by Alan Canas
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Davenport Bromfield was one of Burlingame’s most significant pioneers. He single handedly shaped the town, including the neighborhood of Lyon-Hoag by architecting the city plans. In the 1890’s he was hired by William Henry Howard to lay out streets south of Burlingame Avenue. In 1905,  Ansel M. Easton retained him to plan the Easton Addition. Five years later, he surveyed for the town site of Hillsborough.

The population was well below 200 in 1895 when Edgar Wakefield McLellan purchased land in the Burlingame area. Edgar’s property became the largest growing complex for flowers West of Chicago with open fields and 13 glass houses. These flowers sold all over the West coast and even as far East as New York. The nursery was dismantled and moved in 1930 because the citizens of Burlingame did not want the smell of manure and other horticulture odors permeating the city. The nurseries were moved to unincorporated Colma, near South San Francisco.

The land around the Burlingame train station became known as “Burlingame Square.” Initially, the square was made up of five wood buildings: a drug store, post office, grocery building, the Husing building, and the Hatch building. The Hatch was one of the first buildings erected in town known as the Salon, a small hotel Southwest of California and Burlingame Avenue. Opening in 1894, the train station (a part of the Burlingame Square)  was and is today the home of so much of Burlingame’s history.

People traveled through the station following the 1906 earthquake to commute to and from San Francisco after relocating.  Historically known for more than just purchasing a train ticket, the train depot housed the Wells Fargo Express, Western Union Telegraph, the Pacific Telephone switchboard, and was Burlingame’s first Post Office. In July 1906, the First Baptist Church held Sunday School and early meetings of the Burlingame Women’s Club. Fox hunting sponsored by Burlingame Country Club began at this station, where red-jacket riders and baying hounds gathered in front to await the call of the hunter’s horn.
Who knew so much history was just a block away from Lyon-Hoag.