[QUOTE=citywatch;7524312]^ I'm glad your recollection confirms my estimate of when it was demolished, I guessed it was the 1980s based on the style of the cars in the lot next to it. however, I believe I'm incorrect in guessing that bldg went up next door to the smaller bldg that used to sit on Hill st south of the subway terminal.
Based on this pic, I don't think the federal title bldg rose next to that 1 story bldg but must have filled up some of the land that it once stood on.....
awalkerinla.com
the shed for the trains apparently was constructed after the subway terminal had been completed. So the parking lot on the roof of the shed postdates the existence of what's now metro417.
I'm being nitpicky about this since I'm curious exactly how long either a gap or parking lot has existed next to the former subway terminal bldg. It appears that bldg hasn't had a friendly neighbor since its completion in 1925. A gap that goes back over
90 yrs!
while it's fascinating to see what dtla was like in its distant past, the present & future is where it's at......
Citywatch, I get the level of interest that you are giving to piecing together the puzzle of what was DTLA. I remember visiting from the mid-1960's to today, most often in the 1980's to 1990's. During the years I have accumulated many books on the subject with hundreds of photos and of course with the internet my photo record is now in the thousands. With that in mind, I think that the transit shed pre-dated the Subway Terminal building. The shed (circa 1915-1920) itself was a ramshackle embarrassment for a city with such a huge population growth, soon to become a city with over a million inhabitants in a special census taken in 1923. But the actual history of that entire block could be found out it is just a matter of finding the right sources. From my memory, also in the 1980's I remember the civic auditorium next to the Title Guarantee building. As we in this forum all know the original design was beyond spectacular and the 1930's renovation was very poor. In 1949 it housed the city's philharmonic and my Mother (who had just moved with her mother and father from Boston to Silverlake) told me a story where she accidentally bumped into and Angela Lansbury and they ended up discussing their feelings about Arron Copeland who had just performed there. But sadly, the next time I visited DTLA the auditorium was gone. Apparently the city was convinced by some developer (I think David Hoauk) that he would build a large tower in its place. His plan was to demolish the building and start right away. This was again in the mid-to late 1980's. Sounds familiar doesn't it.
But the point of my story (I think) is that downtown Los Angeles, up until the 1930's, was in its past history a physically dense, economically and culturally vital urban core serving a large suburban area of well over 2,500,000 and growing.
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