page_title: Palo Alto station
section_title: Early stations
hierarchical_section_title: Palo Alto station / History / Early stations
caption_attribution_description: English: University Avenue at the Circle with train steaming toward El Palo Alto, 1894.
context_page_description: Palo Alto station is an intermodal transit center in Palo Alto, California. It is served by Caltrain regional rail service, SamTrans and Santa Clara VTA local bus service, Dumbarton Express regional bus service, the Stanford University Marguerite Shuttle, and several local shuttle services. Palo Alto is the second-busiest Caltrain station after San Francisco, averaging 7,764 weekday boardings by a 2018 count. The Caltrain station has two side platforms serving the two tracks of the Peninsula Subdivision and a nearby bus transfer plaza.
  The San Francisco and San Jose Railroad was built through then-empty land north of Mayfield in 1863. The first Palo Alto station was opened in 1890 to serve the then-newly established Stanford University. It was replaced by a larger depot in 1896. The Southern Pacific Railroad opened a new station in 1941 as part of a grade separation project. Designed by John H. Christie, it was constructed in the Streamline Moderne style to match the railroad's Daylight series of streamlined passenger trains. Intercity service to Palo Alto ended in 1971; the Peninsula Commute service continued and was renamed Caltrain in 1985.
context_section_description: The San Francisco and San Jose Railroad opened from San Francisco to Mayfield in 1863, and to San Jose the next year. Several decades later, Leland Stanford founded the new town of Palo Alto to the north of Mayfield. Palo Alto station was opened in 1890 to serve the then-newly-established Stanford University. The original structure had open sides supported by posts; it was enclosed in 1893 for use as a waiting room. A temporary building for ticket sales, telegraphy, and baggage was constructed between the waiting room and a retrofitted former boxcar. (That boxcar had previously been used as the Los Gatos station, and was later used as the Los Altos station).
  A new station, costing $5,500 (equivalent to US$147,000 in 2018), was completed in 1896. Substantially larger than the previous depot, it had five wooden arches styled after the Richardsonian Romanesque masonry arches of the university campus. The architecturally-plain station was never locally popular, and calls came for its replacement as early as the 1920s.
caption: A train at the original station in 1894
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