Old Depot Deserves New Station

One of my favorite pastimes is driving or walking by the old western-style railroad station near Lankershim and Chandler, one of the hidden treasures in my North Hollywood neighborhood.

It’s been there since 1896 or 1898, depending on which experts you talk to. They agree, however, that it’s the only remaining station of its vintage in the San Fernando Valley still standing in its original location. Indeed, it’s one of the few anywhere in Southern California standing where it was first built.

You may never have noticed it before, since up until recently the building had been used to store lumber. But for decades before that it was a Southern Pacific Railroad station, set in a charming little park, serving a community then known as Lankershim.

From World War I, when the community charged its name to North Hollywood, until 1952, it also served as a busy Red Car station for the Pacific Electric Railroad.

Right now it’s stuck, unused, behind a wire fence because it’s situated on land being used by the MTA while a subway station is being built on the other side of the street.

It looks like something from the Wild West days, plunked down in a bohemian neighborhood (40 working theater companies, new outdoor restaurants and the headquarters of a TV academy), a bit of an orphan, protected by various laws that govern historical sites. The MTA’s role so far is one of encouraging some public or private body to come forward and request permission to do something appropriate with the place.

Now, with a proposal to build a movie studio across the street--and all the continued talk about the subway station actually being built at the same intersection--it seems a good time to point out some things that might attract some attention to the station and maybe help its chances of being fixed up for the public to enjoy.

Movie buffs might have noticed that the station looks a lot like the one used in 1913 in the first important feature film made in Hollywood, Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Squaw Man.”

According to some silent-film experts, the DeMille crew may have used the station as part of a set representing a sort of open-air barroom where trains stopped at the door to unload passengers newly arrived from back East.

Other experts think DeMille may have filmed his station scenes by building a movie-set version of the Lankershim station somewhere north on a rail spur that crossed what is now Roscoe Boulevard. Most of them agree, however, that the desert moviegoers in 1913 saw in the background of the “Squaw Man” rail station scenes was the then undeveloped expanse extending from North Hollywood north and east to the mountains.

One way or another, there’s reason to believe the area has some claim to the renown the other Hollywood traditionally claims when it goes on about the arrival of DeMille’s production group there as if talking about the site of the Pilgrims’ landing.

David Meiger, the MTA’s staff member directly involved with the old station, says, “The problem is to make it useful for people.”

And Walter Beaumont, the Community Redevelopment Agency assistant manager familiar with the situation, says public money is available for architectural work on the building. But so far, nobody in the public or private sector seems to have been brave enough to approach the authorities and deal with the inevitable red tape.

Meanwhile, we have in NoHo not just the only remaining original railway station left in the Valley but one that had an important influence on the area.

John Heller, a Los Angeles architect and author of a book on vintage rail stations in Southern California, says, “That station is the reason there ever was a town of Lankershim and later North Hollywood. It was the there there.”

His book, titled “Pacific Electric Stations,” features pictures and maps of NoHo in the era when its station served as both a Southern Pacific depot and Pacific Electric station.

“It was the heart and soul of the community, where the newspapers and the mail came in. It was the cyber-cafe of its era,” he said, “and the building still could have [that traditional] function of serving as an amenity for commuters going back and forth to Los Angeles on the new subway.”

Then, with a flourish born of a long-standing interest in the question of what the CRA and MTA are going to do about the site, he added, “In a perfect world, the MTA would fix up the place like they did with another vintage station on the Blue Line to Long Beach.

They could use money that they now have available for art projects--but currently such projects don’t meet their definition of art. Their art money can’t be used for architectural preservation or adaptation.”

Several NoHo entrepreneurs, including the Hallenbeck family, which has done a delightful job of renovating a group of shops bearing its name on nearby Cahuenga Boulevard, have discussed plans for commercial use of the station with the CRA and MTA.

One other intriguing idea is to make the station a museum of western transportation under the auspices of an institution like the Gene Autry Museum, with the support of an appropriate California company like Wells Fargo.

Meanwhile, the station just sits there, looking mysterious and forlorn, a Garbo made of 2-by-4s. Let’s hope this little building, unlike Garbo, doesn’t get left alone.