A flag stop at Barrett's Station was established by the mid-1880s; it was renamed Richmond in 1902 during the town's rapid growth.

[7] A semicircular "industrial post-modern" metal canopy covers the west entrance and a small retail building.

[1][7] A parking garage, a curved busway, and a kiss and ride lane are located on the southwest side of the station.

A mosaic relief of marine life by William Mitchell, made of seashells and fiberglass, is in the BART paid area of the concourse.

[9][10] On the Right Track, a 2007 series of tile murals by Jos Sances and Daniel Galvez, is located in the west entrance plaza.

[11][12] Moving Richmond by Mildred Howard consists of two bent weathering steel plates with poetry by Ishmael Reed on the side of the parking garage.

[16] The Southern Pacific (SP)-controlled Northern Railway opened through the then-uninhabited swamplands near Point Richmond on January 8, 1878.

[32][33] The East Shore and Suburban Railway (later a Key System subsidiary) opened from the Standard Oil refinery to the SP station on July 7, 1904.

[34][35]: 9  A $35,000 contract (equivalent to $840,000 in 2023) was issued on September 1, 1907, for construction of an underpass to take Macdonald Avenue and the streetcars under the SP tracks.

[36] The SP station building was closed on August 30, 1968, and demolished shortly afterward for BART construction, leaving passengers with only a platform.

[1] As early as 1957, Richmond was identified as a likely terminus for a line of a proposed regional rapid transit system.

After tension between the Bay Area Rapid Transit District and the city, an agreement to use the latter site was reached in May 1967.

[38]: 106  The tracks continued past the station to the rail yard; the grade crossing of Barrett Avenue — which was ranked the fifth-highest priority for elimination on a 1965 state list — was replaced with a road underpass.

Among the potential cuts was Richmond station, as construction had not begun past the Alameda/Contra Costa county line at El Cerrito del Norte.

[38][42][43] Not until March 1969, when the state approved a temporary sales tax to cover the shortfall, could work begin on the contracts for the remaining stations including Richmond.

[9][48] The construction of Richmond station was credited by local officials as the key piece of downtown redevelopment efforts.

The introduction of the San Joaquin service in 1974 added a third round trip to the SP mainline north of Oakland.

[58] On April 12, 2000, BART and the city broke ground on a "transit village", a mixed-use transit-oriented development (TOD) project adjacent to the station.

[4] In July 2001, the aging Amtrak facility was replaced with a modern island platform with better access to the BART pedestrian tunnel.

[60] The first phase of the transit village, completed in 2004, included 132 residential units and 15,000 square feet (1,400 m2) of retail space on the west side of the station.