Our extra special correspondent to the Daily Journal, local author Joanne Garrison, has penned a history of our historic train station at Burlingame Ave. as part of the run-up to reopening the Historical Society Museum in the station. The DJ piece notes
Members of the Burlingame Country Club lobbied for the train station, selected its location, and chose its architects. The members also insisted that the station stop be named “Burlingame” after their club. The Southern Pacific Railroad was involved, of course, but it contributed less than half the cost of the station — the country club members picking up the bulk of the tab. As architects, the BCC selected George H. Howard, a club member and a scion of the family who owned the property on which the station would sit, and Joachim B. Mathisen, a Norwegian immigrant who had been a draftsman in the office of A. Page Brown at the time Brown designed the California Pavilion for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Commissioned to reflect the uniqueness of California, Brown designed the temporary Chicago structure to resemble a California mission.
More than half a century after it was built, the Burlingame Train Station was awarded both California landmark status and a listing on the National Register of Historic Places because of its architecture. It is the first permanent structure that employs all the elements of what came to be called the Mission Revival-style.
There was a nice event with several hundred people at the station to celebrate the electrification of Caltrain with e-trains offering free hops down to San Mateo where a larger event was held. There will be more to follow as we get closer to the reopening of the museum. We should enjoy the train while we can since its financial status is shaky at best. As one wag said at the event, Waymo is going to give Caltrain more fiscal heartburn as people get used to driverless, door-to-door service for a good price.
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