Nostalgia & History > September '69 SP Trip Part 2

Arrival on Track #10 at Third and Townsend in San Francisco

#3207 Facing the depot

FM Switcher #2351 switching cars over to be serviced

See? No politics.

---

---

---

My ride home---SP #3002 running long hood forward with train #146 in SF

---

I was wondering why SP demolished this beautiful station? What is in it's place nowdays? Sure a lot better than what they built later to replace this. What a loss!

cforssi Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I was wondering why SP demolished this beautiful
> station? What is in it's place nowdays? Sure a lot
> better than what they built later to replace this.
> What a loss!


This is what gets me NOTHING!!!! Well there is an RV park or something isn't there.

There is a large multi use building on the site now. I believe (emphasis on that) it is a combination of offices and condo's and some retail on the ground level.

You are right though, it was a RV park at first after the depot was gone then a sort of parking lot or whatever, but a very valuable piece of land once the ball park was on the way.

Third and Townsend was built by the SP as a temporary depot for the 1915 World's Fair. Mostly built of lath and plaster, by the time it was torn down it was a race between the wrecker's ball and how soon it would fall down on its own. SP had planned to have the depot up behind 65 Market but that just never happened.

cforssi Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I was wondering why SP demolished this beautiful
> station?

My understanding was that it was torn down to make way for the I-280 that was never built. It was planned to connect with I-80 and the current end-of-freeway was to be no more than an off-ramp.

By the time the depot was torn down, the extension of 280 was already a dead issue as I recall.
In the original planning it may have been part of that project, but San Francisco's freeway politics leave all kinds of possibitlities. It may have taken another 14 years, but nature made the final decision in 1989.

By 1975, the voters had ended any hope of a Southern Crossing, part of 280's reason for existence. In another location, there was no way any city administration was going to support more freeway construction along the Embarcadero---there were already calls to tear down 480. Connecting 280 and 480 would have only made sense if they could have contrinued on toward the Golden Gate---that was a dead issue also. The so called Pan Handle freeway thru Golden Gate Park had been stillborn. The California State Division of Highways as CalTrans was then known had been butting their head against SF resistence and was pretty much at the end. Jerry Brown had become governor after Reagan in 1974 and poplular freeways stood little chance, let alone political dogs like the SF projects.

As much as I liked the old 3rd and Townsend Station, I remember during the coverage of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake thinking how many more people would have died in San Francisco, had the old station been still in service and full of commuters, and then collapsed on them.