Union Station Los Angeles: Mission Revival in the West

Union Station Los Angeles is set in a park-like setting. The color scheme of white walls and terracotta roof is complementary of the many other area structures in this part of Los Angeles. The San Gabriel Mountains are visible in the distance. (Basil Sofi/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Interestingly, architectural style often suggests a particular region in America. While many notable train stations in the United States conform to classical inspirations, Union Station in Los Angeles presents the residential and commercial architectural style trends that emerged in 19th- and 20th-century California.

Built in the 1930s, Union Station Los Angeles blends architectural influences of Spanish colonial, Mission Revival, and Art Deco. In 1933, a joint venture between Southern Pacific, Union Pacific, and Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroads settled on the father-and-son architect team of John and Donald Parkinson to design the burgeoning city’s star transportation hub.

Now referred to as “modern mission,” the style of the station is manifested in its floors, ceilings, windows, lighting, as well as extraordinary handwork and attention to details.

From its outset, the station handled 33 arrivals and 33 departures, with an estimated 7,000 passengers per day. Today, the station is still bustling, serving around 111,000 passengers daily, many of whom are commuters from areas outside the busy city.

The lobby of the south entrance, once the main entrance to the original ticket concourse, presents a star-design brick floor, brass doors, mosaic panels, a focal-point brass chandelier, and polished wooden beams set into a painted barrel ceiling. (Courtesy of LA Union Station)

The north patio offers a formal garden for travelers to enter and exit Union Station Los Angeles, just to take a break. The area includes red brick and stone paving on the floor. The fountain is surrounded by Art Deco light fixtures and mosaic tiles. The cast-concrete and polychromatic-wall fountain has a basin in the shape of a quatrefoil (a symmetrical shape of half circles in four overlapping circles) designs. (Courtesy of LA Union Station)

Currently the area where ticketing takes place at Union Station, as well as where rental car and food vendors are located, the passenger concourse contains geometric-patterned, desert-hue flooring tiles as the main focal point under a stark white-painted wood ceiling. Dotting the long passageway are rectangular columns with mosaic decorations at the base. (Courtesy of LA Union Station)

Once a regularly packed ticket concourse, this space is now used as an events hall. The theatrical 61-foot ceiling exhibits stenciled and hand-painted acoustic tiles, while steel trusses below the decorative ceiling are covered in plaster and painted to emulate wood. Six 10-foot-wide, Art Deco-style chandeliers hang 10 feet from the ceiling. The six arched, multi-paned windows rise to the ceiling to allow in light. The wainscoting around the base of the walls features geometric handmade tiles. (Courtesy of LA Union Station)

Just as in the original ticket concourse, the station’s waiting room’s architectural majesty is in the "beamed ceiling with decoratively stenciled and hand-painted acoustic tiles." Caramel-colored travertine was used on the walls as to not take away from the complex ceiling. The almost 30-foot-high rectangular windows sit atop bronze doors. Each bronze chandelier weighs more than 3,000 pounds, or about the weight of a compact car. (Courtesy of LA Union Station)

Most recognizable about the main terminal's unornamented, white exterior is its 127-foot clock tower with its four original clocks that can be seen from different ground-level viewpoints. Each 12-foot diameter brass clock has 7-foot-long hands. (Courtesy of LA Union Station)

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