Should the Glen Park BART Station really be on the National Historic registry?

Glen Park’s BART station offers its commuters many things: a rare opportunity to appreciate Brutalist architecture in San Francisco, the even-rarer amenity of functioning restrooms and a more convenient method of transportation than the neighboring Highway 280.

But does the station deserve to be a National Historic Place?

The California State Historical Resources Commission thinks so. On Thursday it voted to include the station on its nomination list for placement on the National Register of Historic Places.

Admittedly, this is not as spectacular as it sounds.

There are jillions of buildings on the National Register of Historic Places, from the Oakland Free Library (branches on 23rd Avenue, Alden, Golden Gate and Melrose all have designations) to the U.S. Post Office and Courthouse in New Bern, N.C.

If the Beach Chalet is considered a National Historic Place (which it is), there’s no need to ask too many questions about why a mid-1970s concrete hull in a sleepy corner of southeast San Francisco should merit the title, too.

Yet I was taken aback by some of the rhapsodizing about the Glen Park Station.

Jonathan Pearlman, an architect on the commission, has called it “the cathedral of the BART system, one of the very few stations that is exhilarating.”

Christopher VerPlanck, the architectural historian who prepared the...