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Glossary · Architecture

Palo Alto station

The Caltrain station at the foot of University Avenue, a Streamline Moderne building of 1941 and the second-busiest stop on the line.

Southern Pacific opened the station in 1941 as part of a project that took University Avenue under the tracks. Its rounded corners, glass blocks and porthole windows echo the railroad’s streamlined Daylight trains, and its waiting room holds a 1944 mural by John McQuarrie.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996. An earlier stop near the creek was known to many as Big Tree Station.

Sources

Questions people ask

When was the Palo Alto train station built?

The present Streamline Moderne station opened in 1941.

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