The Belmont Tunnel in Los Angeles was the city’s first subway: a 4,325-foot bore that carried Pacific Electric Red Cars under downtown from 1925 until 1955, when the last train rolled out and the tracks were pulled up. Today it sits sealed at both ends, partially filled in beneath the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, with its western portal locked inside a private apartment courtyard and its downtown terminus buried under a converted historic building.
What the Tunnel Was and Where It Ran
Pacific Electric Railway, the interurban system founded by Henry Huntington, built the tunnel to bypass downtown’s congested streets and, it hoped, to seed a larger subway network comparable to those in New York and London. The California Railroad Commission authorized the project under Order No. 9928.1PBS SoCal. Stunted Progress: Belmont Tunnel and the Repurposing of a Faded Los Angeles Dream
Ground was broken on May 3, 1924. The bore was finished on April 16, 1925, and the first scheduled passenger train ran on December 1 of that year. At the opening ceremony, a Red Car was christened with a bottle of ginger ale, a nod to Prohibition.2Los Angeles Times. LA’s First Subway
The structure was double-tracked and concrete-lined with a semi-circular arch, cut through soft shale by the drift method. It measured 4,325 feet long, 28 feet wide, and 21 feet 3 inches high, though some accounts describe the overall route as roughly a mile or a mile and a quarter once approaches are included. It ran on catenary overhead wiring with 21 automatic block signals, powered from the Toluca Substation.3Electric Railway Historical Association. Pacific Electric Hollywood Subway
The downtown terminus sat beneath the 12-story Subway Terminal Building at 417 South Hill Street. From there the route ran northwesterly, parallel to Fourth Street, passing under Olive, Grand, Hope, Flower, Figueroa, Fremont, and Beaudry before emerging at a western portal near Glendale Boulevard and First Street in the Westlake neighborhood. Trains surfaced into the Toluca Yard and fanned out onto street-level lines heading toward Hollywood, Glendale, Burbank, Santa Monica, and the San Fernando Valley.3Electric Railway Historical Association. Pacific Electric Hollywood Subway The combined cost of the tunnel and the terminal building ran to roughly $7.5 million: $3.5 million for the tunnel and $4 million for the building.4National Park Service. Subway Terminal Building National Register Nomination
Peak Ridership and the War Years
The tunnel’s busiest era arrived with World War II. Gasoline rationing pushed commuters back onto the rails, and by the early 1940s the subway was carrying roughly 65,000 passengers a day.1PBS SoCal. Stunted Progress: Belmont Tunnel and the Repurposing of a Faded Los Angeles Dream It also doubled as a designated air raid shelter with capacity for up to 10,000 people. The planned extensions that would have turned it into a true subway system were never built.
Why the Tunnel Closed
After the war, car ownership climbed, suburbs expanded, and ridership fell. Complaints about train-versus-car collisions grew. In 1952, Pacific Electric’s passenger operations were sold to Metropolitan Coach Lines, which stated its intent to convert all rail service to buses as quickly as possible. Metropolitan leased 140 rail cars from Pacific Electric and began abandoning lines, and the Western District’s rail operations ended in under two years.5Pacific Electric Railway Historical Society. Fallen Flag Farewell
The final Red Car departed the Subway Terminal on June 19, 1955. The tracks were ripped out, and the city turned its attention to freeways.1PBS SoCal. Stunted Progress: Belmont Tunnel and the Repurposing of a Faded Los Angeles Dream A separate narrative sometimes attributes the end of LA’s rail system to a corporate conspiracy involving General Motors and the holding company National City Lines, but historians have noted that National City Lines bought the separate Los Angeles Railway “Yellow Car” system in 1944 and had no involvement with the Pacific Electric Red Cars; the Red Car system’s decline was managed by its parent Southern Pacific and later by the publicly funded Metropolitan Transit Authority.6Bunker Hill Los Angeles. No, Everyone, There Was No Los Angeles Streetcar Conspiracy
What Happened After the Trains Stopped
The empty tunnel had several odd second lives. The city received it in 1966 and used it for Cold War civil defense storage, packing it with 329,700 pounds of survival crackers meant to feed nearly 70,000 people. The food was removed in 1969 after the tunnel developed a leak. The space also held impounded vehicles and served as a film set, standing in for the Malinta Tunnel on Corregidor in the 1970s film MacArthur.2Los Angeles Times. LA’s First Subway
In the mid-1970s, a portion of the tunnel was filled in to accommodate the foundations of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel downtown. That backfill ended any realistic chance of reviving the tunnel for rail service. According to the Los Angeles Times, no one took much notice at the time.2Los Angeles Times. LA’s First Subway
By the early 1980s, the western portal and the surrounding Toluca Yard had become what one account called the internationally recognized epicenter of West Coast graffiti. The first large-scale piece, “Risko City,” was painted by a tagger known as Shandu in 1984. For roughly twenty years, clean-up crews left the yard alone, and it drew writers from around the world along with film crews, homeless residents, and locals who played pelota tarasca, a Purépecha handball game, on the flat concrete.1PBS SoCal. Stunted Progress: Belmont Tunnel and the Repurposing of a Faded Los Angeles Dream
What’s There Now
In 2002, the Meta Housing Corporation bought the Toluca Yard for an apartment project. Neighborhood groups pushed to have the site preserved as a public graffiti art park, and the city denied that request. The Belmont Tunnel and Toluca Substation were granted historic status in 2004, and the following year the Los Angeles City Council designated the tunnel, yard, and substation as city Historical-Cultural Monuments. Construction was approved anyway in December 2004. Meta Housing later sold the project to Essex Property Trust, Inc., and the resulting $77.7 million, 275-unit Belmont Station Apartments opened to residents in August 2008, with 55 affordable units in the mix.7LA Downtown News. The Train Stops Here
The sealed western portal now sits on the grounds of the Belmont Station Apartments near the intersection of Glendale Boulevard, First Street, and Beverly Boulevard, beneath the Beverly Boulevard Viaduct. It’s enclosed in a small landscaped park with artificial turf, a pair of grills, and a mural of a red trolley by artist Tait Roelof. The Toluca Substation still stands nearby, stripped of its graffiti and painted flat grey. The park is gated, fenced, and electronically locked, so the general public can’t get in. As a condition of the project the developer was supposed to make the tunnel and substation available for future public tours.1PBS SoCal. Stunted Progress: Belmont Tunnel and the Repurposing of a Faded Los Angeles Dream
At the downtown end, the Subway Terminal Building at 417 South Hill Street has fared better. It’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was converted in 2005 into 277 residential lofts marketed as “417 Metro.” The two-story barrel-vaulted lobby, mosaic tile murals, and marble flooring remain. The former train platform levels below were filled in and mothballed for potential future use.4National Park Service. Subway Terminal Building National Register Nomination
Between those two endpoints, one a locked courtyard and the other a loft lobby, the tunnel itself is largely gone: partially filled for hotel foundations, sealed at both portals, and inaccessible to the public.