Driving through the Figueroa Street Tunnels offers a unique and dramatic Los Angeles experience. As you enter the first of the four Art Deco portals, the dazzling downtown skyline shrinks in your rearview mirror. Moments later, emerging from the last tunnel, you’re greeted by the lush scenery of the Arroyo Seco Parkway, characterized by its mature sycamore trees, gentle curves, and charming arched bridges. This transition highlights a fascinating piece of Los Angeles history, where functional engineering meets artistic design, all centered around Figueroa Street.
Originally, these tunnels weren’t conceived as part of the state freeway system we know today. Constructed between 1930 and 1936 by the City of Los Angeles, their initial purpose was to extend Figueroa Street through the challenging terrain of Elysian Park. This ambitious project aimed to improve connectivity and ease traffic congestion in a rapidly growing city. The tunnels were designed to accommodate two lanes of traffic in each direction, clearly separated by white double stripes. Reflecting the era’s approach to public infrastructure, a five-foot sidewalk was even included, inviting pedestrians to traverse this subterranean route – a feature that has since been removed.
The aesthetic of the Figueroa Street Tunnels is a testament to the vision of municipal engineer Merrill Butler. Butler, also celebrated for his iconic Los Angeles River bridges, imbued the tunnels with distinctive Art Deco flourishes. The tunnel portals and retaining walls are adorned with geometric patterns and ornamental street lamps, showcasing the architectural style popular in the 1930s. Inside the tunnels, reflective tiles were incorporated to enhance the sensation of movement, a subtle yet effective design element. Adding a civic touch, each of the eight portals featured a stylized concrete cast of the Los Angeles city seal. These details elevated the tunnels beyond mere infrastructure, transforming them into notable landmarks along Figueroa Street.
Beyond aesthetics, the Figueroa Street Tunnels were fundamentally a traffic solution. They were the centerpiece of a broader initiative to widen and extend Figueroa Street, creating a more efficient thoroughfare between downtown Los Angeles and Pasadena. Another surviving element of this program is the grade-separated intersection of Temple Street and Figueroa Street. Prior to the tunnels, North Broadway served as the primary northern route from downtown, frequently becoming heavily congested, especially at its Los Angeles River crossing. The four tunnels provided a crucial bypass, cutting through Elysian Park and circumventing the bottlenecks on North Broadway. This improvement came at the cost of a portion of Elysian Park’s southeastern edge, sacrificed to enhance traffic flow and modernize Figueroa Street’s reach.
Construction of the Figueroa Street Tunnels was a significant undertaking. In April 1930, workers from contractor H.W. Rohl’s firm began the arduous task of drilling through the Elysian Hills’ sandstone and mudstone. Tunnels two and four (starting the count from the south) were constructed using a method of drilling outwards from the center towards each portal. Tunnel three, the shortest of the four, was built using the cut-and-cover technique. These initial three tunnels were opened to public traffic in November 1931, marking a significant milestone in the Figueroa Street project. A second phase of construction from 1935 to 1936 saw the completion of tunnel one, the longest of the group, stretching 755 feet through the hills connecting Bishops Road and Solano Avenue. On August 4, 1936, all four Figueroa Street Tunnels were opened, allowing two-way traffic to flow through them for the first time, solidifying Figueroa Street as a major artery.
However, the Figueroa Street Tunnels’ role as part of Figueroa Street was relatively short-lived. The 1940 inauguration of the Arroyo Seco Parkway to Pasadena created unforeseen traffic challenges. The tunnel system, designed for city street traffic, became a bottleneck as multiple lanes of parkway traffic converged into just two lanes within the tunnels. To resolve this emerging congestion issue, state highway engineers quickly initiated a project to upgrade Figueroa Street to freeway standards. This involved extensive blasting and excavation above and west of the existing tunnels to create a new open-cut roadway. This new section was designed to carry four lanes of southbound traffic through Elysian Park towards Castelar Street (now Hill Street). The original tunnels were repurposed to handle northbound traffic. By December 30, 1943, the pedestrian sidewalk was removed, and the Figueroa Street Tunnels were transformed into a one-way freeway system, accommodating four lanes of northbound Arroyo Seco Parkway traffic. This adaptation marked the final chapter in the evolution of the Figueroa Street Tunnels, embedding them within the larger narrative of Los Angeles freeway development.
