Essay On The Waiting Room In A Railway Station

By virtue of its site and existence, the station plays the role of public stage, chronicling the everyday experiences of a diverse cross section of visitors and locals from all walks of life.I have heard at the station in the wee hours of the morning, waiting for a Fly Away bus to LAX, maintenance workers sharing stories about how some of the public artworks in Patsaouras Bus Plaza remind them of their respective homelands.

By virtue of its site and existence, the station plays the role of public stage, chronicling the everyday experiences of a diverse cross section of visitors and locals from all walks of life.I have heard at the station in the wee hours of the morning, waiting for a Fly Away bus to LAX, maintenance workers sharing stories about how some of the public artworks in Patsaouras Bus Plaza remind them of their respective homelands.My mother, a native Angeleno, appreciated local history and culture and instilled the same kind of fervor in me.

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Whenever my family took the bus from Union Station to Bakersfield, transferring to the Amtrak San Joaquin line to visit family in California’s Central Valley, the trains were nearly empty.

At the time I was too young to understand Union Station’s untapped potential, which changed after I embarked on a career in urban planning and design.

I have witnessed how Union Station facilitates personal interactions in the middle of the day, when strangers ask me how to transfer to the Metro Gold Line, so they may visit their new grandson at a local hospital.

I have seen this late at night, while walking past entire families waiting in front of the station looking for a place to relax, celebrate, and share the excitement of a hometown win on their way back from Dodger Stadium.

In a editorial published just after the demolition began, Ada Louise Huxtable wrote that the city would some day be judged "not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed" [PDF].

Photographer Cervin Robinson captured the original station in a series of pictures taken for the Historic American Buildings Survey in the spring of 1962 (below)."The loss of the building was a great loss but it such an obvious loss that it helped the city in the long run," Robinson says."People suddenly realized that New York could tear down things it should never have torn down." The current Penn Station is certainly an eyesore, especially compared with its classic predecessor, but its own destruction may occur in the not-so-distant future.I found out that the leather seats were custom built by the Angelus Furniture Company, a now-defunct, but previously legendary and independent local furniture shop located in East Los Angeles.Coincidentally, the company also supplied much of the furniture in my childhood home."Such opulent dimensions were not functionally necessary; the companies could afford magnificence and enjoyed their munificent role, as princes had in predemocratic ages," wrote Meeks in his 1956 book, In the mid-1950s, a proposal emerged to raze the station and construct in its place a home for the World's Fair — the so-called "Palace of Progress." That plan fell apart, but a new one surfaced in 1960, this one led by the Madison Square Garden Corporation.That project, detailed by the in July 1961 [PDF], made room for the arena by flattening the existing Penn Station and building an underground one instead."These are obviously not the days when great historic railway stations get built," says Robinson., featuring eight written and five photographic essays that celebrate the station by authors John C. Estrada, Stephen Fried, Rafer Guzman, David Kipen, Marisela Norte, D. Union Station: Los Angeles’ Enduring Symbol of Civic Optimism by John C.City officials recently gave Madison Square Garden ten years to find another location, clearing the way for a brand new Penn in its place.Still, there are many questions to be answered before that day arrives, and Robinson for one doubts anything can match the glory of the original.