7/30/2023 0 Comments Downtown la underpass![]() ![]() ![]() Dual tubes for trolleys and autos first bore through the northeastern part of Bunker Hill (sometimes referred to as Court Hill.) Hill Street then intersected with Temple Street aboveground. The Broadway tunnel began transporting horse-drawn carriages underneath Fort Moore Hill in 1901, the same year that the still-surviving Third Street tunnel first connected downtown with the neighboring Crown Hill neighborhood.Įight years later, as automobile use and streetcar ridership skyrocketed, the city introduced the Hill Street tunnels. The tunnels pictured below in historical photographs from some of the region's photographic archives were among the early solutions to the city's traffic problem. In response, civic leaders, streetcar operators, and groups like the Automobile Club of Southern California called for traffic relief. It's not hard to imagine how Main Street soon became clogged with streetcar, automobile, and other vehicular traffic.īottlenecks like the one on Main Street meant more than just longer travel times to points west they also translated into congestion throughout the downtown street grid. ![]() There, several other streetcar routes, also circling around Fort Moore Hill, converged on the busy street. But to get to Sunset from Pershing Square (then Central Park), the trolley was forced by the steep face of Fort Moore Hill to divert three blocks east to Main Street. For instance, an early Los Angeles Pacific Railway line to Hollywood ran along the main highway to that town, Sunset Boulevard. Several automobile highways and trolley routes traversed the vast, open flatlands between downtown and these destinations, but the steep slopes of Bunker Hill and Fort Moore Hill limited the options out of the city center. Pierce Photography Collection, USC Libraries. ![]() Courtesy of the Title Insurance and Trust / C.C. For these fledgling communities, a connection to downtown-then still the center of commercial life in the region-was vital.Ĭonstruction of the western portal of the Pacific Electric subway tunnel at 1st and Glendale, circa 1926. Further west, Santa Monica and Venice drew tourists and pleasure-seekers to their beachside resorts. Other tunnels in downtown Los Angeles, including L.A.'s first subway, were landmarks for decades but are no longer open for exploration or exploitation.īuilt early in the twentieth century and shuttered near the century's midway point, these tunnels were made necessary by simple fact of physical geography: a palisade of hills separated L.A.'s historic core from the upstart suburbs to the west.īeginning in the 1890s, the towns of Hollywood, Colegrove, and Sherman began attracting residents and businesses to the once rural Cahuenga Valley. Action films and car commercials often feature images of automobiles speeding through the Second and Third Street tunnels. News reports have explored the miles of pedestrian tunnels still buried beneath the civic center. Underground passageways hold the power to excite-especially when they're hidden underneath a busy city soaked in sunshine. Used under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0). Courtesy of the Metro Transportation Library and Archive. South portal of the Broadway tunnel, near Broadway and Temple, circa 1925. ![]()
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