This electrical power station, right on Olvera Street, powered 40% of LA’s streetcars from 1905-1963

Added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 13, 1978

Decades before LA became a car town, it was a streetcar town. At the end of the 19th century, the Los Angeles Railway corporation (LARy) bought up the vast majority of LA’s existing streetcar systems, and started converting LA’s horsecars and cable cars into modern electric streetcars, called “yellow cars.” LARy operated 20 lines and some 1,250 trolleys at its height. Check out this 1898 map of the Los Angeles Railway lines:

Powering the yellow cars was a network of 14 substations developed under LARy’s owner Henry Huntington. Beginning in 1905 the Plaza Substation, right on Olvera Street, supplied about 40% of the current required to operate the entire LARy system.

The streetcar lines started to be replaced by diesel buses in the late 1940s, and by the late ‘50s, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority took over the few remaining streetcar lines. The streetcar service was shuttered completely in 1963, by which time the Plaza Substation’s generators had already been removed.

So what happens to a power substation after its services are no longer needed? You could follow the Altadena substation’s lead, and turn it into Mennonite thrift shop (see post 23). In the case of the Plaza Substation, a debate erupted over whether it should be replaced by another kitschy Olvera Street-style building, or preserved as it is. After a historian argued it had “no identifiable historic value” in 1971, the Recreation and Parks Commission voted to demolish it; but a group called Californians for Preservation Action sued to prevent its destruction, a state judge agreed, and in 1978 some funds were appropriated to rehab the building. 

The Plaza Substation’s original entrance on Olvera Street is mostly obscured by marketplace vendors. On the opposite side of the building, a handsome brick facade is punctuated by two really cool hand-carved wooden window coverings, honoring the history of the facility. Without these two unique markers you’d never know that this building had a significant role to play in LA transportation history.

Recommended Reading

+Plaza Substation @ NRHP website

+History of the Plaza Substation @ California Historic Route 66 Association’s website

+View vintage photos of the Plaza Substation’s construction and early years (LAPL El Pueblo Photo archives)