Union Station Tour

I have written about art at public transit sites before so I was pleased to find a free art tour of LA's Union Station. There aren't so many morning Metrolink trains but the tour was scheduled to start less than ten minutes after our train arrived. Coincidence? I am not sure, but it was a good start.

We looked in the former Fred Harvey restaurant
and spent some time in the ticket room, which
I had seen before but had never been in.

Union Station was created when the voters chose to have one central station for the railroad lines that each wanted their own station. I had never noticed this sign listing departures and arrivals from the Southern Pacific, Sante Fe, and Union Pacific lines.

I am sorry my picture of the equinox mosaic is not great, but you can read more here.

I had been in the bus plaza only once and had not noticed that the gates, Guardians of the Track, were supposed to be like bright Mexican paper cuttings, papel picado. We were told that the symbols on the floor are from local native and Chinese tradition, memorializing the people who lived there before the station was built. The bottom photo is of the ceiling in the newest part of the station.

The final part of the tour took us into the Metro Headquarters Building, which had several murals.

I hope the security guard does not mind being photographed by a whole tour group.

More in this series, Los Angeles (Circa 1870, Circa 1910, Circa 1960 and After 2000), 1995–96, can be seen here.

My favorite was just outside the board room, but was very hard to photograph and also hard to find good pictures online. You can check out Epoch, here and here.

It was not the best tour ever, but it was free and I got to see some things I had not seen before so I am glad to have done it. I would even consider taking another one, maybe the art of the metro rail line I take the most or the Hollywood stations.