Not too long ago downtown Los Angeles was a major industrial business area. Railroad switch engines would work night and day on a maze of switching leads to ship products to and from their loading docks doors.
During the early 1900 most multistory businesses used brick in their construction. That's not bad, unless there built in earthquake country such as Southern California. Most of these building are gone now, due too. . . You guessed it! Earthquakes
This long switching spur known as Violet Alley was operated by the SP and the Union Pacific shaired working this spur on alternate years.
The old PE Warehouse at the left of the picture and the SP warehouse on the right. This is the truck loading area with the PE and SP tracks are on the far side of each structure.Bruce Petty photo,1965
This is the old Santa Fe yard along the west side of the Los Angeles River. Here can be seen are some of the track side industrial buildings such as National Van Lines and National Storage Co. Bruce Petty photo,1973
The Anthony Macaroni Company is nothing more than a empty lot now, but they received their freight shipments from the Southern Pacific. Bruce Petty photo,1973
Many of the downtown warehouses such as this one, the Hass-Baruch building located on Alameda Street where the Southern Pacific tracks ran in both directions. This warehouse had its own spur track. Bruce Petty photo,1968
Andrew Novak took this picture in 2003. As you can see the Hass building and others around it are now gone. Only business going on now is an Office Depot parking lot and some homeless guy across the street collecting cans and plastic in his shopping cart. Sure going to take a lot of that crap to fill a box car.
