Name/Title
Print, PhotographicEntry/Object ID
2007.046.0552Scope and Content
Color Photograph
Southern Pacific Passenger Depot
Southeast Corner of First and East A Streets, Benicia CA
Built in Banta, CA in 1897 and moved to Benicia in 1902
Parcel Number: 80-20-7
This wood frame, gable roof building is typical of the style of buildings built by the Southern Pacific Railroad Company as a passenger depots. The western portion is two-story and includes the agent's office and waiting area with agent's residence upstais. The one-story eastern portion is the baggage area. The building is clad in horizontal V rustic siding (8") with patterned shingles above and modified half timbering trim. The windows are wood sash, double hung; first floor 12 over 4, second floor 8 over 2. The deep eaves of the composition shingle roof have brackets and there is a shallow shed dormer facing south on the second story. A deteriorating wood loading dock is on the north side of depot. There is one brick chimney. The railroad abandoned the building in the 1950's and it was boarded up in 1984 and storm drain backup is causing some deterioration to wood foundtion.
The Benicia Southern Pacific Passenger Depot is significant because it is the only remaining building in the historic town of Benicia that was part of the transcontinental railway and ferry system across the Carquinez Straits. It is an original representative of a style of architecture developed specifically to represent the railroad in California. The building was originally built in Banta, California, in approximately 1897. Since that community never developed, the depot was dismantled around 1902 and moved to the growing port of Benicia. The buiding's design was not altered and the significant historic events associated with the bulding occurred duirng the time it has been in Benicia as the focus of Benicia's transportation system, commerce and ecomony. President William Howard Taft campaigned here from his special railroad train that was transferred to the ferry for the crossing to Port Costa in 1912.Collection
Benicia Architectural Study - 1989