Our deep Los Angeles history videos are now available on a subscription streaming channel, with all you can watch by the month or the year. To learn more and see everything on the channel, click here.

If you’d like to subscribe and watch this webinar first, you’ll find it here.

In the 1960s, as the Community Redevelopment Agency prepared to tear down the Victorian neighborhood of Bunker Hill, Angelenos (including the editorial pages of the Los Angeles Times) urged them to preserve one small and delightful feature: Colonel J.W. Eddy’s efficient, charming and portable funicular, Angels Flight Railway.

In 1962, Angels Flight was declared Historic-Cultural Monument #4, in recognition of its significance, and the threat to its survival. And the CRA pledged that the wee conveyance would be stored, restored (using HUD grants), then reinstalled—in a few years, when there was sufficient development atop the new Bunker Hill.

Angels Flight was operating as sleepy Los Angeles grew into a metropolis, and it was still running as old Bunker Hill was scraped away, carrying occasional passengers up to a grim dusty plain that remained underutilized for many years, as it became clear that the CRA had made a terrible mistake.

But in 1996, as promised, Angels Flight returned to service, ferrying office workers, history lovers and symphony and museum goers between Grand Central Market and Grand Avenue.

And although its recent tenure has not been without drama and controversy, Angels Flight stands today as a treasure of old Los Angeles, its cars Olivet and Sinai twin time capsules that bring a lost world into focus for the bargain price of a $1 ticket.

Join Esotouric, L.A.’s most eclectic sightseeing tour company, for a webinar celebrating the cultural history of Angels Flight Railway, from its opening in 1901 through redevelopment, the long years in storage and its recent revival.

Your hosts Kim Cooper and Richard Schave have been intrinsically involved in Angels Flight’s most recent return, having been so upset on seeing the derelict funicular tagged with graffiti that they launched Angels Flight Friends And Neighbors (FANs), the advocacy group that successfully petitioned Mayor Eric Garcetti to step in and solve the apparently insurmountable licensing problems plaguing the privately owned Angels Flight.

Also joining us is Bunker Hill native son Gordon Pattison. Gordon’s family owned the last two mansions still standing when the hill was redeveloped, and he has a very special relationship with Angels Flight—particularly the open jump seat at the back of the cars, but if you’re nice, he’ll let you sit there.

The webinar will reveal:

• The colorful private operators who kept Angels Flight humming day and night for decades, starting with the visionary creator, Col. J.W. Eddy

• A tour of the lost landmarks that once surrounded Angels Flight, down at street level on Hill Street, flanking the funicular along its tracks up Bunker Hill, and on the hill itself

• Angels Flight in popular culture, as an early cinema and film noir location, a student film favorite, in video games (“L.A. Noire”), in fiction (John Fante’s “Ask The Dust”), and a beloved symbol of nostalgia for a lost Los Angeles for generations of visual artists

• How Angels Flight survived the long decades in storage to become the star atop the tree of 1990s Bunker Hill redevelopment, only to quickly flicker out again

• The terrible story of an arrogant ski lift designer, a careless redevelopment agency and a tragic passenger, whose fates converged on a terrible funicular trip in 2001.

• How Esotouric’s Kim and Richard got involved in saving Angels Flight after its

2013 derailment, a wild tale that includes Eric Garcetti’s Vogue Magazine feature, enlisting film producer Harold Nebenzal (“Cabaret,” “M”) for a funicular fundraiser, and how Angels Flight advocacy helped to get the Los Angeles Times buildings landmarked

• Peculiar things about Angels Flight Railway that only its biggest fans might know or notice.

This webinar is an illustrated lecture packed with rare photos and video that will bring Angels Flight Railway and old Bunker Hill to life on your digital device. And you’ll find the look of an Esotouric webinar is a little different than your standard dry Zoom session, with lively interactive graphics courtesy of the mmhmm app.

After the presentation, Kim and Richard will answer your questions about Angels Flight, Downtown Los Angeles and their passion for historic preservation, so get ready to be a part of the show.