Fifty-Five Years Ago Today: Plans for 4th Street 'Cut' Unveiled

Boy, what a blunder that plan was. The urban planers back then were really clueless about how a vibrant downtown should look like. Their redevelopment of Bunker Hill ruined that. By having these streets no longer intersect, the sidewalk life was destroyed by a car oriented design.

Look at Grand Ave. from 5th from the library going up the hill. Grand used to have a more gentle slope up the hill and intersected with 4th street. Then these brilliant designers ruined it by raising Grand above 4th. No longer could you have a vibrant intersection of streets but now an almost vertical climb up Grand from the Library. Go take a look a Grand and you can see the street was raised above the building next to it as the windows of the building are now below street level. I'm talking about the building next to the US Bank Tower.

Grand Avenue was not "raised", the top of the hill was cut down further and the Grand Avenue viaduct was constructed between 2nd and 4th, stood alone for many years. Before the grading down, one could walk along Grand from 2nd to 1st and actually walk downhill. Large concrete pylons thrust up in the air right down the center median. I think these were intended to support some sort of future mass transit system.

Civil engineer Steve Mutschenbacher designed the layout and grading.

Either way, it was a poor urban design.

The Fourth Street cut and Viaduct was a huge urban planning mistake. That hideous viaduct should be removed (like the Central and Embarcadero Freeways in San Francisco) and the western slope could be turned into a lovely stairway/escalator/garden/fountain similar to what was done in front of the Central Library on Fifth.

It makes a nice setting for that very last scene in the movie "Repo Man"...

And the opening scenes of the first Terminator.

The Fourth Street Freeway, the World Trade Center, the Security Pacific Bank complex (now BOA), the Bonaventure Hotel, the parking garage for ARCO Plaza - all of it conceived by civil engineers and architects without an ounce, no awareness whatsoever of sensible urban design. It is all a nightmare.

And then some bureaucrat at the CRA gets a case of 2001 Space Odyssey on the brain and proposes Pedways and a People Mover.

Send them all to Mars along with Bush! No return ticket.

You guys have got to remember the context of the times. Public places where people gathered to shop and intermingle were considered the terrible breeding grounds for crime and disease (sometimes they were).

The "Anglo" reigned supreme in L.A., and the wrecking crew that followed behind this group's manifest destiny made a killing ripping up everything to service automobiles and real estate speculation.

Cruise through the archival L.A. Times and you'll see the worst, anti-urban, slander coming from both newly minted and long-time residents of L.A. It is too easy to blame just civil engineers and planners of the times.

Engineers and planners were the foot soldiers and propagandists of a several generations of L.A. leaders, and they reflected the opinions of the ruling class in this City.