The oldest railroad station still in use in California sits in Menlo Park. It was built in 1867 by the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad Company, the first incorporated railroad line in the state. [1]
The railroad reduced the traveling time from Menlo Park to San Francisco from 3 hours to 80 minutes. This transformed both the town and the development of the countryside – where fashionable estates sprung up.
This wood frame structure was rectangular with a bay window on the south and a gable roof on the north-south axis with an additional steep gable in the center of the east side.
The major decorative element was the use of flat arch drip moldings over the doors and windows, as illustrated in architectural handbooks of the period. In its form and details, this 1867 structure was typical of a popular house type of the 1850’s and 60’s called the “picturesque cottage.”
The present depot displays rich ornamentation resulting from its expansion in the late nineteenth century in accord with the rising prosperity of the region. The station was enlarged with the addition of an ell at the south west corner and a later extension to the north with its corresponding ell to the west. A wide variety of machine carved elements were applied including door and window hoods, eave brackets, shingled gable ends, incised carvings, finials, roof cresting, etc. The waiting shed at the north end was added during World War I. The depot remains a center of activity and a charming document of the changing, fanciful taste of the late nineteenth century in the Bay Area.
~ HABS survey CAL-1994
[1] The Historic American Buildings Survey is a project of the National Park Service, and this recording project was sponsored jointly with the Junior League of Palo Alto. The project was directed by John Poppeliers, chief of HABS, during the summer of 1974 at the Historic American Buildings Survey field office at the Latham-Hopkins Gatehouse, Menlo Park. The field survey crew was Jim Spurgeon, project supervisor; Patrick Christopher, historian; with student architects Stephen Farneth, Robert Radall, Aino Vieira Da Rosa, and Amy Weinstein. Photography was produced by Jack E. Boucher. More information can be found in the Library of Congress, HABS survey number CAL-1994.