(rshsdepot) Pleasanton, CA

["Jim Dent" <james.dent_@_itochu.com>]

-From the Contra Costa Times...

Pleasanton train depot's many faces
It served passengers and freight from 1901 to 1941; it was leased to a glass
company until 1976; it now houses offices
By Daphne Hsu

About a century ago, a yellow building on West Neal Street would welcome
train passengers who had arrived at the doorstep of a burgeoning town named
Pleasanton.

Even though the rail line that served the station is gone, the old depot
still stands as a reminder of the city's dependency on trains in the era of
horse and buggy. Hops, mail and even elephants were hauled in and out by
train. Freight service was discontinued in the 1980s and the building was
given a new life in 1989.

The two-story depot was built from a standard Southern Pacific floor plan,
"Two Story Combination Depot No. 22," said Bill Wullenjohn, board member of
Niles Depot Historical Foundation. It was painted with two different yellows
and had a mossy-green roof.

The station agent and his family lived in the second story. It contained a
kitchen, parlor and bedroom. Two-story depots were usually built when
suitable housing was not available nearby, Wullenjohn said.

The first two trains that carried cross-country passengers passed through on
Sept., 6, 1869, said Henry Bender, who is writing a book titled "California
Railroad Depots." The tracks were part of the original transcontinental main
line, the first tracks to connect the Pacific Coast with the rest of
America. It continued to be the main line to San Francisco for a decade.

Colors for the wooden Southern Pacific depots were standardized in 1902.
Passengers came to recognize the bright yellow and the brown trim.

"It became kind of like their golden arches, so to speak," said Wullenjohn,
who has worked on the restoration of the Centerville depot.

The community was dependent on the railroad to carry its goods. In the first
two decades of the 1900s, hop fields lined what is now Hopyard Road,
according to "A Pictorial History of Pleasanton" by the Pleasanton
Bicentennial Heritage Committee. These hops were destined for England to be
used in beer making, said Ed and Diane Churka, who owned a coffee shop
housed in the depot after the 1989 renovations.

Besides shipping things out, the train brought letters and news. Jim Georgis
of Pleasanton would come to the station twice a day to take the mail bag off
the hook and take it to the post office, Ed Churka said.

The circus also came by train. Elephants and performers would parade down to
the fairgrounds from the station, Diane Churka said.

Kids also would come to the station for play.

The late Jack Kolln would try to hold up the trains with his toy gun and a
red bandanna over his face, said Diane Churka, whose coffee shop patrons
would tell stories of the old train station. The 12-year-old Kolln got
arrested by the sheriff for his antics.

Fewer trains came by as SP shifted traffic to other rail lines, and as cars
ate into the passenger train business. The last passenger train came through
in January 1941, Wullenjohn said.

In 1958, the California Public Utilities Commission gave Southern Pacific
permission to discontinue use of the depot as an agency. The space was
leased to the Pleasanton Glass Co. until 1976, Bender said.

Bob Ollendick bought the depot along with land on First Street in 1976, Ed
Churka said. Ollendick had wanted to tear down the structure, but the city
wouldn't allow that.

In the 1980s, architect Charles Huff stepped in to renovate the structure.
The paint was peeling off the depot, and bees and transients lived under its
roof, Diane Churka said.

"It was in pretty bad shape, but that's the way we fell in love with it,"
she said.

Huff extended the space by 10 feet in length and in width, put in ramps and
chose a muted yellow instead of its historic bright color.

In 1991, Gary Torretta, Mitchell Pereira, Eric Hoff, and Sherry Hoff, bought
the property after Great Western Bank foreclosed on it.

The depot is now used as office space. There are plans to split the lot and
add another structure to the property. The depot will lose its colors and be
painted in three shades of taupe to accommodate the new building, Pereira
said.

Other changes also have been brewing. Alameda County would like to connect
the Pleasanton station to the Niles Canyon Railway, Churka said. He headed
the Pleasanton Railroad Association, which promoted the project in the
1990s. The city of Pleasanton, however, has plans to use the county land for
trails instead of rails.

Wullenjohn would like to see an extension of the tracks because it would
"give (the depot) some historic context." Bender said there are fewer than a
dozen of this particular design of depot left.

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End of RSHSDepot Digest V1 #116
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