by Paul R. Spitzzeri
The highlighted artifact from the Homestead’s holdings for this “Through the Viewfinder” post is a 28 July 1925 snapshot photo of the Plaza, the historic center of pre-American Los Angeles, with the view taken from the northeast corner of the public park looking towards Main Street. It is interesting to peruse the scene with the long benches much of which are occupied, in the shaded sections, naturally, by what looks like a mix of Anglos and Latinos, expansive lawns (though signs warn to “Keep Off The Grass,” leading one to wonder what the grass is for), palm and other trees.
In the background, through the trees, is Main Street with several cars and trucks parked on its east side adjoining the Plaza—goods such as produce may have been sold from trucks?—while, on the west side of the thoroughfare, where the LA Plaza Cultura y Artes is now, a drugstore with a lighted sign reading “Botica,” Spanish for that establishment, stands out because of the most space between the plantings.
To the right, outside the image, is the Plaza Church, an anchor for the area and its communities for well over two centuries, while, to the left, and also beyond the bounds of the photo, is the Pico House hotel, which is more than 150 years old. What we see in this great snapshot is a public place that drew a good many people and was part of a vibrant, active community—but plans were afoot that could have completely transformed the Plaza, far beyond what actually transpired in later years.
This was related, specifically at the end of July 1925, to the long-gestating Union Station project, in which the City of Los Angeles worked for a quarter-century or so on establishing a railroad terminal for all lines entering and leaving downtown. This, in turn, was tied to a much bigger and grandiose Civic Center concept that, as noted above, would not only have radically remade the Plaza, but a large swath of the downtown area surrounding it.
This post will focus particularly on varying ideas for Union Station and a federal decision made that cleared the way, from Washington’s side, for a project, of which there were options. A prior post here looked at an earlier proposed administrative center that envisioned a group of buildings as far south as First Street and north to Sunset Boulevard (today’s César A. Chávez Avenue) and, on the east, Main while expanding the other direction to the west side of Hill Street, with a city hall directly west of the Plaza about where the drugstore is situated and to the west of that.
In this case, the big news, announced in newspapers the day after the photo was taken, was discussed in various ways, with the Los Angeles Record reporting:
Los Angeles today won a 10-year fight to force the three transcontinental railroads [the Southern Pacific, Santa Fe and Union Pacific] entering Los Angeles to unite their terminal facilities by constructing a union station at the Plaza.
Advices from Washington say that the interstate commerce commission [ICC], which the U.S. supreme court has held to have authority, today approved the Plaza terminal and authorized the California railroad commission [forerunner of today’s California Public Utilities Commission, or CPUC] to issue the necessary orders for the construction of the entire Plaza union terminal plan . . .
City officials announce that the ruling and approval is a big victory for the city, as the city has been working and fighting through the railroad commission to force the three railways to accept the plan and to build the station.
Deputy City Attorney Milton Bryan put a price tag of $9 million on the station and noted that “the Southern Pacific and Union Pacific railroads want to use the Arcade station,” built by the former and located to the southeast along the Los Angeles River, “as a joint terminal.” The account added that a state railroad commission engineer was hired to work on a plan, while the railroad companies fought the concept by arguing that the commission had no jurisdiction, leading ultimately to the federal high court ruling on the ICC’s authority.
The Record continued that “it is expected that it will take a score of years [20] before the entire plan is completed” and noted that “the approved plan,” in a city public utilities office, “shows a parkway just north of Commercial street” and that, north of this, “would be the huge union terminal and north of this would be the switching tracks.” It was reiterated that the three railroad giants also protested the large cost of millions of dollars, beyond the question of jurisdictional authority.
In its coverage, also on the 29th, the Los Angeles Express added that the ICC’s ruling observed that “the official commitment of the city in favor of a union station in the general area of the Plaza is also entitled to weight on the question of public convenience and necessity.” The Southern Pacific and Union Pacific (the latter controlling the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake line) applied together for approval to have a terminal beyond the Plaza area, but this was rejected. “Considerable weight” was offered by local authorities for a union station, however, and it was noted that there wasn’t “any particular site within the general area defined,” nor was there “a particular plan to be followed.”
The paper also provided a quote from the chair of the Mayor’s Committee on the Union Terminal, former Secretary of the Treasury, under his father-in-law President Woodrow Wilson, and candidate in 1920 and 1924 for the Democratic Party nominee for President, William Gibbs McAdoo:
The decision of the Interstate Commerce Commission is highly gratifying, because it clarifies the situation and marks the beginning of the end of the ten-year controversy between the railroads and the city over a union terminal . . . the reports indicate that it is a sweeping victory for the city . . . I am sure that Mayor Cryer is immensely gratified with the results.
Not surprisingly, the Los Angeles Times, with its significant influence and greater resources, delved far deeper into the decision than its competitors, as it emphasized not only the concept of a union terminal but the prospect of “the elimination of the death-trap grade crossings on [the city’s] downtown streets.” It also added that there were a pair of dissenters on the ICC.
Moreover, while the paper commented that “civic interests yesterday received with general enthusiasm” the news of the decision, “railroad representatives retired behind the judicial front of withholding comment.” Bryan’s boss, City Attorney Jess E. Stephens, told the Times, “we have fought this thing through every court in the land . . . It has been a clean fight and we have won. I hope that the railroads will not force us into court again . . . [I hope] the railroads will bow to the wishes of the people and without further court action go to work and build the union passenger depot on the Plaza site.”
The Times also traced some of the history of the union terminal project, noting that music company owner and theater builder, Frederick W. Blanchard, as president of the Central Development Association, filed a protest to the City Council regarding those grade crossings. As conversations continued, Blanchard, appointed chair of a committee in the powerful Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, pushed for the terminal and a petition filed with the state railroad commission.
In 1916, the City Council held an informal gathering, with railroad commissioners invited, and, while the City Attorney questioned the latter’s authority over grade crossings, the Central Development Association continued its push for addressing both the crossings and the terminal. After it was decided to seek a decision from the California Supreme Court, that body, in June 1917, issued a ruling that the railroad commission, not the City, had authority with both issues. Investigations and hearings ensued and, at the start of 1918, the City Council passed a resolution seeking to have the railroad commission order the building of a union terminal.
Richard Sachse, the commission’s chief engineer, spent two years on a comprehensive transportation survey and issued a two-volume, 1,400-page report, in which, the paper wrote, “he recommended the construction of a union passenger terminal at or near the Plaza.” While the railroads did what they could to counter the arguments, the City Council, by this time including Boyle Workman as president, approved the Sachse recommendation, with the note that the Pacific Electric Railway was not forced to be part of the project.
The three railroad companies appealed to the state Supreme Court, which ruled in their favor by denying the force of the commission’s order and the latter then took the matter to the federal high court, while the City applied for a hearing before the ICC. In 1924, the U.S. Supreme Court, while ruling against the authority of the state railroad commission, vested authority in the ICC, which sent a representative and appraisers to Los Angeles.
Information on the matter was also provided by the California railroad commission and an examiner issued a report to the ICC, but an examiner for the latter determined that, while grade crossings should be abandoned in most cases and that the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe/Salt Lake did not show the need for further work on their lines, there was a need for a union terminal, though not necessarily in the vicinity of the Plaza. Finally, the Times noted that the Southern Pacific, in acquiring the El Paso and Southwestern Railway, took possession of nearly 50 acres of more than 60 located within Sachse’s “original Plaza union terminal plan.”
Meantime, the paper also noted that a civic center plan, different from the one proposed in 1923 and developed by the Allied Architects’ Association, which designed the Hall of Justice (1925), Patriotic Hall (1925) and Los Angeles County General Hospital (1933). It was stated that this would be “similar in many respects to the Sachse plan, to be located at the Plaza” and were endorsed by the Board of Public Utilities, the Traffic Commission and the Planning Commission. Moreover, the account continued,
Recognizing the necessity of preserving the city’s two most important landmarks, the original Plaza [actually, it was the third, the others being a little to the southeast and then a bit to the northwest of the current one] and the Plaza Church, the association, on its plan, located the union terminal a block further eastward than the site provided in the Sachse plan.
Allied’s concept was to place the passenger depot just south of a rerouted Temple Street and east of Los Angeles Street with executive buildings and a plaza-like area extending south to First. The freight depot and train yards would have been constructed north of Temple up to Macy Street (César A. Chávez Avenue), with the eastern boundary of the terminal complex being an extended San Pedro Street (the northern part of which to Temple is now Judge John Aiso Street) and the western line being Los Angeles Street.
Streets would have been significantly realigned as part of this project, which would have terminated Spring and Main streets and First Street for a civic center that would have placed the city hall on the north side of First to the east of the existing Hall of Records and kept the Hall of Justice at the northwest corner of the complex. A federal building was slated for the southwest corner of Temple and Los Angeles streets and two other unidentified edifices placed within the project area.
Meanwhile, “additional sites for railroad administrative buildings are provided, under the plan, on the south and east sides of the Plaza.” Additionally, the account observed that “the plan also provides for a great concourse beneath the station, giving access to and from the railroad trains,” while, for streetcars, the idea was “to create an underground loop for the street car tracks, this loop opening on the main underground concourse.” Lastly, it was recorded that “careful provision for the terminal was made at the Plaza in case the decision favored that location.”
The Sachse plan, however, called for an astounding revision of the Plaza, and upheaval of its heavy use by and meaning to Latinos, Chinese and others, with a rendering calling for “The New Plaza” that looked like something from Europe, and with the massive rail terminal at its north end and tracks coming into it from the north, obliterating Olvera Street and such landmark structures at the Avila Adobe and the Pelanconi House along with everything else past what would have been a viaduct for Macy Street over the tracks. Subway stations were sites on North Main Street in front of the Plaza Church and directly east of the terminal entrance. On the last day of July, however, the Express reported that new state railroad commission members were not expected to support his plan and this proved to be the case.
Others who weighed in on the ICC decision were Henry Z. Osborne, Jr., whose father was a former publisher of the Express and member of Congress and who was the engineer for the Board of Public Utilities from 1919 to 1923, and Blanchard. The former called the situation “eminently satisfactory” and felt that “we are virtually assured of ultimate success,” while the latter offered that “we’ve been through a long hard contest” while calling for the railroads to work with “the people” because “we need the terminal” and there was “no good reason for squandering any more money to delay the much needed improvement.”
In a lengthy editorial on the 30th, the Times celebrated the fact that “the public interest has taken precedence over the individua interests of the railroad companies” so that “the neck of the bottle has been broken” and traffic improvements were nigh. It was acknowledged that “time will be required to bring the Plaza project to its fruition” but “the city can now plan big things in a big way,” included more transportation work, such as with subways, streets and more development.
While “no case in the history of Southern California has been more bitterly contested,” the piece went on, “the city and the State have won” and “the public interest has proved paramount.” The Southern Pacific’s board chair indicated the firm would not appeal in the face of an ICC decision against the company and noted that Angel City transportation problems could no longer by tolerated. The Times commented, “A city of 1,000,000 population and billions of wealth cannot be kept in a transportation garb hardly suitable for one of 100,000 population.”
It was added that the city sought a conference with the state railroad commission and officials from the three railroad companies to plot out the steps toward the union terminal’s completion and cooperation was emphasized, including public financial support so that burdens did not fall too heavy on the transportation giants. Gravely intoning that “no attempt will be made to take advantage of the victory the people have won,” the editorial ended,
But there must be no parsimony. The foundation laid must be broad enough to suffice when Los Angeles has reached its third million in population. We must not build alone for next year and the year after, but for the next decade and the decade after.
The Express also editorialized briefly on the 30th that “this decision is epochal” and that “it terminates a long and vexatious dispute.” Angelenos and the state railroad commission were to be offered congratulations, while the paper stated that “not for many a long day has a decision by a branch of the federal government brought to the people of Los Angeles so great satisfaction” as the ICC decision—in fact, it could be argued that this was the most significant federal decision since a 1906 act of Congress allowing for the sale of and rights-of-way through public lands for the future Los Angeles Aqueduct.
Nothing, incidentally, was reported in these accounts about what would happen to the city’s Chinatown as part of the remaking of this section. Union Station finally was developed east of the Plaza and across Alameda Street and Chinatown was uprooted and moved to its current location as part of the project that finally was finished in 1939.
These discussions, however, nearly fifteen years earlier are a notable part of the quarter-century long effort for that unified railroad terminal that is still heavily used today, including for a slowly growing mass transit system embracing, over the last few decades, Metrolink trains from the suburbs and Metro lines within the city and surrounding areas.
After merging and shifting to freight transportation, the three major railroad giants are no longer carriers at Union Station. As noted in the post, they have been replaced by Metrolink, Metro subway lines, Amtrak, and connected bus services. This allows Union Station, the 85-year-old historic landmark, to continue operating and providing substantial benefits to Los Angeles.
As detailed in the post, the long period of disputes and legal battles between the three companies and other dissenters against the city illustrates the behind-the-scenes struggles common in many public projects, including the so-called high-speed rail. It is often the case that public interest is sacrificed to meet private, individual, and vested interests. Even among those nominally defending public interests, there are corrupt officials and legislative members who prioritize their own gains (“What’s in it for me?”), leading to compromised projects.
In my opinion, Union Station is a fortunate success.