Depot still standing today. The railroad, encouraged by the development of the community 
around the growing citrus industry, constructed the depot to coordinate with the joint anni-
versaries of Pomona College and the incorporation of the city of Claremont. Furthermore, 
the railroad assisted the city in planning, designing, and 
constructing the new civic center in the same style as the 
depot. In the late twenties the Courier (then, the College 
Press—more recently The Press restaurant) building, the 
county library (demolished in 1974) and the commercial 

buildings on the east side of 
Harvard were completed. In the early thirties the firehouse/
chamber of commerce (now city hall) was completed; the year 
1935 saw the construction 
of the Spanish-Revival post 
office. Clearly the depot 
was the focal point and cor-
nerstone for a second gen-
eration of development in 
Claremont. 

1920’

S

-30’

S

 

O

ne of the first major products of this progress and planning was the new Santa Fe 

 

4 

The Santa Fe railroad station, commonly known as the Claremont Depot, is a Spanish Co-
lonial Revival structure. It was designed by the architectural staff of Santa Fe and was 
built by the Sumner-Sellit Company of Los Angeles. While not physically large and im-
posing, the depot does display distinctive precast concrete churrigueueresque forms rising 
some thirty-five feet above the ground line. It also features the style’s classic thick walls, 
Moorish arches, and red tile roof. Architecturally, the depot is one of the few survivors of 
perhaps as many as fifty transportation portals which were built by the Santa Fe or the 
Southern Pacific during the same period of the 1920s. Similar stations were constructed in 
Monrovia, La Mirada, and Anaheim. Careful restoration of the Claremont Depot will es-
tablish it as one of the remaining examples of this part of California of both the Spanish 
Revival style of railway stations and of the railroad’s connection to the development of 
Southern California.  

POST OFFICE 

Originally COLLEGE PRESS 

Originally FIREHOUSE