Downtown Berkeley station is an underground

Bay Area Rapid Transit Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is a rapid transit system serving the San Francisco Bay Area in California. BART serves 50 stations along six routes and of track, including eBART, a spur line running to Antioch, and Oakland Airport Connecto ...

(BART)

station Station may refer to: Agriculture * Station (Australian agriculture), a large Australian landholding used for livestock production * Station (New Zealand agriculture), a large New Zealand farm used for grazing by sheep and cattle ** Cattle statio ...

in the

Downtown Berkeley Downtown Berkeley is the central business district of the city of Berkeley, California, United States, around the intersection of Shattuck Avenue and Center Street, and extending north to Hearst Avenue, south to Dwight Way, west to Martin Luther ...

section of

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland, Cali ...

. It is served by the

Orange Orange most often refers to: *Orange (fruit), the fruit of the tree species '' Citrus'' × ''sinensis'' ** Orange blossom, its fragrant flower ** Orange juice *Orange (colour), the color of an orange fruit, occurs between red and yellow in the vi ...

and Red lines.

History

Southern Pacific

The

Central Pacific Railroad The Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) was a rail company chartered by U.S. Congress in 1862 to build a railroad eastwards from Sacramento, California, to complete most of the western part of the "First transcontinental railroad" in North Americ ...

opened its

Berkeley Branch Railroad The Berkeley Branch Railroad was a long branch line of the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) from a junction in what later became Emeryville called " Shellmound" to what soon became downtown Berkeley, adjacent to the new University of Califo ...

to the intersection of Shattuck and University Avenues on August 16, 1876. Early civic leader Francis K. Shattuck donated land for the railroad and its depot, and subsidized the initial construction. Berkeley was the terminus of the line until 1878, when it was extended northwest along Shattuck. The Central Pacific was leased by the

Southern Pacific Railroad The Southern Pacific (or Espee from the railroad initials) was an American Railroad classes#Class I, Class I Rail transport, railroad network that existed from 1865 to 1996 and operated largely in the Western United States. The system was oper ...

(SP) in 1885, then transferred to its Northern Railway subsidiary in 1888. The first Berkeley station was a small wooden building at the northwest corner of Center Street and Shattuck; it was replaced in the 1890s by a slightly larger by still modest station. On October 26, 1903, the

Key System The Key System (or Key Route) was a privately owned company that provided mass transit in the cities of Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, Emeryville, Piedmont, San Leandro, Richmond, Albany, and El Cerrito in the eastern San Francisco Bay Area ...

began electric commuter rail operation from Berkeley to the San Francisco ferries – a direct threat to the SP's steam-hauled trains – on a line that paralleled the SP tracks on Shattuck. Around that time, Cal president

Benjamin Ide Wheeler Benjamin Ide Wheeler (July 15, 1854– May 2, 1927) was a professor of Greek and comparative philology at Cornell University, writer, and President of the University of California from 1899 to 1919. Life and career Early years Benjamin ...

and other prominent Berkeley academics lobbied SP president E. H. Harriman for an improved train station to complement John Galen Howard's emerging architectural style for the nearby

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. Finally, the devastating 1906 earthquake and subsequent rebuilding "served as a powerful incentive to expedite the project". Surveying work began in June 1906; that September, SP management announced their intentions to convert their suburban lines to a frequent electric service to compete with the Key System. The new station, an elegant red brick structure with buff terracotta trim, red tile roof, and a colonnade, opened on April 9, 1908. It was officially designed by SP architect Daniel J. Patterson in a similar style to

Émile Bénard Henri Jean Émile Bénard (June 23, 1844 – October 15, 1929) was a French architect and painter. Bénard was the winner of the 1899 International Competition for the Phoebe A. Hearst Architectural Plan to design the campus of the University ...

's original plans for the university, though the high quality of its design and circumstantial evidence led some historians to believe it was actually designed by Howard. The SP lines were fully electrified in 1911.

BART

The BART Board approved the name "Berkeley" in December 1965. The station opened on January 29, 1973, as part of the extension from to . The station was designed by Maher & Martens of San Francisco in collaboration with

Parsons Brinckerhoff WSP USA, formerly Parsons Brinckerhoff, is an American multinational engineering and design firm. The firm operates in the fields of strategic consulting, planning, engineering, construction management, energy, infrastructure and community plann ...

, Tudor Construction, and

Bechtel Bechtel Corporation () is an American engineering, procurement, construction, and project management company founded in San Francisco, California in 1898, and headquartered in Reston, Virginia in the Washington metropolitan area. , the '' E ...

. In 1995, BART changed the name of the station from "Berkeley" to "Downtown Berkeley" in an effort to minimize confusion between this station and North Berkeley.

Removal of rotunda

A station and plaza renovation project began construction on August 29, 2016 and opened to the public on October 19, 2018. The new plaza includes new lighting, landscaping, drainage, paving, and bus shelters in the overground plaza of the station. The old main rotunda entrance has been removed and was replaced by a glass entrance structure similar to those in

Downtown Oakland Downtown Oakland is the central business district of Oakland, California, United States. It is located roughly bounded by both the Oakland Estuary and Interstate 880 (California), Interstate 880 on the southwest, Interstate 980 on the north ...

. The $11.2 million project is funded primarily by BART, with additional funding from the City of Berkeley, Metropolitan Transportation Commission, and

Alameda County Alameda County ( ) is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,682,353, making it the 7th-most populous county in the state and 21st most populous nationally. The county seat is Oakland. A ...

. A further project to renovate the underground station interior is in the planning stages. The entrances on the southern end of the station were closed from April 13, 2020, to June 12, 2021, due to low ridership during the COVID-19 pandemic. Bathrooms at underground BART stations were closed after the September 11 attacks due to security concerns. The bathroom at Downtown Berkeley station reopened on June 30, 2023, after a renovation, with an attendant on duty during all operating hours.

Station layout

Like most underground BART stations, Downtown Berkeley has two levels: a mezzanine containing the faregates and an island platform with two tracks. Access to the station is provided by five street-level entrances on

Shattuck Avenue Shattuck Avenue is a major city street running north–south through Berkeley and Oakland, California. At its southern end, the street branches from Telegraph Avenue in Oakland's Temescal district, then ends at Indian Rock Park in the Ber ...

, with two at Addison Street and Allston Way each and one at the southwest corner of Shattuck Avenue and Center Street. The escalators at the latter were topped by an 24-sided rotunda featuring artwork of the

UC Botanical Garden The University of California Botanical Garden is a 34-acre (13.7 ha) botanical garden located on the University of California, Berkeley campus, in Strawberry Canyon. The garden is in the Berkeley Hills, inside the city boundary of Oakland, wit ...

References

External links

Downtown Berkeley station overview
{{Berkeley, California Bay Area Rapid Transit stations in Alameda County, California Stations on the Orange Line (BART) Stations on the Red Line (BART) Buildings and structures in Berkeley, California Railway stations in the United States opened in 1973 Railway stations located underground in California Transportation in Berkeley, California