Court Flight Funicular

Court Flying Railway, also known as the Court Flight, in 1908. This railway was the other funicular in Downtown Los Angeles. Since 1905 Bunker Hill residents enjoyed another incline railway in their neightborhood. Originally envisioned as a tourist spot more than a practical mode of transportation, Court Flight was built on a portion of Court Street, so steep it was passible only to pedestrians by stairs. Court Flight's base was located on Broadway and it ran approximately 180 feet up towards Hill Street, in between Temple & First Street. Unlike Angels Flights, the Court Street cars ran on two separate tracks instead of one.

Source: www.skyscrapperscity.com and http://onbunkerhill.org/node/130 .

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El Court Flying Railway, o también conocido como el Court Flight en 1908, que junto al Angels Flight, fue el otro funicular inclinado del centro de Los Ángeles desde 1905. Inicialmente ideado como una atracción turística más que como un medio de transporte, el Court Flight se construyó sobre una porción de la Calle Court, donde el acceso unicamente era posible, a causa de la inclinación de la calle, para los peatones por medio de una escalera -originalmente de madera, y luego substituída por una echa de bloques de piedra- La base del Court Flight se hallaba en la calle Broadway, y ascendía aproximadamente unos 54.8 metros en dirección a la calle Hill, por la calle Court, en medio de las calles Primera y Temple. A diferencia del Angels Flight, los vagones del Court Hill se movían sobre dos raíles por dirección en lugar de uno solo.

Fuente: www.skyscrapperscity.com y http://onbunkerhill.org/node/130

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

Court Hill

Probabbly taken in the last decade of the 19th century or at the beginning of the XX century, the view shows a section of Court Hill, another famaus hill where Downtonw Los Angeles got settled.

Hill. The neighborhood is still very much in its heyday. Note that the Court Flight funicular railway (1904) has not yet been built on the dirt slope in the foreground at center right. And, in case you're curious, that large, remarkable Victorian residence at Court and Hill Streets is the Bradbury Mansion (1887-1929).

Do click on the images and have a look at the enlargements. The detail that can be seen is really quite impressive.

From: http://losangelespast.blogspot.com/ and LAPL.

No skyscrapers

It's winter 1905-'06, and we're looking northwest from atop the old Hotel Lankershim at Broadway and Seventh, with Seventh Street stretching out to the hills at left. The vista shows what was called the "Apartment District" at the time. Within 25 years, frontage on Seventh would become some of the most valuable urban real estate in the West. And a quarter century after that, the area to the right of center would become the skyscraper district.

It's really something to see this area as an ordinary residential neighborhood, isn't it? Remarkable that essentially everything we see here was wiped clean off the face of the earth without a trace. No earthquake or fire or other natural disaster could have accomplished such a thorough obliteration as was wrought here by the hand of man himself...

From: LAPL, www.skyscrapercity.com and http://losangelespast.blogspot.com/

(español)

Es el invierno de 1905-06, y la vista es de las calles Broadway y Séptima, hacia noreste, tomada desde el hotel Lamkershim (que ya no existe) La imagen muestra lo que en su tiempo se llamó el 'distrito de apartamentos'. En 25 años las fachadas de Broadway y la Séptima se convertirán en la zonas urbanas más valiosas y caras del todo el oeste de E.E.U.U. Y un cuarto de siglo después, toda el área de la derecha de la imagen, albegará el actual distrito de los rascacielos.

Parece un poco sobrecogedor poder contemplar este lugar como una corriente zona residencial. Sin embargo, toda esta zona residencial ha sido borrada de la faz de la tierra sin dejar ningún rastro. Ningún terremoto, o fuego, ni ningún otro desastre natural natural pudo haber cumplido tan bien su cometido de destrucción, como lo hizo simplemente la mano del hombre.

Downtown panorama: then and now

In the picture above, Bunker Hill is viewed in all its entirety, as the photo dates from 1939. Only 80 years later, just a human life time, the place is virtually unrecognizable: the picture bellow dates from 2009.