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I took a guided walking tour of the old Spring Street financial district the other day, and was reminded that Los Angeles was never the cultural wasteland it was alleged to be.
The financial palaces of south Spring Street were a solid architectural achievement, and to this day the buildings that remain give the street beauty, strength, unity and dignity.
It was a fine day, bright and wind-washed. We gathered in the lobby of the old Subway Terminal Building in the 400 block of South Hill-which in itself was a revelation to some of our group.
Our guide, Janet Marie Smith of the Los Angeles Conservancy, took us downstairs into a large room that had been part of the grand concourse, where the streetcars arrived after running the subway tunnel from Glendale and Beverly boulevards. Most Angelenos today probably don't know we had a subway.
Though it ran for little more than one mile, the subway avoided heavy traffic for Pacific Electric trains coming into the downtown area from Glendale-Burbank, Santa Monica-Beverly Hills via Hollywood, and the San Fernando Valley. It was a thrill, suddenly to be swallowed up in that dark tunnel under Crown Hill and Bunker Hill, and to emerge at 4th and Hill streets, a block from Pershing Square.
We walked two blocks over to 4th and Spring and looked into the old Hellman Building,...