Hollywood Subway

The Hollywood Subway, as it is most commonly known, officially the Belmont Tunnel, was a subway tunnel used by the interurban streetcars of the Pacific Electric Railway. It ran from its northwest entrance in today's Westlake district to the Subway Terminal, in the Historic Core, the business and commercial center of the city from around the 1910s through the 1950s. The Subway Terminal was one of the Pacific Electric Railway’s two main hubs, the other being 6th and Main. Streetcars of numerous Pacific Electric lines proceeded from the San Fernando Valley, Glendale, Santa Monica and Hollywood into the tunnel in Westlake and traveled southeast under Crown and Bunker Hill towards the Subway Terminal.

This article is about the tunnel for the streetcars of the Pacific Electric Railway in Los Angeles. For the current subway line running under Hollywood, see B Line (Los Angeles Metro).
Pacific Electric interurban streetcar at the Downtown Los Angeles Subway Terminal around 1930
Belmont Tunnel /
Toluca Substation and Yard
The rail tunnel portal in 2017
Coordinates34°3′36.56″N 118°15′32.8″W
DesignatedFebruary 23, 2005
Reference no.790

The tunnel, 1.045 miles (1.682 km) long, cut roughly eight miles (13 km) off rail travel through some of the most heavily congested areas in the United States. At its peak, this artery served upwards of 20 million passengers a year. [1]

The tunnel's northwest entrance, the shed of what formerly an electric substation, and the site of the former yard, are just downhill from 299 South Toluca Street, in Westlake. Together they form a designated historical monument, the Belmont Tunnel / Toluca Substation and Yard. The monument site bounded by 2nd Street and the Beverly Boulevard viaduct to the north, Lucas Avenue to the west, Emerald Street uphill to the south, and Toluca Street to the east. Currently, the Belmont Station Apartments stand in front of the tunnel entrance.

History

1920s – 1950s
Hollywood Subway
Toluca Substation
US 101 (Harbor Freeway)
Hill Street Station
Subway Terminal

The monument has a rich history dating back to the early 1920s. Responding to the traffic congestion that clogged the streets of downtown, the California Railroad Commission in 1922 issued Order 9928, which commissioned the Pacific Electric company to dig a subway for new trains to bypass downtown's busy streets and highways.[2] Plans for the proposed "Hollywood Subway" were drafted as early as February 1924, and ground was broken in May of the same year.

After eighteen months of construction and $1.25 million spent (equivalent to $18.2 million in 2019), the Subway officially opened to the public on December 1, 1925.[2] Over about one mile of track, the Subway linked trains heading towards the intersection of Beverly and Glendale Boulevards in Westlake with Los Angeles’s newest train station and second electric rail hub, which lay underneath the Subway Terminal Building at the corner of Fourth and Hill Streets, by Pershing Square (due east). Trains through the tunnel were powered by a new substation — Toluca No. 51 — which was built in the yard next to the tunnel’s portal. The Subway funneled trains through Westlake and Hollywood to Santa Monica, North Hollywood, and Glendale, cutting seven miles (11 km) or more off similar journeys on rails running along Alameda Street and Exposition Boulevard, which funneled train traffic south and east in Southern California to the other hub, and headquarters, the Pacific Electric Building.

The Subway soon became Los Angeles’s most heavily used shortcut. Faster than the automobile and at 6¢ a fare (equivalent to $0.87 in 2019), electric trains carried thousands of travelers each day through it in the 1920s and 1930s. Ridership through the Subway reached its peak during the Second World War: in 1944, an estimated 65,000 passengers rode the red electric trains down the Belmont Tunnel daily, reckoning out to more than 20 million riders a year.[1]

After the parent corporation, Southern Pacific Railroad, sold Pacific Electric Railway to a subsidiary of General Motors, trains were replaced with motor buses; Pacific Electric was shut down in 1955. The last electric train to carry passengers — adorned with a banner reading, To Oblivion, left the Belmont Tunnel on the morning of June 19, 1955.[1] Shortly thereafter, Southern Pacific lifted the tracks from the Subway, shut up the Subway Terminal Building, disconnected the Toluca Substation, and abandoned the properties.

1960s – present
Belmont Station Apartments, built on the railway yard
Toluca Substation in 2017

Until 2002, few changes were made to the tunnel, electric substation, or train yard since closure, as the lot of the former railway that once moved Southern California had long escaped the mind of city officials. In the 1960s, the city briefly conscripted the Subway for impounded automobiles, and later as a makeshift disaster shelter.[2] The first structural change to the Subway came about in 1967 under Flower Street, and in 1974 a piling of the Bonaventure Hotel was punched down through the hill and into the tunnel at the same spot, which can be spied from the bottom level of the old underground parking garage. This stalled plans to convert the Subway to a busway, but it was used as an entrance down into the tunnel by the adventurous. Over the next 35 years, the site around the tunnel’s portal was neglected, becoming a popular venue for graffiti.

Since 2002, when the city sold West Los Angeles-based Meta Housing Corporation the railway yard and all its buildings, the tunnel portal and electric substation have been cleaned up and landscaped by management of the Belmont Station Apartments, which Meta built inside the railway yard, but which block egress to the tunnel currently.

The Tunnel’s portal, sealed and painted with a mural of a Red Car by artist Tait Roelofs, glows in the dark.[3] The electric substation stands besides the Subway’s portal at the back of the property and behind the apartment building.

Film and media location

The Hollywood Subway and electric substation are used in a large number of TV shows, films, and other creative genres:

  • The electric substation is the Resistance headquarters in the 1980's TV miniseries, V.
  • The Belmont Tunnel is the way out of the refugee camp in the 1987 film, The Running Man.
  • The substation is a gang clubhouse in the 1988 film, Colors.
  • The predator’s spacecraft in the 1990 film, Predator 2, was hidden inside the tunnel.
  • The substation in the 1992 film, Reservoir Dogs, is the secret place for Freddy Newandyke to prepare himself to go undercover as Mr. Orange.
  • The substation is set as an underground nightclub in the 2004 movie, D.E.B.S.
  • The cover art for the album, Take Them On, on Your Own, by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, was photographed inside the tunnel.
  • The substation appears in the video for “Under the Bridge.”
  • The video for By the Way, by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, is set inside the tunnel.
  • The substation is seen briefly in the music video for “Get U Down Pt. 2,” by Warren G.
  • The tunnel and substation are featured in the 2005 skateboarding video game Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, in which the player takes the tunnel to ride from Downtown LA to East LA.
  • The 2011 neo-noir-detective video game L.A. Noire, set in 1947, recreates the tunnel and substation in full use.
  • The video for "Maria Maria" by Carlos Santana is set in front of the substation.

See also

References
  1. "Pacific Electric Subway Terminal". Electric Railway Historical Association of Southern California.
  2. "Pacific Electric Hollywood Subway". Electric Railway Historical Association of Southern California.
  3. Harvey, Steve (February 8, 2009). "The colorful saga of Los Angeles' first subway tunnel". Los Angeles Times.
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