90 Years Ago, the Los Angeles Subway Was Born in This Lost Tunnel

By now almost everyone knows ( I hope ! ) that Los Angeles has a metro . But did you know that this is not the first subway that LA has ever had ?

Ninety long time ago today , thePacific Electric Subwayopened in Los Angeles , link the urban center ’s grow transit internet with a 1.9 - mile burrow .

ThePacific Electric system — nicknamed the “ Red Cars”—was once the largest interurban railway in the creation , with over 1,000 mil of cut at its stature in the early 1920s . But many of its trains and trolleys were traveling along streets which were already becoming crowded with automobiles . The underground was proposed to help move passengers more expeditiously through in high spirits - traffic areas but also as a way to avoid LA ’s many hilly neighborhoods . The burrow wasapproved by a bond certificate measurewith the hopes that succeeding rail development would be position underground as well .

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On November 25 , 1925 , the subway tunnel spread out to swell fanfare . Passengers found they could shave a great plenty of time off their trip to popular destination like Glendale and Hollywood and the tube became a collision . At one stop during the forties over 65,000 riders per day were shamble down into the astuteness of Los Angeles to board the trains .

The metro terminated in the creatively named Subway Terminal Building , which still place upright today in the eye of LA ’s changing business district . While the edifice has been turned into sumptuousness lofts , the subway station below it remains almost wholly uninfluenced .

It ’s condemned now — do not call the building and seek to arrange a visit — but a few yr ago I got special permission to go in there . Here are some of my photo compare to historical images from theMetro Library Archive .

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In many parts of the station you could still see the decorative ceiling , column , and level altogether intact .

The walkways to the platforms were still there , too . This guy was n’t around anymore , regrettably . OR MAYBE HE WAS .

The remaining signage was probably the cool part . You could almost sail the place using the be wayfinding .

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The tracks themselves were start but all the platform still remained , as did part of the tunnel itself . So if you ’re stand where this photo was taken , and you turn around and climb through a little yap in the paries , you see this …

Pretty brainsick , right ? After being used as a radioactive dust protection , the tunnel was sealed here in the 1960s . Then the Bonaventure Hotel was make in the 1970s , worry the portion of the tunnel just on the other side of that wall . The rest of the tunnel became known as afamous spot for graffiti artistsuntil it , too , was sealed .

However , anyone can still visit the other end of the tube .

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This is at theBelmont Stationapartments , at the intersection of Beverly and 2nd , where , if you ’re a resident , you may walk your wiener along an Astroturfed discussion section of the former tracks . Otherwise you could stand up here and take a photo . The tunnel itself as well as the former substation are still completely intact .

If you look at this maps of the Pacific Electric Subway plot on a contemporaneous map ( here ’s a coolGoogle Maps version ) , you ’ll see how the tunnel traveled beneath Bunker Hill and emerged on the other side to tie with other lines . Butdepending on which legend you like to believe , LA ’s subway , and its entire Red Car internet , was a failure in the end . The last train black market through this tunnel in 1955 and it was n’t until 35 years later that the city would have a rail system again .

Someday I ’d hump to see the previous underpass station preserved as a museum chronicle LA ’s long and storied transportation history . But the verity is that you could know the bequest of LA ’s first subway today . On January 30 , 1993 , LA lionise the gap of a new underpass line of business , which also happened to travel to Hollywood . It ’s named the Red Line , as a nod to those Red Cars , and you’re able to get on it just a block from where passengers first journey below LA ’s street .

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