Francisco in 1914, anticipating the need for increased capacity to handle visitors traveling to the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition. Southern Pacific plans Starting in 1909, SP purchased sixteen complete blocks in a direct line between the foot of Market and the existing Third and Townsend depot at a cost of $5 million (equivalent to $ in ), and the San Francisco Call believed this meant a station uniting SP with the Santa Fe and Western Pacific near the San Francisco Ferry Building was imminent. In 1911, SP purchased a key property which had previously housed a home for war veterans, and the San Francisco Call again speculated SP would shortly build a new depot at Market and Beale. When the new Third and Townsend Depot was announced in November 1912, Charles S. Fee, SP passenger traffic manager, denied the prior rumors putting a new depot at Market and Beale, saying the Ferry Building would be handling the bulk of the traffic and that a Market and Beale station could not be completed in time for Panama–Pacific service. The San Francisco Chronicle speculated that Third and Townsend could have been announced as a bargaining tactic to knock down the asking price of the few landowners remaining between the existing station and Market and Beale. However, other observers understood the 1914 Spanish Revival Depot at Third and Townsend was intended as a "temporary" structure since SP planned to extend service to downtown San Francisco at some point in the future, as shown by the configuration of the new Southern Pacific General Office building at 1 Market Street. That building was completed in 1917 with an "E"-shaped floor plan, and Southern Pacific had retained tenancy of the first-floor spaces facing the "courtyard", implying that a ground-floor courtyard station space may have been planned for the future, but plans to extend the rails into downtown San Francisco were put on hold following the United States's entry into World War I and were never revived. Some of the land was later sold to the federal government and used for the Rincon Annex post office and mail distribution center. In 1955, the California Public Utilities Commission published a report to evaluate SP's Peninsula Commute service in the wake of a 1950 application to raise fares. The report noted "While the Peninsula Service furnishes a rapid rail transportation, particularly during morning and evening peak periods, it does