The station was designed by the firm of Corlett & Spackman and architect Ernest Born in the brutalist style.[2] Born also designed the graphics for the entire BART system. The BART Board approved the name "Glen Park" in December 1965.[3] Service began on November 5, 1973.[4] The November 1974 Architectural Record wrote of the station:
The dramatic volume of the station–one of the deepest in the system–unfolds at the escalator wells, where the full height (60 feet or 18 m) of the structure is visible. During the day, daylight from the skylights, one over the mezzanine, the other over the end escalator, pours in to the lower platform, an extraordinary sight in a subway.[5]
Born designed a marble mural at the west end of the mezzanine. "100 pieces, few of which are cut at right angles, in warm brown and red-brown tones, make it up". The mural is prominently featured in a scene of the 2006 Will Smith film The Pursuit of Happyness.[6]
The station was nominated in 2019 to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.[7][8] The Glen Park Association submitted the application, funded by a grant from San Francisco Heritage, whose president called the station "the best example of Brutalism in San Francisco, if not the entire Bay Area."[9]
As of 2024[update], BART indicates "significant market, local support, and/or implementation barriers" that must be overcome to allow transit-oriented development on the surface parking lot at the station. Such development would not begin until at least the mid-2030s.[10]
^Cerny, Susan Dinkelspiel (2007). An Architectural Guidebook to San Francisco and the Bay Area (1st ed.). Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith. pp. 501–502. ISBN978-1-58685-432-4. OCLC85623396.
