Union Station LA is one of the great public spaces in the country.

It was last of the great central stations of the age of rail, built in 1939, only a decade before air travel brought it to an end. Cities built “Union Stations” — consolidating the competing rail lines - as magnificent showplaces meant to overwhelm visitors with grandeur.

You’d be on a train for hours or days then emerge into a damned cathedral before exiting into the heart of the city. Compare that to being extruded into suburban industrial processing center known as an “airport.”

I know all this from the great book “Metropolitan Corridor” by Professor John Stilgoe.