Give Thanks for What We Don't Have
Eric Richardson
[Flickr]
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — It's often hard to appreciate the visual impact of something when it's not around. It's easy to take for granted Downtown's freedom from the visual blight of telephone poles and their associated wires, but it sometimes surprises me just how close the cables come to the city center.
As you approach the core of Downtown the lines simply taper away before finally disappearing, their function replaced by underground conduit.
It wasn't always this way. Early in its life Downtown had poles to carry phone and power lines, as shown in this 1890's photograph.
In 1897, though, City Council decreed that the phone and electric utilities had one year to underground all their cables in the core of Downtown. The deadline got pushed back a time or two -- in 1898 Edison blaimed their lack of compliance on all supplies being taken for the war -- but all work was done by the end of the decade. Over a century later I'm quite grateful to those councilmen for taking that stand.
D on January 24, 2007, at 10:13PM – #1
Now to get the wires in the rest of the city underground, it will take forever! they are disgusting, attract trash and graffiti, obscure sightlines and views, and are a visual blight. Get rid of those things for Christ sake. Every modern city in the world has a plan to underground their wires and are acting on it, yet LA lags behind once again. SD has 60 % or so of their wires underground and most other cities do to, yet we have big ass poles and wires hanging on La Cienega, one of our main streets, as well as on almost every other street. Sorry, this pisses me off.
Scott Mercer on January 25, 2007, at 07:05PM – #2
THe one that really disgusts me is Third Street in the area of Cedars and east of La Cienega. Ugh.
Mortenson2 on January 25, 2007, at 08:15PM – #3
The "SD" mentioned by "D" made me curious. I found the following press release online, and so I'm assuming he or she is referring to the city that issued it ---->
http://www.sandiego.gov/citycouncil/cd6/pdf/press/060113.pdf
D on January 26, 2007, at 01:02AM – #4
yup, i was referring to San Diego.