page_title: Subway Terminal Building
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Subway Terminal Building / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Entrance to Subway Terminal Building (built 1925) — on Hill Street, in Downtown Los Angeles, California. Present day "Metro 417" — renovated in 2007 into a luxury apartments building.
context_page_description: The Subway Terminal Building, now Metro 417, is an Italian Renaissance Revival building in Downtown Los Angeles at 417 South Hill Street. It was designed by architects Schultze and Weaver and was built in 1925. It was the downtown terminus for the "Hollywood Subway" branch of the Pacific Electric Railway Interurban rail line. Currently it is a luxury apartment building. It is near Pershing Square. When the Metro Red Line, the replacement for the Hollywood Subway, was built, the Pershing Square station was built nearby.
context_section_description: As street traffic increased in downtown Los Angeles, the Pacific Electric Railway undertook its most ambitious project, a dedicated right of way into downtown through a subway - the existing terminal in the Pacific Electric Building at Sixth and Main was reached by shared street running. Responding to the traffic congestion that clogged the streets, the California Railroad Commission in 1922 issued Order No. 9928, which called for the Pacific Electric to construct a subway to bypass downtown's busy streets. Plans for the "Hollywood Subway," as the project came to be known, were drafted as early as February 1924, and ground was broken in May of the same year.
  The Subway Terminal Building was built to conform to the 150 foot height limit imposed on all downtown construction. The other end of the subway line emerged at the surface at the Belmont Tunnel / Toluca Substation and Yard.
  After 18 months of construction and $1.25 million in expenditures, the Subway officially opened to the public on December 1, 1925, between the intersection of Beverly and Glendale Blvds in Westlake, and the Subway Terminal Building.
  The early years of the Subway were widely met with success, as it emerged as one of Los Angeles's most popular modes of public transit throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Ridership hit an all-time high during the World War II-era; in 1944 – considered to have been the Subway's peak – trains carried an estimated 65,000 passengers through the tunnel each day.
caption: Entrance to Subway Terminal Building
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