Santa Fe Depot

This guide to Santa Fe Depot in San Diego starts with a paradox hidden inside its landmark tile domes: crack one open and you find hollow terracotta tube packed with chicken wire, not solid stone. It traces the frantic rush to finish the station in under a year for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition, and the architects, John Bakewell and Arthur Brown, who dressed a cheap steel frame in brick arcades and glazed ceramic from the same kilns that tiled Balboa Park. Look closely at the columns as you pass beneath them; the color you see is only skin deep.