Yesterday’s free (with RSVP) LAVA Sunday Salon and walking tour focused on the holy grail of Los Angeles mass transit history: the sealed-off streetcar station and tunnel located beneath the Subway Terminal Building.
How eager are Angelenos to see this storied space? The waiting list was a thousand names long! For those who couldn’t join us on this time travel trip, below you’ll find some photos (or video) to tell this complex and fascinating tale.
We began our LAVA Sunday Salon program in the basement of Grand Central Market where downtown historian Nathan Marsak (nice tie!) let us know what to look for in the Subway Terminal, and our own Richard Schave explained how the Bonaventure Hotel footings severed the tunnel in 1976. Plus, Bunker Hill native son Gordon Pattison previewed his July 30 Sunday Salon talk about his lost Victorian neighborhood and the short-lived Second Street Cable Car Rail Road.
Sunday Salon title card
Bunker Hill historian Nathan Marsak is nattily prepared to deliver Los Angeles Subway secrets
Gordon Pattison recalls Bunker Hill friends.
Nathan Marsak gets us oriented in the Los Angeles Subway Terminal
Richard Schave bemoans the Bonaventure Hotel’s destruction of the old Subway Tunnel
Then, after strapping on headlamps and double-knotting boots, our well-prepared and somewhat giddy group made the short walk down Hill Street to the Subway Terminal Building for a rare tour of the historic passenger concourse, train platform, offices and yes, that remarkable decommissioned tunnel, complete with a growing collection of stalactites and stalagmites! We’re grateful to our gracious hosts at Metro 417 for welcoming us into the Los Angeles landmark beneath their apartment tower.
Will there be another Subway tunnel tour? Only time, and the LAVA newsletter, will tell.
Happy, dusty explorers emerge into the light – Photo: J. Scott Smith – see more
Starting our time travel trip to the Subway tunnel.
Old Los Angeles grandeur in the Subway Terminal Building.
A curious family perhaps wishes they could join LAVA on the tunnel tour.
We stop to say hello to the huge replica of Rodin’s Thinker that has lived in the lobby for decades.
Richard Schave points out the fine Tennessee marble in the main lobby.
Stray bits of the coffered ceiling awaiting restoration
Stray bits of the coffered ceiling awaiting restoration
ichard Schave demonstrates appropriate use of a high powered flashlight in the sealed off pedestrian ramp at the back of the Subway Terminal Building.
Leaving the main lobby and descending to the office level of the Subway Terminal Building.
Pedestrian concourse detail
When the carbonic gas tank is empty call the carbonic gas man for a topper. Bugs hate it!
Sink in a closet in the Subway Terminal Building.
Hole in the wall in the office section
Down a dark hall is a former tool room, vacant now.
Door latch detail on the former tool room.
An old restroom by the Foreman’s office.
An old restroom by the Foreman’s office.
Foreman’s office door.
Step right up fellows and get your paychecks.
Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and Nathan will show you a place deep beneath Hill Street where time stands still!
Gordon Pattison, the only person on our tour who remembers catching a train at the Subway Terminal, shares a Proustian moment below LA.
Gordon Pattison, the only person on our tour who remembers catching a train at the Subway Terminal, shares a Proustian moment below LA.
And finally, we emerge into the weird, humid, beautiful heart of the Subway Terminal Building: the tunnel! Richard keeps an eye on things.
Skinny little stalactites dangle from the top of the subway tunnel. (Hard to shoot in low light, but they are very pretty!)
Tunnel tourists take a trek.
Weird stalagmite patch beneath a ceiling drip in the old Subway Tunnel. Hard, crystalline and little bit Lovecraftian.
Weird stalagmite patch beneath a ceiling drip in the old Subway Tunnel. Hard, crystalline and little bit Lovecraftian.
Decommissioned stairs on the control booth in the Subway tunnel.
Control booth with tunnel beyond
Inside the control booth
Built solid to withstand tons of steel driving through dozens of times a day.
Vintage toilets await future duties in the depth of the Subway Terminal Building.
Vintage sign to nowhere.
Wayfinding made by hand
Nathan Marsak and Richard Schave wrap us a fascinating tour beneath the streets of Los Angeles. You never know where the LAVA Sunday Salon Salon will take you.
The lovely Subway Terminal Building hides some fascinating places in its core. So happy we could take people into the Subway tunnel today!
Architectural historian Nathan Marsak dreams about a light rail system that made his city grow.
