Union Station

I went back and forth on this one.  With very few exceptions, this blog is limited to photographs or images made from photographs.  Anything in  my collection that starts life as a drawing goes to my Fair Use blog.  The thing is, I'm not sure on this one.  In the end, after scanning, I blew it up as large as I could, and the tree leaves looked too detailed for a painting, so I decided to go with the whole hand coloring of a black & white photo explanation. 

So, Union Station, Los Angeles, the largest railroad station in the western United States.  Multiple Amtrak lines, a subway line, trolley, lots of buses, and regional rail lines start, end, or pass through Union Station.  I transferred from the Red Line Subway, to the Gold Line Light Rail just yesterday, and it's still in pretty good shape. 

In 1926 the voters of Los Angeles County passed a referendum consolidating all of the commercial rail lines into one common station.  I don't know why it took so long, but Union Station wasn't completed until 1939.  L.A. is building a lot of off road mass transit right now, and California is building a high speed rail line between L.A. and San Francisco, all of which face major delays as one law suit after another, almost all of which aim to stop any form of transportation other than cars, wend their way through the courts.  As noted, I have no idea why it took so long, but I'd be willing to bet that Californians were as litigious back then a they are now.

The caption on the back, "The Union Station, covering 40 acres and costing 11 million dollars, is a beautiful example of the Spanish architecture of southern California and makes an appropriate entrance into the Southland for visitors, delighting them with its modern facilities and lovely garden setting." 

Union Station was designed by father and son architects John and Donald Parkinson.

The Here, There, and Everywhere Collection-Murray Hill

So, the war's over, the men are back, and the women have left their wartime work and wait at home, in the suburbs, for their husbands to come home.  Just like a John Cheever story.

Murray Hill is a town in New Jersey, and it's connected to New York City by train.  No doubt this lady's husband got on the morning train to Hoboken, got the ferry to Manhattan and worked in an office.  Then, at the end of the day it was back to Murray Hill, a martini and the perfect children.  At least that's the stereotype.

This post is the back side of yesterday's entry. Click on The Here There and Everywhere Collection in labels to see other images.