"It is time for me to hang up my knives and spatula." That was how chef Michael Shafer put it in his farewell note, written in the middle of his 35th year at The Depot. He said he was 70, and that the restaurant at 1250 Cabrillo Avenue would serve its last meal on September 30. In his October 7 A La Carte column for Easy Reader, Richard Foss called it the end of "an era of fine dining in Old Town Torrance." He also wrote that Shafer knew an astonishing number of his patrons by name.
The building itself has not gone anywhere. The Depot spent 35 years inside the Pacific Electric railway station that Irving Gill designed and finished in 1912, the year the city of Torrance was founded. Of the buildings Gill designed for the new city, it was the most public one that still stood. For three decades you could walk in, order dinner and sit inside it. Now the dining room is dark. For the time being, Old Torrance's founding architecture is something you see from the sidewalk, and the season's last free guided walk is a few weeks away.
How a train station became a restaurant
The depot exists because of a land deal. The Daily Breeze's South Bay History column, by Sam Gnerre, describes how Torrance agreed in 1911 to donate 125 acres to Pacific Electric for its railcar maintenance facilities. In return, the railway agreed to build a Red Car line into town. Gill's depot was built to serve passengers on that Torrance spur off the larger Gardena line.
According to Gnerre's 2010 account, the station lost its purpose once the South Bay's Red Car lines began shutting down in the 1940s. By the late 1980s it had fallen into disrepair. Southern Pacific, which owned it then, turned down several bidders before selling to developers Capellino and Associates in 1986. They brought in Robert Bell and Michael Franks, the restaurateurs behind Chez Melange, and The Depot opened in October 1991 with Shafer as its chef.
That sequence explains why the building survived. A station with no trains has to find a second use, and for this one the second use was a restaurant. The sources found for this post don't say who owns the building now or what comes next, and nobody has announced a new tenant.
What Gill built, and what remains
Gill won the job of chief architect for the new Torrance in the spring of 1912, beating four other architects. According to a 2021 Daily Breeze column, he spent the following year on his plans, often working with landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. He favored concrete because it was sturdy, easy to mold and fireproof. A Los Angeles Times story from September 15, 1912, ran under the headline "Southland City That Will Boast None But Fireproof Buildings."
Not much of that early city is left. Here is how the Gill-era buildings stood when the Daily Breeze last took stock in 2021:
| Structure | Built | Status as reported |
|---|---|---|
| Pacific Electric depot, 1250 Cabrillo Avenue | 1912 | Standing; home to The Depot restaurant |
| Pacific Electric bridge over Torrance Boulevard | Gill era | Standing; listed on the National Register in 1989 |
| Brighton Hotel, Cabrillo Avenue | Gill era | Standing, in altered form |
| Model worker homes, 1800 and 1900 blocks of Gramercy Avenue | Beginning 1912 | About 10 were built |
| El Roi Tan and Murray hotels, across from the depot | Gill era | Demolished |
| Hendrie Rubber Tire Co., Border Avenue | 1911 | Not surviving |
| First National Bank of Torrance, first home | Opened 1913 | Not surviving |
The bridge is the one most people recognize. Gnerre calls its simple, graceful arches a symbol of the city. It carried workers over Torrance Boulevard to the large new factories north of downtown, including the Union Tool Co. and the Llewellyn Iron Works.
The Gramercy homes are the most unusual of the group. Gill planned 100 model houses for factory workers, and only about 10 were built. Each one had a single wall with no windows, set to face the windowed side of the house next door so both families kept their privacy. Inside, concrete floors sometimes curved up into the walls to leave no crevices, and there were no baseboards, moldings or exposed beams. The Daily Breeze reports that the workers found them nowhere near fancy enough.
The depot is not on Torrance's landmark list
The City of Torrance keeps a Historic Landmark and District Register on its Historic Preservation Program page. The register holds 10 local landmarks, the earliest designated October 20, 2022 and the latest June 18, 2026. Several are in the old core of town: 1620 Post Avenue, 2003 Gramercy Avenue, 1515 El Prado Avenue and three on Acacia Avenue. 1250 Cabrillo is not among them.
The same page lists three Torrance properties on the National Register of Historic Places: Torrance High School at 2200 Carson Street, Fern Avenue School at 1314 Fern Avenue, and the Pacific Electric Railway El Prado Bridge on Torrance Boulevard. The depot is not on that list either.
The city's process explains why. Any person or group, the City included, can start a local landmark designation by filing a development application and a supplemental designation application, with a fee. The Historic Preservation Commission reviews it. The application also needs the property owner's written consent. The 10 local landmarks on the register all went through that process. The best-known Gill building in town hasn't.
The last free walk of the year is October 25
The Torrance Historical Society runs a free, docent-led Walking Tour of Historic Old Torrance on the fourth Sunday of each month from May through October. The final 2026 tour is Sunday, October 25, at 10:30 a.m. It starts at the Torrance Historical Museum, 1345 Post Avenue, covers eight blocks in about an hour and a half, and doesn't require a reservation.
Among the stories the tour promises is why Irving Gill was fired. The Society names him as the architect of both the El Prado bridge and the Depot. The tour also covers the explosion that helped put Torrance on the map, the building the original police and fire departments shared, along with a car, why Torrance has no cemetery, and the work of the Olmsted firm, which designed the city's layout. For more details, the Society lists the museum's number as 310.328.5392.
The museum keeps public hours Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m., and asks visitors to call ahead to confirm. The Society's biennial self-guided historic home tour runs October 10 and 11, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., starting at the museum. It includes about six homes built between 1914 and 1928, all within walking distance. During the tour, the historic 1925 Woman's Club hosts a Rose Float Association exhibit, "Floating Through the Decades," a framed collection of Torrance's winning Rose Float entries.
Where to eat after the walk
The table at the depot is gone, but downtown is still open for lunch. The Downtown Torrance Association's Scaredown event on October 3 listed Red Car Brewery, Local Kitchen and Keegan's Sports Lounge & Grill among the restaurants taking part, and Torrance Bakery on El Prado stayed open until 7 p.m. that evening. The association's downtown restaurant map gives their addresses:
- Red Car Brewery, 1266 Sartori Avenue
- Local Kitchen, 1321 Sartori Avenue
- Torrance Bakery, 1341 El Prado Avenue
- Keegan's Sports Lounge & Grill, 1434 Marcelina Avenue
All four are within a few blocks of the museum on Post Avenue. To see the depot before or after the tour, head to the 1200 block of Cabrillo Avenue. The El Prado bridge crosses Torrance Boulevard nearby, and it is still the clearest sign of the Red Car line the depot was built to serve.
For more on Old Torrance and the rest of the city, see our Torrance neighborhood guide and our look at how Torrance's four submarkets are priced.
If you own one of the early homes near Post, Gramercy, Andreo or Acacia and want to know how its age and history show up in today's market, Thompson Team can prepare a valuation that accounts for both. Start with a free home valuation.
