A map from 1912 shows the plans for the Arroyo Seco Parkway. Note the Silver Lake Parkway, which was not built. The Arroyo Seco Parkway was actually proposed even earlier, as part of Charles Mulford Robinsons' "City Beautiful" project of 1906-7. (He also advocated realigning Spring Street and putting City Hall there … and he proposed planting jacarandas along the city's streets). |
 Los Angeles Times file photo This photograph of the Arroyo Seco Road, dated 1921, shows a pleasant country lane between Pasadena and downtown Los Angeles. |
 Photograph by the Los Angeles Times Construction on the river channel next to the Pasadena Freeway, July 1, 1935. |
 Photograph by the Los Angeles Times Construction is nearly finished, Oct. 17, 1940. |
 Los Angeles Times file photo. Rose Queen Sally Stanton, Gov. Culbert Olson and Highway Patrol Chief E. Raymond Cato at the ribbon cutting of the Arroyo Seco Parkway (Pasadena Freeway), Dec. 30, 1940. This is in the general location east of Fair Oaks Avenue in South Pasadena where the sinkhole opened July 16, 2008. |
 Photograph by the Los Angeles Times And in a matter of months (Feb. 4, 1941) after the opening, the southbound Arroyo Seco Parkway (Pasadena Freeway) is backed up at the Figueroa Tunnels. If you ever wondered what a 67-year-old traffic jam looks like, this is your answer. |
 Photograph by the Los Angeles Times Emergency turnouts are added to the Pasadena Freeway in 1950 to ease congestion and prevent accidents. |
 Photograph by Gil Cooper / Los Angeles Times Workers install center dividers on the Pasadena Freeway, June 15, 1961. If you have ever seen the beating that these guardrails take from accidents, you can imagine what it was like when there was nothing but perhaps a little landscaping to keep cars from plunging into oncoming traffic. Email me |
Photograph by the Los Angeles Times
If you drive the Pasadena Freeway regularly, you will recognize immediately that it no longer looks anything like this. Yes, the ramps are entirely different. (And the Golden State Freeway hadn't been built when this picture was taken). But my point for now is the hillside in Elysian Park, which kept dropping mud and boulders on the southbound lanes, as occurred in February 1958.
Photograph by Frank Q. Brown / Los Angeles Times
Here's a picture of the freeway after cleanup allowed some lanes to be reopened. In 1958, the southbound Pasadena Freeway carried 120,000 cars a day, the Mirror said. The Mirror also noted that another mudslide took out a bridge in 1937.
ladailymirror.com 
The two pictures of the Pasadena Freeway through Elysian Park are graphic evidence of two separate mindsets in building the auto thoroughfare through Elysian Park.
Look at the top picture. On the left are the Figueroa Tunnels. Built during the early 1930’s and designed to blend into the environment of Elysian Park. Made for a wonderful drive through the park (at the time, and to some degree, even today) and didn’t impede the experience of noncommuters using the park.
On the right are the inbound lanes of the Pasadena Freeway built years later to complete the freeway to Downtown L.A. and the four level interchange. Figueroa Street through the tunnels was drafted to become the outbound lanes of the Pasadena Freeway. Bulldozed right though. So much for aesthetics.
Picture Elysian Park WITHOUT the inbound lanes of the Pasadena Freeway. It is obvious that the Pasadena Freeway took priority over the Park or the local community.
Notice the separation between the outbound and inbound lanes of the Pasadena Freeway over the Los Angeles River. Believe it or not, that is a walkway from San Fernando Road to Elysian Park. Access to Elysian Park from Lincoln Heights after the Figueroa Tunnels were closed to pedestrians. It continues on in the lower picture between the two fences on the right of the picture. That accessway from San Fernando Road to Elysian Park is still there, fifty years later.
Somebody explored this walkway recently here:
http://blogging.la/archives/2007/03/freeway_fun.phtml
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Re the article’s passage:
“Completed in 1940 and originally called the Arroyo Seco Parkway, the highway is the oldest freeway in the West. Its design was inspired by such East Coast routes as the George Washington Parkway in the Washington, D.C., area; the Sawmill River Parkway north of New York City; and the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut”
It should be noted that the real progenitor of all these roads in the Bronx River Parkway, the nation’s oldest such road, that runs north from New York City, through southern Westchester County. The parkway suffers from many of the same early-innovation inadequacies as does the 110 Freeway; when a study was commissioned a few years ago as to the feasibility of widening the largely two-lane, shoulderless parkway, it was determined that the environmental impact of cutting into the parkland that flanks the road (in Westchester, “Parkway” is a very literal designation) would destroy its character and threaten its national landmark status. So, it continues to be unequal to the demands placed on it, though it remains a lovely road to drive — if the motorist remians alert.
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The Arroyo Seco Parkway owes its right-of-way to Horace Dobbin’s Cycleway. He assembled the right-of-way to build a bicycle tollway at the turn of the last century. His route was blocked by Huntington’s Red Car line, which would not let the Cycleway cross above its tracks. The Cycleway, charging 5 cents, was in competition with the Red Cars, which charged 25 cents.
Remnants of the Arroyo Seco Road remain on the east side of the Arroyo, and would be resurrected for the modern day version of the Cycleway.
We need the Cycleway built now more than ever.
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Oops! Misspelled “remains” in my previous posting.
Also, it should be noted that the Westchester County, New York, road mentioned in the article is, correctly, the Saw Mill River Parkway, not “Sawmill.”
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