote in 1926. First, the voters approved Union Station instead of elevated railways by 61.3 to 38.7 percent margin. Second, the electorate voted in favor of Los Angeles Plaza, not Chinatown, as the site of the new station, but by a much smaller 51.1 to 48.9 percent margin.[8] However, largely due to the efforts of preservationist Christine Sterling and Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler, Union Station would not replace the Plaza, but be built across the street in Chinatown, which was demolished for the project.[9] During the construction process of Union Station, archaeological remains from the Tongva village of Yaanga were uncovered.[10] Researcher Joan Brown summarized this in 1992:

Previous archaeological studies conducted at and near Union Station indicate that buried intact prehistoric and historic deposits exist in-situ beneath and in the vicinity of Union Station. The extent of the archaeological deposits is unknown at this time. Union Station was constructed on three to twenty feet of fill dirt placed over the original Los Angeles Chinatown. Chinatown, in turn, had been built over the remains of an Indian village, tentatively identified as the village of Yangna.[10]

Santa Fe's combined Super Chief/El Capitan at the station in 1966

The glamorous new $11 million station (in 1939 dollars)[11] took over from La Grande Station which had suffered major damage in the 1933 Long Beach earthquake and Central Station, which had itself replaced the Arcade Depot in 1914.

Passenger service was provided by the Santa Fe, Southern Pacific, and Union Pacific, as well as local lines of the Pacific Electric Railway and Los Angeles Railway (LARy).[12] The famed Super Chief luxury train carried Hollywood stars and others to Chicago and thence the East Coast. Union Station saw heavy use during World War II, but later saw declining patronage due to the growing popularity of air travel and automobiles.

In 1948 the Santa Fe's Super Chief lost its brakes coming into the station, smashed through a steel bumper and concrete wall, and stopped with one third of the front of the locomotive dangling over Aliso St. No one was killed or injured, but the engineer lost his job.

The station was designated as a Los Angeles Historic–Cultural Monument No. 101 on August 2, 1972, and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.[3]

The first commuter rail service to Union Station was the short-lived CalTrain that began operating on October 18, 1982, between Los Angeles and Oxnard. The service faced economic and political problems from the start and was suspended in March 1983. The next attempt at commuter rail came in 1990 with the launch of the Amtrak-operated Orange County Commuter. The once-daily round-trip served stations between Los Angeles and San Juan Capistrano.

In December 1989, the Santa Fe Pacific Realty Co purchased Southern Pacific's shareholding in the station, followed in January 1990 by Union Pacific's 22% and Santa Fe's 34%.[13]

Metrolink commuter rail service began on October 26, 1992, with Union Station as the terminus for the San Bernardino Line, the Santa Clarita Line (later renamed the Antelope Valley Line) and the Ventura County Line. In January 1993, Metro's Red Line subway[14] began service to the station, followed by Metrolink's Riverside Line in June. The Orange County Commuter train was discontinued on March 28, 1994, and replaced by Metrolink's Orange County Line. In May 2002, Metrolink added additional service to stations in Orange and Riverside counties with the opening of the 91 Line.[15]

Metro L Line train at Union Station

Light Rail service arrived at Union Station on July 26, 2003, when Metro's Gold Line began operating to Pasadena from tracks 1 and 2. The line was expanded south over US 101 in November 2009 with the opening of the Gold Line Eastside Extension.

In February 2011, the board of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) approved the purchase of Union Station from Prologis and Catellus Development (a descendant of the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific railroads) for $75 million. The deal was closed on April 14, 2011.[16][17] Since taking over ownership of the station, Metro has focused on increasing services for passengers at the station. One of the most noticeable changes is the addition of several retail and dining businesses to the concourse.

Amtrak opened a Metropolitan Lounge at Union Station on September 23, 2013.[18] The lounge is open to Amtrak passengers traveling in sleeping car accommodations or business class as well as some Amtrak Guest Rewards members (Select Plus and Select Executive levels only).[19] The lounge features a staffed ticket counter, complimentary refreshments, complimentary Wi-Fi, and a conference room. Passengers using the Metropolitan Lounge receive priority boarding.

Metro plans to install Bluetooth beacons in Union Station to enable sending text messages to travelers' smartphones.[20]

Waiting room

Original ticket lobby, with ticket counter at the right

Union Station was partially designed by John and Donald Parkinson, the father-and-son architectural firm who had also designed Los Angeles City Hall and other landmark Los Angeles buildings. They were assisted by a group of supporting architects, including Jan van der Linden. The structure combines Art Deco, Mission Revival, and Streamline Moderne style, with architectural details such as eight-pointed stars, and even elements of Dutch Colonial Revival architecture (at the suggestion of the Dutch-born Jan von der Linden).[21]

Enclosed garden patios are on either side of the waiting room, and passengers exiting the trains were originally directed through the southern garden. The lower parts of the interior walls are covered in travertine marble; the upper parts have an early form of acoustical tile. The floor in the large rooms is terra cotta with a central strip of inlaid marble (including travertine, somewhat unusual in floors since it is soft). The ceiling in the grand waiting room has the appearance of wood, but is actually made of steel.[22] The original ticket lobby has 62-foot (19 m) high ceilings and a 110-foot (34 m) counter it is closed to the public, but occasionally rented out for film shoots or special events.[22][23][24][25] Public art has been added to the station including an aquarium with a wall featuring etchings of Gabrielino Indians and Latino settlers such as Pío Pico.[26]

Inside the grand waiting room, is the Traxx restaurant and bar, which is Art Deco-themed, reflecting the history and architectural grandeur of its home. The restaurant opened in the late 1990s, and became a "top draw" at Union Station, according to the Los Angeles Times.[27] Traxx closed between May and September 2019 as ownership of the restaurant changed.[28]

Attached to the main building to the south is the station restaurant designed by the famed Southwestern architect Mary Colter. It was the last of the "Harvey House" restaurants to be constructed as a part of a passenger terminal. The vast rectangular dining room has a rounded central counter, streamlined booths and spectacular inlaid cement tile floor reproduces the pattern of a Navajo blanket.[29][23] Colter also designed a sleek, Streamline Moderne cocktail lounge. The restaurant closed in 1967 and for decades remained largely empty, used only for the occasional film shoot or special event.[30] In October 2018, following a four-year renovation process, the dining room re-opened as the "Imperial Western Beer Co.," a restaurant and bar with its own attached brewery, and the cocktail lounge re-opened as "The Streamliner," a smaller craft cocktail bar.[30]

Even with its grand scale, Union Station is still considered small in comparison to other union stations.[31]

Although Union Station contains no distinct sculptures or artworks from its early years, Metro rail development in the 1990s funded the installation of a variety of notable public art murals and sculptural installations for the station's new subterranean lobbies, portals and subway platforms.[32] The following Union Station public artworks include murals, granite seating sculptures, electronic wall-mounted art, glass mosaics, and a river-themed sculptural installation incorporating found objects from the subway excavation and an aquarium of native sea life.[33]

• L.A.: City of Angels (1993) by Cynthia Carlson[34]
• Traveler (1993) by Terry Schoonhoven[35]
• Union Chairs (1993) by Christopher Sproat[36]
• La Sombra del Arroyo (1995) by East Los Streetscapers[37]
• City of Dreams (1996) by Richard Wyatt Jr.[38]
• River of History (1996) by May Sun[33]
• Riverbench (1996) by May Sun and Paul Diez[39]
• A-Train (1996) by Bill Bell[40]
• Solar Shift: San Bernardino and Santa Monica (2006) by Roy Nicholson[41]

Union Station and the MTA Building

Aerial view of LA Union Station area in 2014.

Union Station is located in the northeastern corner of Downtown Los Angeles, on the property bounded by Alameda Street, Cesar Chavez Avenue, Vignes Street, and the Hollywood Freeway. It is across Alameda Street from L.A.'s historic Olvera Street and El Pueblo de Los Angeles State Historic Park. The historic Terminal Annex building is on the opposite side of the Chavez Avenue underpass. Chinatown and Civic Center are a short distance away.

The site of the Tongva village of Yaanga, which was "believed to have been the largest of the Tongva villages," was in the vicinity.[42]

The Patsaouras Transit Plaza on the east side of Union Station hosts several connecting bus lines, including Metro Local, Metro Rapid and Metro Express lines, as well as downtown DASH shuttles, many municipal bus lines, FlyAway express bus service to Los Angeles International Airport, and University of Southern California campus shuttles. The Transit Plaza is named after Nick Patsaouras, former RTD board member and advocate for public transportation.

The Gateway Transit Center includes the station itself and the Patsaouras Transit Plaza, both of which were designed by Ehrenkrantz & Eckstut, along with the western terminus of the El Monte Busway, as well as Metro's headquarters building.

As of October 2019, Amtrak and Metrolink share 12 of Union Station's 14 outdoor tracks, with 94 trains departing on most weekdays (95 on Wednesday, 96 on Friday).[Note 1][43][44]

Actress Kim Novak at Union Station (1956)

The facility served as a backdrop for the 1950 film Union Station,[71][72] which starred William Holden and Nancy Olson. It has been used in many vintage motion pictures, many of the film noir variety. Movies that have featured Union Station as a filming location include:

• List of Registered Historic Places in Los Angeles
• Los Angeles County Metro Rail
• Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority
• Los Angeles Metro Rail rolling stock

• Musicant, Marlyn, ed., with Deverell, William and Roth, Matthew W. Los Angeles Union Station (Los Angeles): Getty, 2014. xvi, pp. 109; heavily illustrated.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Union Station (Los Angeles).

• Official website of Union Station
• Union Station overview (Metro)
• Image of workers laying tracks at Union Station terminal, Los Angeles, 1938. Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive (Collection 1429). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
• Image of workers laying tracks at Union Station terminal, Los Angeles, 1938. Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive (Collection 1429). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

• Los Angeles, CA – Amtrak
• Union Station overview (Metrolink)
• LA Metro map of connections in the Union Station area
• LA Metro map of bus services from Union Station
• Great American Stations listing (Amtrak)
• Los Angeles station information (Amtrak Texas Eagle)
• Public Art Works at the Union Station and in El Pueblo
• "Union Station" Visiting... with Huell Howser (Episode 222 – September 26, 1994)