![]() ![]() It didn’t take long for the dream highway to become a nightmare for commuters, an example of almost instant unplanned obsolescence. “The Hollywood Freeway was really the result of a convergence of interests between developers in the Valley at the end of (World War II) and Downtown interests who wanted to keep the trade of Valley residents,” said urban historian Mike Davis. (He lost the battle over the billboards.) “It changed a way of living, some for the better and some for the worst.”Īt the dedication in 1954, Los Angeles County Supervisor John Anson Ford described the freeway as “a great entrance to one of the great cities of America” and voiced a plea that it be kept clean of rubbish and unsightly billboards. “That was a big step toward opening up the San Fernando Valley,” said Guy Weddington McCreary, a North Hollywood businessman whose parents’ home was acquired when the freeway was extended farther into the Valley in the 1960s. They’ve seen the Hollywood of legend with the Capitol Records building and the Hollywood sign looming from on high, and they’ve seen the New Hollywood of Universal Studios. Motorists have seen the old Downtown give way to the new-the once towering City Hall dwarfed by the emerging skyline of Bunker Hill. The freeway also has provided two generations of commuters with a chronicle of the changing metropolis. ![]() At home, it shaped the way we saw ourselves, creating a new urban nexus, accelerating development of the San Fernando Valley, delivering the promise of Downtown jobs and rustic homesteads to suburbanites of the growing city. The freeway helped shape how others saw Los Angeles. And nary a foreign car, freeway call box or Botts’ dot in sight. So too did the old movies and TV shows that featured the freeway with City Hall, then the tallest building in town, in the background. Just its route-through the movie capital of the world-assured it fame. The Pasadena was the first and the Santa Monica is the busiest, but the Hollywood Freeway, which turned 40 this year, has always been the most L.A.-a telegenic mix of glamour, grit and gridlock. ![]()
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