Today's is Union Station in Los Angeles. You have all seen Union Station a million times on TV. Here is the outside and one of the current inside shots. It has been in tons of movies, as well as TV shows as varied as Adam 12 to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But more as to why I show you these after the shots.
So, below are pictures of a restaurant. What I did not know, until reading the site, is that this was the last Harvey House built in the US. For anyone is not up on their Judy Garland movies, the Harvey Houses were restaurants built along the railroads as the country grew. There were places were a train would stop and everyone who wanted to could get off for a good meal.
Apparently this Harvey House (closed in the 1960's) served upwards of 800 people an hour during it's prime.
People like my mom, long out of LA, will remember that Union Station fell into disrepair with only about 10 trains a day in the 1970s- 80s. But now that has changed. The station gets 200 trains in and out a day! Many are commuter metrorail from the Inland Empire. Union Station is also the hub of the Metro (subway) Red and Gold lines to the West Side (Red Line 1), Hollywood and the Valley (Red Line 2) and Pasadena (Gold Line).
There are great pictures on the Big Orange site, but I won't bore you with them all.
Union Station has a little LA thang for me because my mom and dad (back when they were still together - so like 200 years ago) used to take me to a Philippe's home of the original French Onion Dip sandwich. You knew you were there when you saw the Union Station tower.
PS- Final Fun fact about the ceiling tiles. They were made partially from crushed corn cobs!