Bird's-eye view of downtown from top of Hill St. Tunnel, Los Angeles, circa 1921-1923

Title: Bird's-eye view of downtown from top of Hill St. Tunnel, Los Angeles, circa 1921-1923
Date Created: [circa 1921-1923]
Publisher: Los Angeles Times
Language: No linguistic content
Collection: Los Angeles Times Photographic Collection

Description: The Hill Street Tunnel was completed in 1909. "Now and Then," advertised on a billboard visible in the photograph, was a comedy written by Aaron Hoffman and performed by the Vaudeville comedy team Kolb and Dill, referring to Clarence William Kolb (1874-1964) and Max M. Bill (1876-1949). "Now and Then" is most frequently referenced in newspaper advertisements dating from 1921 to 1923.
This is a bird's-eye view from the top of the Court Hill, above the Hill St. Tunnel, looking down Hill St. towards 1st St. The tunnel was one of several built in the early twentieth century in order to connect LA's historic Downtown to the suburbs in the west through the palisade of hills separating them. At the foreground of the image, we can see park benches placed strategically for people to enjoy the view. We see streetcar tracks emerging out of the tunnels blending into the busy streets in the background. To the left, we can see the board to a Hotel La Crosse, and to the right, there are two boards, with the signs, "Starting Sat. Mar. 24 Charles Chaplin" and, "Mar. 26 Kolb & Dill Now and Then" partly obscured by a pole. The negative is slightly damaged at the top center.
Caption: Text on nitrate sleeve: Los Angeles City, Streets, Hill St. Tunnel; [Handwritten center right] SM has 1 copy; [On a post-it to bottom left] damaged, (try to scan)
Handwritten on edge of negative: Hill St....Tunnel

Genre: bird's-eye views
cellulose nitrate film
news photographs
Cityscape photographs
Subjects: Hill Street Tunnel (Los Angeles, Calif.)
Tunnels--California--Los Angeles
Streets--California--Los Angeles
Location: Los Angeles (Calif.)
Longitude: 34.054333
Latitude: -118.246576
Resource type: still image

Repository: University of California, Los Angeles. Library. Department of Special Collections
Local identifier: uclamss_1429_9511
ARK: ark:/21198/zz002dhktd
Manifest url

Rights statement: copyrighted
Rights Holder: UCLA Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections, A1713 Young Research Library, Box 951575, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575. E-mail: spec-coll@library.ucla.edu. Phone: (310)825-4988
Rights Country: US
Funding Note: Access to this collection is generously supported by Arcadia funds.
License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License .