A map of the tunnel today.

On the last day of operation, June 1955
(photo by Bill Volkmer)

People driving along Glendale or Beverly boulevards near Downtown Los Angeles may have noticed a peculiar tunnel embedded in a hillside. Most people don't know what it's there for aside from an example of urban decay: The building alongside it is a canvas for grafitti artists and homeless people are known to live around it. Locals refer to it as "The Belmont Tunnel" or simply as "The Tunnel." Many are unaware what the tunnel was actually used for.

Although Los Angeles has a popular modern subway line running from Downtown L.A. to North Hollywood, very few are aware that the city once had a subway 75 years ago.

Decades before Southern California was known for its freeways, it had the largest trolley system in the world -- the Pacific Electric Railway. "The Big Red Cars," as the locals called the trolleys, spanned 1,100 miles throughout Southern California and was the primary means of transportation in the pre-freeway age. Back then, Downtown Los Angeles was a highly active, bustling city center, and a typical street would be indistinguishable from those in New York or Chicago at the time. Downtown was also the hub of the Pacific Electric.

In the 1920s, automobiles and streetcars were equally popular, and streets were full of both cars and packed trolleys. But the rising presence of automobiles already led to congestion and traffic jams, which slowed down the speeds of the Red Cars, which traveled mostly on tracks embedded in the streets. The Pacific Electric decided to build a "subway," which was more of a shortcut for trolleys going to Hollywood or the San Fernando Valley. The "Hollywood Subway," as it was known at the time, was only one mile long and did not ever reach Hollywood proper, but it allowed trolleys to/from Hollywood to bypass Downtown street traffic entirely. Trains entered at the portal near Glendale Blvd. and stopped at the Subway Terminal Building at Hill and 4th Streets.

The subway opened on November 30, 1925 and cost $1.25 million to build. It was in operation for about 30 years, until June 19, 1955, a victim of the gradual dismantling of the rail system. The Red Cars rolled until 1961.

THE TUNNEL TODAY

Today the area is run-down, frequented almost exclusively by graffiti artists and the homeless. Men from the nearby neighborhood use the former Toluca Yard area just outside the mouth of the tunnel for impromptu soccer games.

The tunnel was used temporarily for storage, and was largely intact until 1967 when the city filled in the portion between Figueroa and Flower streets to provide for the foundations for the Bonaventure Hotel.

The gritty, urban appearance of the tunnel was also used in movies and TV; like the 1980s mini-series "V" and the Red Hot Chili Peppers' music video, "Under The Bridge."

Many Angelenos wrongly believe that subways are unsafe structures in so-called "Earthquake Country," They fail to realize that other cities in the world experience seismic activity, and many of those cities (San Francisco, Tokyo, Mexico City) also have subway systems which are never damaged during major quakes. Today's Metro Red Line subway hardly got a crack during the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The most surprising fact is that the Pacific Electric Subway, built 75 years ago and un-maintained for 45 years, has survived three major earthquakes and has no major damage!