Re: West Portal Station

08/22/09 - posted by John Martini

Thanks Frank, I guess.

Love the part about 'the facade [was] eligible as a National Historic Place but local West Portal merchants thought it was an eyesore.'

Just watch. In another fifty years a wave of nostalgia will sweep West Portal and some agency will restore the original portal once again. These things go in cycles.

Witness what recently happened to the old Chronicle building on Market Street. The new owners stripped the hideous 1960s veneer and restored the wonderful pre-earthquake Romanesque brick facade buried beneath.

I don't think we're whiners for a lost City. We ruefully recognize change and mourn the loss of familiar places and names, but I don't think any of us really wants to go back to the 1950s. I know I don't.