3rd & Hill Street, Los Angeles: Then and Now

Within a span of only two lifetimes, an almost unimaginable transformation...

1895: Third Street looking west, past Hill Street. A church on the northeast corner is within walking distance of the residences. That’s the Crocker Mansion at the top of Bunker Hill, a landform that effectively cut off this part of the city from growth to the west.

1900: The tunnel at 3rd st and Hill st. is under construction, for an up coming train screet sytem. Now this part of the city can grow up to the west.

1903: (The two-year-old funicular railway "Angels Flight" (left), and the just completed 3rd and Hill str eet tunnel.)

1905: The photo shows how apartment buildings replaced the frame structures of earlier years. The Crocker Mansion is the fancy building at the top of Bunker Hill, and the viewing tower stands behind it to the right. There appear to be electric lights in the tunnel: In June 1903 a journalist had suggested coating the walls of the tunnel with radium to provide illumination

1908: The Crocker Mansion is almost completely hidden in this artificially colored shot from the early 1900s by a new apartment building that faces Clay Street. The Saint Helena Sanitarium, with a vegetarian restaurant, is on the northwest corner of Third and Hill. The gabled buildings at the left were later replaced by the Ferguson Building, shown below.

Ornamental street lights have been added.

1912: Angel's Flight funicular is still in service as well as the tunnel.

1918: The Crocker Mansion is gone in these shots from what appears to be the late teens, replaced by the Elks Lodge (the building bearing the sign BPOE, for Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks; the same initials appear on the new archway entrance to Angels Flight). Saint Helena’s has been replaced by a rooming house, but the vegetarian restaurant remains.

The striped awnings mark the ground floor of the Conservative Life building, and the white-columned archway at the right appears to be the entrance to the YWCA.

The wooden houses on the southwest corner have been replaced by an office building.

1960: The ornamental street lamps and the viewing tower have vanished in this view, probably from the 1960s. Grime covers the retaining wall.

1965: Bunker Hill redevelopment years, many of the remaining buldings are now torndown away. Many of the new empty loads will be use for the new modern skyscrapers, but some other will be nothing but parking lots. Olivet and Sinai bravely continue their up-and-down transit during their waning days at Third Street as Bunker Hill is transformed behind them. Angels Flight was moved a block farther south but is now out of action again as the result of its first fatal accident

1970: After the Bunker Hill devastation...

1995: An attempt to revitalise downtown... new apartments buildings were built... There is any sign visilible of what once was Bunker Hill.

2009: The Third Street tunnel (marked by the line of lights just above the automobile) now runs beneath a residential and commercial development.The photo was taken in February 2009. Ornamental street lights have returned.

All pics are taken from: LAPL. www.skyscrapercity.com, http://www.ulwaf.com/LA-1900s/index04.html and http://losangelespast.blogspot.com