Fleeting glimpses of beauty at every station

Glen Park’s BART station offers its commuters many things: a rare opportunity to appreciate Brutalist architecture in San Francisco, the evenrarer amenity of functioning restrooms and a more convenient method of transportation than the neighboring Highway 280.

But does the station deserve to be a National Historic Place?

The California State Historical Resources Commission thinks so. On Thursday it voted to include the station on its nomination list for placement on the National Register of Historic Places.

Admittedly, this is not as spectacular as it sounds.

There are jillions of buildings on the National Register of Historic Places, from the Oakland Free Library (branches on 23rd Avenue, Alden, Golden Gate Melrose all have designations) to the U.S. Post Office and Courthouse in New Bern, N.C.

If the Beach Chalet is considered a National Historic Place (which it is), there’s no need to ask too many questions about why a mid1970s concrete hull in a sleepy corner of southeast San Francisco should merit the title, too.

Yet I was taken aback by some of the rhapsodizing about the Glen Park Station.

Jonathan Pearlman, an architect on the commission, has called it “the cathedral of the BART system, one of the very few stations that is exhilarating.”

Christopher VerPlanck, the architectural historian who prepared the station’s nomination reached for poetry: “Streams of sunlight pierce its dark recesses,” he wrote. The station is a favorite of many architectural and urban design critics, including The Chronicle’s own John King.

Was I missing something? What kind of “cathedral” had I not seen on my trips through this station, being so busy dodging all the pigeon poop?

Determined to find out, I rode out to Glen Park on Wednesday morning.

There was as much pigeon poop as ever, and many of the station’s surfaces were lined with those grimlooking metal spikes designed to keep the poor birds at bay.

Between the spikes, the mesh netting draped over both escalators, and the graffiti paint slapped haphazardly along the side of the station facing San Jose Avenue, I remembered why I usually scurry in and out of Glen Park without pausing.

Also, let’s be honest: Brutalism isn’t built for lingering.

Sure, the big bones and cold marble of Glen Park Station are impressive and grand.

Even as a harried commuter, I’d noticed that the best experience you can have on the BART system is riding down the escalator at the Glen Park Station. I noticed it again during my Wednesday visit. Bathed in sunlight as I glided into the station’s stately basement, I felt refreshed, anointed, born anew — privy to that “cathedral” experience that experts insist on.

Once I was actually in the basement, though?

Let’s just say I tried to remember my prayers.

Down there, the darkness of Brutalism closes in.

My trip to Glen Park didn’t change my mind one way or another about whether it deserves to be a National Historic Place. If the designation is good enough for the Armour & Co. Building at 1050 Battery St., which is an old meatpacking plant, I don’t see why Glen Park shouldn’t qualify.

But the experience did get me thinking about the overlooked merits of other BART stations.

The 16th Street Mission Station, for example, is usually discussed as Exhibit A for San Francisco’s problems.

All around the station is a tapestry of distress, from openair drug use to the curbside sale of dubiously acquired goods to the obvious anguish of the mentally ill, unhoused people whom San Francisco has failed over and over again. As a result, most people scurry through this station, even though it contains a great piece of art — the English sculptor William Mitchell’s white abstract concrete forms in geometric shapes.

The tiles are both stark and inviting, grand and playful all at the same time. They’re easy to appreciate as you ride up the escalator on the northeast plaza, and they’re much nicer to look at than whatever garbage and debris has blown into the station over the course of the day.

There’s another William Mitchell sculpture at the Richmond BART Station that also deserves appreciation, merely because of how bonkers it is — a rainbow explosion in fiberglass and seashells.

But you can find a piece of interesting public art in every BART station, from glasstiled murals in South San Francisco to Helen Webber and Alfonso Pardiñas’ collaboration on mosaic-covered columns at the Lafayette Station. And in a (rare) bit of good news for BART riders, BART is currently assessing the condition of its collection to plan for conservation, maintenance and future programming.

Is it as good as being a National Historic Place? Of course not. Is it good enough to bring a smile to your face as you schlep through the Bay Area? It is, and that’s good enough.

I was taken aback by some of the rhapsodizing about the Glen Park Station.