Is Los Angeles Finally Ready to Take the Subway?

Illustration by Clay Hickson Save this story Save this story Save this story Save this story In 1895, an eccentric businessman named Henry Gaylord Wilshire began developing a luxury residential community on what was then the western edge of Los Angeles. In a gesture of civic pride, or perhaps shrewd self-promotion, he cut a strip of land running four blocks down the middle of the subdivision and donated it to the city for a grand boulevard. But his gift had two conditions. The first was that the road be named for him. The second was that rail lines be banned from the thoroughfare. Wilshire believed that automobiles were the future. The city agreed to his terms, wrote them into municipal code, and L.A.’s most important boulevard was born.

Today, Wilshire Boulevard runs nearly sixteen miles from downtown Los Angeles to the Pacific Ocean. It is the densest urban corridor west of the Mississippi River, and one of the most congested streets in all of Los Angeles County. Wilshire Boulevard is also the most direct route through Los Angeles’s core to various business districts, schools, and cultural institutions, making it a major artery for Angelenos who live on the city’s cheaper, denser East Side, and work in the various industries centered on the West Side.

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