The first section of the Hollywood Freeway opened in 1940. It was then known as the Cahuenga Pass Parkway and trolleys ran down the center of it until 1952. The Parkway was designed by a team of engineers under the direction of Merrill Butler, the same team that had designed the Arroyo Seco Freeway/Parkway. Here in the Pass, they were able to incorporate lessons they had learned in their earlier work eg generous access ramps.
In spite of the fact that the on- and off-ramps of the former Cahuenga Pass Parkway have been modified by Caltrans since their original construction, the bridges have remained virtually intact. Although the detailing, methods of construction and structure of the three bridges are similar, and all manifest the *WPA-Heroic Streamline Moderne design influences, each has a slightly different appearance. The Pilgrimage Bridge is the low, arched one; the Mulholland Bridge, pictured, tall with a longer span over Cahuenga Blvd; and the Barham bridge wide and workman-like. These differences are most apparent in their streetlight/- luminaire designs, which are unique to each of these three bridges. However, they all share similar simple decorative concrete railings and a late Thirties sense of monumentality and civic presence. These bridges, walls, ramps, guard rails and tunnels represent an example of the late 1930’s civic social aspirations and grandeur.
Where earlier roads once crossed open countryside, however, early planning maps showed the Hollywood Parkway (to use its original name) slicing through a densely populated area. Residents were understandably unsettled. As early as 1940, the Hollywood Anti-Parkway League denounced the Cahuenga Pass Parkway, then under construction, as “un-American.” Later, as planners moved to extend the parkway toward downtown, opposition became even louder. Movie stars worried about their Whitley Heights homes. Merchants fretted about a sweeping concrete viaduct over Franklin Avenue. The Hollywood Bowl Association feared noise pollution. Some critics suggested that the city build a rapid transit line instead. Most supported the general idea of a freeway but disagreed with its routing.
Ultimately, the state relented to local opposition and struck compromises with the mostly white, middle-class, and politically powerful Hollywood community. Construction claimed several historic structures, including Charlie Chaplin's and Rudolph Valentino’s former homes in Whitley Heights, but the state planted extensive landscaping near the Hollywood Bowl to dampen traffic noise, and highway engineers bent the freeway around local landmarks like the First Presbyterian Church, the Hollywood Tower apartments, and KTTV’s newly constructed television studio.
The more ethnically diverse and working-class communities southeast of Hollywood – as in Boyle Heights and East Lost Angeles, where seven superhighways were built over local objections – were not as lucky. There, the freeway took a more direct route. It bisected Echo Park, severing the recreational lake from its adjacent playgrounds. It carved a canyon through downtown, obliterating historic Fort Moore Hill and its 1873 high school building. And where it met the Arroyo Seco Parkway rose the Four-Level Interchange, a colossal structure that displaced some 4,000 people.
Construction lasted seven years (1947-54) and cost $55 million. Nearly half went toward right-of-way acquisition, which involved the relocation of 1,728 buildings and the demolition of another 90. When the final link of the ten-mile freeway opened in 1954, an ancient transportation corridor had entered modern times, but it had also opened urban wounds that have yet to heal.
*The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency, employing millions of job-seekers (mostly unskilled men) to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads. It was established on May 6, 1935, by presidential order, as a key part of the Second New Deal.