Street Railways and the Growth of Los Angeles by Robert C. Post

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 421 though rather uninspired academic in its style. Yet it is not entirely satisfactory as urban history. In the first place, the antecedents of City Beautiful were more extensive and prophetic than Wilson’s earlier chapters suggest. By the mid-19th century the major cities of Europe and America were faced with demands that had never existed before—water supply, public health, sewage disposal, urban transpor­ tation, railroad stations, public institutions, open space with light and air—and the attempts to meet the needs led to entirely new concepts of urban technology, of which linked spaces and vehicular drives, civic buildings, and monumental railroad stations were a part. It would have been possible for the author to give us a summary description of these problems and their solutions in which City Beautiful by neces­ sity was rooted. In the chief narrative chapters, those on the five cities, he adheres strictly to the kind of history that emphasizes the role of individual action and offers little of the physical accomplishments and the technical processes associated with them. This is most conspicuous in the chapter on Kansas City Union Station, where, in spite of a detailed account of genesis, siting, and conflicts among interests, we are given little on the design, structure, capacity, traffic, and operations of a monumental work of railroad architecture. Finally, there is the continuing legacy of the movement, in both aim and physical realiza­ tion. City Beautiful was an important factor in many more cities and lasted considerably longer than the author suggests. Random recol­ lection brings to mind the landscaping and civic art associated with the union stations of Cincinnati and Los Angeles (the last of which brought the great age of the railroad to its end), the implementation over twenty years of the Chicago Plan, Paseo del Rio in San Antonio and other projects of the federal Works Progress Administration, Riverside Park in New York, and many others. As the author notes in his introduction, he will not bore the reader with lists of parks and boulevards born of the City Beautiful impetus, but a comprehensive record of specific achievements would remind us that a few visionaries still struggle to preserve a decent city before the onslaught of poverty, the automobile, and the airplane. Carl W. Condit Dr. Condit is professor emeritus of history, art history, and urban affairs at Northwestern University. Street Railways and the Growth of Los Angeles. By Robert C. Post. San Marino, Calif.: Golden West Books, 1989. Pp. 170; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $48.95. In a snappy volume, Robert C. Post chronicles public transportation in Los Angeles before the Automobile Age. While some Angelenos 422 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE still fondly recall the “Big Red Cars” of the Pacific Electric Railway, America’s greatest interurban, most know only travel by motor car. After all, Los Angeles developed an unusually high rate of urban auto ownership. By 1949, the city had one car for every family, or for every 2.5 people; New York City, on the other hand, had one car for every 2.5 families or 8.7 people. Although Angelenos embraced the automobile earlier and more enthusiastically than did other Americans, the evolution of their public transport resembled dozens of other communities. Los Angeles began with horsecar operations, moved to cable-car lines, and subse­ quently initiated electric-powered service. This succession occurred at a rapid pace, covering about a score of years beginning in the mid-1870s. As elsewhere, the first animal-propelled streetcars were puny contraptions that operated over short spans of track, usually in or near the central plaza. The cable-car era was not too much different, except for lines appearing on heretofore unconquered hills. But the triumph of the electric trolley resulted in much heavier rolling stock and quick construction of an extensive network of trackage. Shortly after the turn of the century, bitter competition between operators gave way to corporate unification under the banner of the Los Angeles Railway Company. Traction monopolies, of course, regularly occurred throughout the nation. Yet a distinguishing feature of street railways in Los Angeles involved an immediate relationship between real-estate speculators

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