Added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 2, 2006

On December 1, 1925, a Pacific Electric Red Car full of passengers rumbled into the entrance of the Hollywood Subway at 1st Street and Glendale Boulevard for the first time. The route took the streetcar through a mile-long concrete tunnel, recently bored below the grand old Victorians of Bunker Hill, and ending in a cavernous room underneath the brand new Subway Terminal Building on 4th Street between Olive and Hill. 

Actually “brand new” isn’t quite right, because that would imply the Subway Terminal Building was finished at the time. It would still be a few months before all 12 floors were complete, and tenants could begin to move in. Nevertheless, that first subterranean ride to the Subway Terminal Building’s underground platform was a milestone in LA transportation history. It inaugurated our first subway, and introduced a new transportation hub that would keep the city moving for 30 years. Even after the final Red Car rode through the Hollywood Subway (aka Belmont Tunnel) in 1955, the Subway Terminal Building continued to house major companies and organizations for decades. Today it’s a high-end apartment project called Metro 417, housing Angelenos with a taste for history and a bit of luxury. 

The Subway Terminal Building was the second major mass transit hive for the Pacific Electric Railway Company. Pacific Electric (PE) was a private interurban rail system founded in 1901 by Henry E. Huntington, as a way of ferrying potential real estate customers to his holdings in and around LA. Huntington never intended it to be a moneymaker in itself.

The first of PE’s big transit hubs in LA, the Pacific Electric Building at 6th and Main Street, went up in 1905. For 20 years, the Pacific Electric Building was the main stopoff point for commuters coming downtown from outlying parts of the city, via the vast network of PE Red Cars. Also a frequent sight there were the Yellow Cars of the Los Angeles Railway (LARy), a separate passenger service (controlled by Huntington after he sold PE to Southern Pacific in 1910) that mostly served LA’s downtown core, and some surrounding neighborhoods. For its first five years, the Pacific Electric Building housed the offices of the PE and LARy systems.

LA’s two streetcar systems operated an impressive network. At its peak, some 5,000 cars (both passenger and freight) ran on 1,200 miles of track between the PE and LARy systems. By the late 1910s though, downtown LA’s streets were becoming clogged as streetcars, pedestrians and automobiles all jockeyed for space. Streetcars were often overcrowded and uncomfortable, and all the congestion meant that timetables were unreliable. Three-car PE trains frequently got stuck waiting to enter the old Hill Street Station, which had just three gates to serve multiple commuter lines, plus a dedicated gate for the PE Venice Short Line, heading out west to the beach communities. So in 1922, the California Railroad Commission issued Order No. 9928, mandating that PE build a subway that would keep trains from LA County’s northwest communities off of downtown streets altogether.

On January 1, 1924, PE executives in Los Angeles sent a request to their overseers in San Francisco for $696,155 “to construct [a] depressed passenger terminal and provide other facilities.” The request included money for a mile-long subway, plus the foundations and basement structure of the Subway Terminal Building. An unspecified purchaser would then pay back PE for the foundation work and the land itself, and finance the construction of a $4 million office building above the subway terminal. 

The plan was an ambitious one with a lot of moving parts. In addition to building the subway and underground portions of the Subway Terminal Building, PE needed to purchase extra land on Olive Street, demolish both the existing Hill Street Station and an old Masonic temple that was on the same site, and construct a temporary replacement for the Hill Street Station. That temporary station would operate for just a year until the Subway Terminal Building was complete. 

PE stood to gain a lot from the whole situation. Replacing some of their overland routes with a subway would save them nearly $39,000 in operations annually, plus $25,000 in savings for track maintenance and injury claims. They anticipated increased ridership and future expansions, and an estimated $27,000 a year in revenue from vendors setting up shop in the underground concourse. The Electric Railway Historical Association of Southern California points out that the subway also prevented PE’s frienemies at LARy from building a competing line into Hollywood.

The “purchaser” of the Subway Terminal Building was a syndicate of bigshot LA financiers. Formed as the Subway Terminal Corporation, the group included JP Sartori (head of the Southern California Security Trust and Savings Bank), Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler, banker Irving Hellman and Stuart O’Melveny of the Title Insurance and Trust Co. 

On May 3, 1924, Twohy Brothers of Portland, Oregon broke ground on the tunnel portion of the project, at its western portal at 1st Street and Glendale Boulevard. Soon they added a small train yard so PE could make repairs on-site to trains that needed them, plus the Toluca No. 51 automatic substation to help power the tunnel and improve electrical conditions for the Hollywood and Glendale lines. 

At the same time that they were boring the tunnel east, Twohy Brothers were working on a large open cut between Figueroa and Flower Streets, down to 40 feet below street level. From there, they dug in two directions, west towards the portal and east towards the future Subway Terminal Building. Using a combination of dynamite and pneumatic air drills, workers loosened the soft shale and hauled it out on automatic carts. Then they erected timber forms and poured in concrete, to create the arched frame of the tunnel. 

At the point where the tunnel reached Olive Street, steel was used to create footings, columns and girders strong enough to support the massive weight of the building. The tunnelers made quick progress, with about 24 lineal feet of tunnel completed each day, and finished the bore on April 16, 1925. Then they had to lay the double-track rail, add lighting and install the trolley wire that powered the streetcar.

Almost exactly a year after the tunnel broke ground, on May 4, 1925 the PJ Walker Company (same contractor who handled the Oviatt Building) began construction of the Subway Terminal Building. The first three months were devoted to the largest excavation that Los Angeles had seen up to that point, removing a total of 122,000 cubic yards of earth. Then in late August the reinforced concrete foundations were poured, and the building’s steel frame started to take shape. All in all the building’s structure required 6,000 tons of steel – another record for an LA building project. 2,400 tons of steel were used underground alone, more than was used in the entirety of the city’s largest hotel the Biltmore, just a block away.

SPEAKING OF WHICH: the architects behind the Subway Terminal Building were New York-based Schultze & Weaver, the same guys responsible for the Biltmore. Designer Leonard Schultze had plenty of experience with large-scale terminals. While working for the firm of Warren & Wetmore in the 1910s, he contributed to both Grand Central Station in Manhattan and Michigan Central Station in Detroit. Schultze & Weaver also designed the downtown LA headquarters for the Jonathan Club, an exclusive social club that counted both Schultze and Henry E. Huntington as members (Huntington was even President of the club for 12 years). To complete the circle, the Jonathan Club had previously leased space on the top two floors of the Pacific Electric Building!

The basic plans of the Subway Terminal Building and the Biltmore are strikingly similar, with a central spine and wings projecting in one direction – three wings for the Biltmore, four for the Subway Terminal Building, plus a fifth extending the opposite direction. The layout looked cool, and also allowed light to shine down to the below-ground spaces via skylights embedded in the ground floor between wings. 

Today a modern apartment complex just south of the Subway Terminal Building blocks our view of its four appendages. For decades after the building went up though, its immediate neighbor to the south was the single-story Hill Street Terminal Market. It would have been a hell of a sight, walking north on Hill and seeing those four wings jutting towards you. 

The Subway Terminal Building rises 12 stories above ground, including a two-story penthouse section at the top. On its north and west elevations, it’s cleverly built into the  steep slopes of 4th Street between Olive and Hill, and Olive Street between 4th and 5th. On the Olive Street side, the base of the building goes from two stories up at the north side on 4th Street, down to three stories closer to 5th Street.

Architecturally this is a classic beaux arts design, with the clearly separated base (bottom two floors), shaft (middle eight floors) and capital (two-floor mechanical penthouse) that define the style. There are also evocations of Italian Renaissance styles in the cladding, with grooves between the granite stones for extra massive-lookingness, and the flowery friezes you’ll find at the top of the shaft and capital segments. Up at the top, the two-story penthouse is recessed to make room for a deck, then capped with mission-style roof tiles. 

The building has a steel skeleton encased in concrete, with reinforced concrete floors. The whole thing is sheathed in a combination of rusticated granite, terra cotta and, on some of the projecting wings and the north face of the building’s spine, brick. Originally much of the brick was a standard reddish color. It’s since been painted off-white to complement the mottled grey that dominates the building. 

The east side of the building facing Hill Street saw most of the action, with its two nearly-identical entryways, each one set back in a double-height vestibule, and topped by barrel-vaulted, coffered ceilings and an arched mosaic. 

The entrance to the left was for PE passengers. Now shuttered, it used to lead through an arcade of shops and on to the subway ticket concourse, which was lined in octagonal columns clad in terra cotta and topped by another coffered ceiling. Six ramps led down to a mezzanine level with a waiting area and storage space. Then the ramps led down again to the subway platform and its five loading tracks, capable of holding 30 cars.

The rightmost entrance on Hill Street was for tenants of the Subway Terminal Building’s 600 office spaces. You can still walk in off the street and see the double-height grand lobby, with many of its original details intact: the luminous floors, paved in pink Tennessee marble; the creamy beige Botticino marble lining the walls and fluted columns; the glass mosaic tiles encircling the top of the walls; the skylight showing through portions of the coffered ceiling; the heavily ornamented doors for the six elevators; the bronze mail chute and directory.

Take an elevator upstairs and the doors would open to a long corridor connecting the five wings of the Subway Terminal Building. The marble floors, walls and wainscoting in the elevator lobbies and main corridor were all there in the 1920s, and represent some of the only interior finishes that remain above the second floor of the building. Five of the original staircases are also still there, with their iron balusters and newel posts intact.

The passenger terminal and office tower portions of the Subway Terminal Building were financed by two different organizations, and constructed by two different contractors. So it should come as no surprise that they were finished on two different timetables. The first to open was the subway portion, which was fully tracked, wired and ready to go by November 24, 1925. On November 30, the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce hosted a celebratory luncheon at the Biltmore for 1,145 muckety-mucks, with speeches given by various political and business leaders. After a morning of backslapping, a large procession of them walked over to the Subway Terminal Building, where a ceremonial silver ribbon was cut. 

That afternoon the public streamed into the subterranean platform area for the first time, where the tracks were loaded with old PE equipment representing the whole history of interurban rail. A live band played marches on a flat car decorated with bunting. Mrs. F.E. Billhardt, wife of the General Agent of PE’s Passenger Traffic Department, christened the subway by smashing a bottle of ginger ale against PE car 741 (it was Prohibition, after all). For the rest of the afternoon, PE offered free rides through the Hollywood Tunnel and back.

Regular service began the following day, December 1, 1925 for PE’s trains coming in from Glendale and Burbank. A couple months later the Hollywood and San Fernando Valley lines were re-routed to the Subway Terminal Building; the Venice Short Line also ran out of a surface terminal on site. 

The new terminal made a big difference. The Hollywood Subway meant that an estimated 1,079 fewer train cars were traversing Hill Street and Sixth Street each day, according to The Pacific Electric Magazine’s December 10, 1925 issue. It also shortened commuter rides by 10-15 minutes each way, even longer during peak travel hours, as compared to its former overland route. PE officials estimated that 50,000 people made use of the new building each day. It was a big enough deal that a different building called the “Terminal Building,” opened by Hollywood developer CE Toberman in 1926, changed its name to the Hollywood Fireproof Storage Building to avoid confusion.

While passengers flowed into the Subway Terminal Building, the office tower portion was still being completed by the PJ Walker Company. The above photo, taken four days after the Hollywood Subway went into service, shows the upper six floors as bare steel frames. By January 1926 all but the penthouse floors had their walls up. A brief hiccup occurred in late January/early February, when construction halted as the result of a strike called by the Bricklayers’ Union, despite no complaints about pay or working conditions by the masons (both union and non-union) working on the building. Los Angeles Times coverage denounced the “preposterous” strike as a “manufactured grievance” against the open-shop policies adopted for the tile and marble setters working on the building…though we have to remember that the Times‘ head honcho Harry Chandler was both outwardly anti-union, and an investor in the Subway Terminal Building, so it’s tough to take the critique seriously. In any case the strike didn’t muster much support, and the open-shop policies continued. 

By late spring/early summer, you started seeing ads in the paper for firms moving into 417 Hill Street. Chief among them was the Janss Investment Company, which had recently sold the land that would become UCLA, and would soon develop the Westwood Village commercial district. Janss announced in late November, 1925 that they would lease the entire second floor of the Subway Terminal Building for $750,000. In June 1926 they took out ads in the Los Angeles Evening Express announcing their removal to their new home, to coincide with their 25th anniversary as a company.

Plenty of other professionals and businesses flocked to the Subway Terminal Building for their new digs – attorneys, architects, doctors, druggists, gas companies, realtors, even the LA branch of the Pinkerton private investigator agency. One company that did not relocate there was Pacific Electric itself, which was still headquartered at the old PE building on Main & 6th Streets.

After their peak in the mid-1920s, LA’s interurban train lines began a slow, steady decline. As personal vehicles got more affordable, they became many commuters’ preferred mode of transportation, and PE themselves began phasing out streetcars for cheaper, more efficient buses starting in 1925 (LARy would follow in 1930). Aside from a brief uptick during WWII, when gas and tire rationing made public transportation sexy again, ridership and revenues for PE’s interurban train lines suffered from the late 1920s onward. 

SIDE NOTE: There is a persistent myth, repeated by the authors of the Subway Terminal Building’s NRHP nomination, that a big money group of evil oil and vehicle manufacturers conspired to dismantle the Red Car system in order to maximize their own investments and prop up the growing freeway system. It’s an alluring conspiracy theory, given pop culture credence by Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? And as Patt Morrison explained in this 2021 Los Angeles Times article, the myth as retold isn’t completely devoid of truth. But there’s a lot of it that’s hogwash. For anyone interested in sorting fact from fiction, I highly recommend Nathan Marsak’s excellent work of debunkery from 2025.

As streetcars fell out of favor, PE gradually cut down the lines served by the Subway Terminal Building. Their parent company, Southern Pacific, sold off the remaining lines to the Metropolitan Coach Lines bus company, which shut down the rest. The papers covered a group of preschool kids and their moms taking their first and last train ride on a doomed Glendale-Burbank Red Car on June 14, 1955, followed by “lunch at a downtown restaurant to celebrate all the June birthdays in the group.” 

On June 19, 1955, one final PE streetcar loaded with members of the Pacific Railroad Society exited the Subway Terminal Building and took the mile-long trip through the Hollywood Subway tunnel. A banner reading “To Oblivion” hung on the front. And just like that, the Subway Terminal Building’s transportation chapter closed. For several years it sat padlocked, its only tenants the 30 disused train cars sitting on a set of old tracks. Those cars eventually started a new life on a railway in Buenos Aires.

So what to do with this massive cave below the Subway Terminal Building that now seemed to serve no purpose? A February 1955 story in the Los Angeles Mirror states that Metropolitan Coach Lines’ president Jesse Haugh pondered turning the tunnel into a multi-story parking garage (that didn’t happen). A couple months later the employees working upstairs were whisked underground for a practice air raid alert, but an article from July 1955 described the space as “unfit for bomb shelter,” and claimed that nobody had expressed the faintest interest in leasing it for any purpose. It’s no wonder that the Subway Terminal Corporation, owners of the office tower portion of the Subway Terminal Building, decided to sue PE in 1956 for devaluing their building by routing passengers away from the subway. 

Over the following couple decades the subway and train shed were used to store impounded cars, microfilm and emergency food supplies. The US government subdivided the old concourse into office space, and placed a Social Security Administration unit there. Then the Veterans Administration came in around the late 1960s and transformed the basement level into an eerie underground hospital, complete with a new concrete slab above the track and platform level (I can only imagine the amount of overhead fluorescent lighting this must have required). The old train tracks weren’t even removed. They were just covered over in concrete.

As the occultists say, “as above, so below.” developments above ground impacted the subterranean space, too. During the destruction redevelopment of Bunker Hill in the late ‘60s, part of the abandoned Hollywood Subway tunnel was filled in due to a misguided concern that the Community Redevelopment Agency wouldn’t be able to redevelop Bunker Hill over a tunnel that lacked steel reinforcement…which conveniently ignored the fact that the Harbor Freeway had already been built over the tunnel in 1947, at which time engineers deemed the tunnel strong enough that no additional bridges or caissons were needed to support the freeway. 

By 1979 the feds had left the Subway Terminal Building. Developer David Hart purchased it with a silent partner for $5.25 million, and spent $3 million on an interior and exterior renovation. He hired Brenda Levin, a preservation architect with a reputation for high quality restorations of landmarks like the Oviatt, Bradbury, Eastern Columbia and Fine Arts Buildings downtown. As Hart explained it to the Los Angeles Times in 1986, “Brenda’s basic assignment was to enhance the appearance of the north side of the building…How do we tie it into the main building?” With the exception of the one wing projecting north, most of the north side of the Subway Terminal Building was bare and windowless. 

Levin and Hart brought on board the EverGreene Painting Studios Inc. to cover two floors of the bare concrete wall with a trompe l’oeil (“trick of the eye”) mural, depicting sash windows identical to the real ones that extend around the rest of the building. On the easternmost section of the wall, the mural shows two painters in media res, painting the very mural that you’re looking at (that idea came from David Hart’s wife, Barbara). You can even see the painted shadows of the “ropes” that hold their suspended scaffold in place. I learned via this Huell Howser video that originally, the mural depicted a third dude falling off the scaffold, but too many people called the cops so they had to paint over it.

It’s a fiendishly clever mural that required four painters and nine weeks to complete, and cost $75,000. In my estimation it was worth it – not only has the mural held up beautifully over the past 40 years, but the wraparound band of windows – real or not – does a lot to give the impression of a more complete building. I highly recommend looking at it from the terrace atop California Plaza, just south of the Angels Flight ticket booth. 

Things were looking up after David Hart’s renovation was completed in 1986. The office space at the Subway Terminal Building was about 70% rented. LA Mayor Tom Bradley declared March 31, 1986 “Subway Terminal Building Renaissance Day,” and the city gave Hart a proclamation for preserving this venerable part of the downtown skyscape. 

This was, after all, a time when many aging downtown structures were falling to the wrecking ball – including Walker & Eisen’s gorgeous National Bank of Commerce building, the Subway Terminal Building’s art deco neighbor just to the south. 

Unfortunately, Hart’s investment didn’t work out. After the downtown real estate boom of the ‘80s went bust in the ‘90s, Hart lost the Subway Terminal Building to foreclosure, and it was left empty and abandoned for a decade. 

In 2004 it was purchased by the Cleveland-based developer Forest City, who put up $65 million to transform the Subway Terminal Building into an apartment complex called Metro 417. They hired AC Martin to convert the original 600 offices into 277 livable spaces with finished interior walls and hardwood floors, unlike the open-plan, loft-style conversions that a lot of other developers chose for their downtown properties in the early 2000s. As part of the renovation the corridors in each of the wings were given new, more modern finishes. Some of the original bathrooms in the main east-west corridor were converted into studio units. They added a workout room, screening room and other common areas; a shared garden and hot tub were added to the eastern terrace on the rooftop deck level. They also removed the portal in the back of the main lobby that used to lead to the subway concourse. Now there’s a conference room back in that area. 

In addition to all the new stuff introduced by AC Martin, workers also restored the mosaics in the main lobby and refinished the moldings, walls, marble floors and doors in the east-west corridor. They removed a drop ceiling that covered the original coffered ceiling in the subway concourse at some point when the Feds occupied the space. They even cleaned up the non-original trompe I’oeil mural introduced in 1986.

Originally, Forest City planned to convert the 130,000 square feet of underground space into a destination for foodies and shoppers, once Metro 417 was complete. But they dropped the idea when the 2008 recession hit. There was some renewed interest in 2016. Then in 2018, a company called City Storage Systems (parent company of CloudKitchens, a “ghost kitchen and delivery firm”) bought the space, submitted plans in 2020 to remodel it into an underground food court (Esotouric posted the audio from the Cultural Heritage Commission hearing), then submitted revised plans in 2023, which seem to suggest they were abandoning the food court concept. As of 2024, City Storage Systems is suing the owners of Metro 417 for $5 million for the mold and extensive water damage in the old subway…and as of late 2024 the old subway platform, plus some commercial condo space on the ground floor, is once again for sale. Today the doors to the subway concourse remain shut.

Occasionally, some well-connected (and/or trespassing!) Angeleno gives us a tantalizing peak inside the mothballed underground levels. Huell Howser investigated in 1994 when the entire building was boarded up, and returned in 2009 after it was renovated by Forest City, and the differences are fascinating to see. There’s loads of illuminating info and footage from this 2017 tour led by Richard Schave of Esotouric with Nathan Marsak, too. But it’s unclear whether the public will ever get to wander freely through that cavernous platform area again.

And what of the Hollywood Subway tunnel? Its western portal has become a landmark of its own, even though it’s been shuttered for decades, too. Starting in 1984, the tunnel, the walls around it and the Toluca Substation became an open canvas for graffiti artists – check out this amazing Flickr gallery to see how it’s been decorated over the years.

Now the former substation and western portal of the tunnel are part of a small private dog park at the back of the Belmont Station apartment complex, built on the former train yard. While it’s all been nicely preserved and repainted, it also looks kind of like a cemetery. When you know what’s behind that sealed-up entryway – or what’s still sitting there two floors underground, in the case of the Subway Terminal Building – it’s all the more frustrating not to be able to see it yourself. All that history is locked away, just waiting to be experienced, you know? 

Watch excerpts of two movies shot below the Subway Terminal Building: Down Three Dark Streets (1954) and While the City Sleeps (1956).

Resources & Recommended Reading 

+ “1800 Take to Subway in Air Raid Practice” (Los Angeles Times, April 26, 1955 – via ProQuest)

+ “$750,000 Rent in Janss Lease” (Los Angeles Evening Express, November 27, 1925 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Autoist’s Drive in Subway Lands Him in Hands of Police” (Los Angeles Times, February 17, 1940 – via ProQuest)

+ Bariscale, Floyd: “No. 177 – Subway Terminal Building” (Big Orange Landmarks, August 28, 2008)

+ Barragan, Bianca: “Into the depths of LA’s old Red Car subway terminal” (Curbed LA, March 2, 2016)

+ Bicknell, Kenn: “November 30: This Date in Los Angeles Transportation History” (Metro Transportation Research library and Archive, updated June 3, 2024)

+ Castillo, Rey: “Trolley Thursday 1-21-21 – The Pacific Electric Building and Subway Terminal” (Twice-Weekly Trolly History blog, January 21, 2021)

+ “Chain Drug Store to Open” (Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1926 – via ProQuest)

+ Cooper, Kim & Richard Schave: “Cultural Heritage Commission discussion of proposed Subway Terminal concourse remodel by CloudKitchens” (Esotouric on Substack, October 8, 2024)

+ Cooper, Kim & Richard Schave: “This Decommissioned Los Angeles Subway Terminal Could Be Yours” (Esotouric on Substack, October 8, 2024)

+ Elliott, Clifford A.: “Tunnel Digging Is Begun in Los Angeles,” part 1 and part 2 (Electric Railway Journal, December 6, 1924 – via Metro Library Archive on Flickr) 

+ “The Executives and Employees of The Janss Investment Co…” (AD – Los Angeles Evening Express, June 3, 1926 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “EXPLORING THE SUBWAY TERMINAL BUILDING IN LOS ANGELES (UNDERGROUND TUNNEL)” (@CLICKCLACKBRAINSPLAT, Jan 2, 2025)

+ “First Train Through New L.A.-Glendale Subway Today” (Los Angeles Evening Express, November 30, 1925 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Glendale Children Take First, Last Trolley Ride” (Los Angeles Times, June 15, 1955 – via ProQuest)

+ “Glendale Gets Extra Doze As Subway Opens” (Los Angeles Evening Express, December 1, 1925 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Hearty Approval-of Patrons Usher in Subway” (PDF – The Pacific Electric Magazine, December 10, 1925 – via Metro Transportation Research Library and Archive)

+ “Height-Limit $4,000,000 Subway Terminal Building Is Planned” (Los Angeles Times, January 8, 1925 – via ProQuest)

+ “Hill Street Station” (Electric Railway Historical Association of Southern California) 

+ “Hollywood Subway” (Electric Railway Historical Association of Southern California)

+ Howser, Huell: “Subway | Visiting with Huell Howser | PBS SoCal” (VIDEO – @PBS SoCal on YouTube, originally aired September 26, 1994; uploaded October 5, 2018)

+ Howser, Huell: “Subway Terminal Update” (VIDEO – PBS.org, June 28, 2009)

+ “June 1 Set as Day on Which Janss Investment Company Will Move into Fine New Quarters” (Los Angeles Evening Express, May 22, 1926 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Kelts’ Geographical Directory | Los Angeles (Kelts’ Geographical Directory Co., 1927 – via LA Public Library)

+ “L.A. Subway Closes After Special Trolley Car Trip” (Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1955 –  via ProQuest)

+ “LAVA Sunday Salon: Subway Terminal Tunnel (June 2017)” (VIDEO – @esotouric on YouTube, March 9, 2018)

+ “Make Photos of New P.E. Tunnel” (Los Angeles Evening Post-Record, August 6, 1925 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Marsak, Nathan: “No, Everyone, there was No Los Angeles Streetcar Conspiracy” (BunkerHillLosAngeles.com, November 2, 2025) 

+ Masters, Nathan: “Inside L.A.’s Dark Network of Deserted Underground Tunnels” (Los Angeles Magazine, February 3, 2015)

+ McAvoy, Christy J. & Jessica N. Ritz, Historic Resources Group: Pacific Electric Building’s NRHP nomination form (PDF – March 18. 2008)

+ McAvoy, Christy J. & Jessica N. Ritz, Historic Resources Group: Subway Terminal Building’s NRHP nomination form (PDF – November 2, 2005)

+ Meares, Hadley: “Stunted Progress: Belmont Tunnel and the Repurposing of a Faded Los Angeles Dream” (PBSSocal.org, December 13, 2013)

+ Metro 417 (BrookfieldProperties.com)

+ Metro 417 (Zillow.com)

+ “Metropolitan Coach Lines (1953-1958)” (Metro Transportation Research Library and Archive, updated February 27, 2025)

+ Morrison, Patt: “Who killed L.A.’s streetcars? We all did” (Los Angeles Times, November 2, 2021)

+ “Moving Day, Anniversary” (Los Angeles Times, May 23, 1926 – via ProQuest)

+ “Pacific Electric’s Mile Long Subway Nearing End” (Daily News, April 12, 1925 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Pacific Electric Toluca Yard and Belmont Tunnel Part 1” (VIDEO – @RTD1 on YouTube, November 17, 2010)

+ Park, Joseph N.: “How Subway Will Absorb Downtown Traffic Pressure” (Los Angeles Times, November 22, 1925 – via ProQuest)

+ “P.E. to Build $4,000,000 Subway Terminal Building” (The Van Nuys News and Valley Green Sheet, January 9, 1925 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Plan Terminal Bldg. Garage” (Los Angeles Mirror, February 15, 1955 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Rasmussen, Cecilia: “70 Years Before Sinkholes, L.A. Had a Subway” (Los Angeles Times, January 8, 1996 – via ProQuest)

+ “Razing of Terminal Is Started” (Los Angeles Times, May 5, 1925 – via ProQuest)

+ Read, Nat B: The Jonathan Club Story (Balcony Press, 2005)

+ Simross, Lynn: “Seeing Is Believing–but Not at This Site : Artist’s Trick of the Eye Draws Attention to Downtown Building” (Los Angeles Times, March 31, 1986)

+ Slayton, Nicholas: “Underground Retail and Office Space Planned at Subway Terminal Building” (LA Downtown News, May 11, 2016)

+ “Speed Made on New Terminal” (Los Angeles Times, April 12, 1925 – via ProQuest)

+ “Stable Values Need Is Cited” (Los Angeles Times, December 6, 1925 – via ProQuest)

+ “Streetcar Tunnel Will Cease Service Sunday” (Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1955 – via ProQuest)

+ “Subway Building Plans Complete, Bids Called For” (Daily News, April 9, 1925 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Subway Station for Hill Street” (Los Angeles Evening Post-Record, January 8, 1925 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Subway Terminal” (Electric Railway Historical Association of Southern California)

+ “Subway Terminal Bldg (Metro 417) – Terra Cotta Repair” (VIDEO – @SpectraCompany01 on YouTube, November 3, 2015)

+ “The Subway Terminal Corporation Announces the Opening of the new…” (AD – Los Angeles Evening Express, June 30, 1926 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Subway Terminal Opening Delayed” (Los Angeles Evening Post-Record, October 22, 1925 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Terminal Building Changes Its Name” (Los Angeles Evening Citizen News, July 3, 1926 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “To Build Temporary P.E. Waiting Room” (Los Angeles Evening Express, April 4, 1925 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Vincent, Roger: “A Homey Look for Red Car Terminal” (Los Angeles Times, May 17, 2003)

+ Wagner, Les: “Mile-Long Tube Is Unfit for Bomb Shelter” (Los Angeles Mirror, July 12, 1955 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Wick, Julia: “L.A.’s First Subway Terminal Is Being Resurrected As A Shopping Center” (LAist.com, May 15, 2016)

+ William-Ross, Lindsay: “LAistory: The 1925 ‘Hollywood Subway’” (LAist.com, July 11, 2008)

+ “Work on Giant Subway Starts” (Los Angeles Evening Express, May 23, 1925 – via Newspapers.com)