Celebrating The 75th Anniversary Of Union Station

Sunday marked the 75th anniversary of the opening of Union Station in Downtown Los Angeles and the iconic transportation hub drew tens of thousands to celebrations that included more than a dozen musical acts playing Jazz, Blues and Swing, a children’s theater performance and model train displays. The crowds were celebrating the Golden Age of trains even as we in Los Angeles are in the midst of a growing boom in rail travel.

Built in 1939 for $11 million, the “union” station brought together three disparate railroads: the Union Pacific, the Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe. The station’s high ceilings, spacious waiting room filled with leather chairs and airy outdoor patios are part of the legacy of John and Donald Parkinson, a father and son architectural team who also built the L.A. City Hall tower, Memorial Coliseum and Bullocks Wilshire. Over the decades, Union Station has grown to become the last great railway station in the United States and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. 

Today, the station envisioned by the Parkinsons fills up daily with a mix of well-dressed professionals catching Metro’s Red Line and Gold Line trains and tourists from every part of the world boarding Amtrak. A face-lift has included polishing the brass fittings on the windows and dusting off the 3,000-pound orbital chandeliers that hang from the faux wood ceilings made of steel. 

In the decade after Union Station opened in 1939, it handled about 13,000 rail travelers a day. That number today is roughly 75,000 and will keep climbing in the next few years as Metro, which bought Union Station in 2011, expands the subway and light-rail network in L.A. County and remakes the station and the surrounding area under a new master plan. Of course, the figure will jump again if the plans for a high speed train running between LA and San Francisco come to fruition.