If you take a closer look at the street car in this 1919 photo, you’ll see that it is so jam-packed with passengers that two guys have climbed onto the roof. I’m not sure how they got up there or how they got down, or why nobody stopped them. I’m sure it was probably against some law or other, but it made for a great photo. It was taken at the corner of Eleventh and Flower Streets in downtown Los Angeles.
That grill at the front was a spring-loaded pedestrian catcher invented after several fatalities. When the front hit something, it released a bear-trap-sized spring that pushed forward and up, knocking the person into the basket and lifting them high and tight against the other side.
It looks like this street car was heading south on Flower toward USC, in which case this is what that view looks like now. (February 2021)
Risky place, that roof—with all that electricity flowing about. I guess it’s now safe to confess that we used to put a penny in the track and watch the streetcar hit it and send sparks flying where the arm from the top of the streetcar met the overhead wires. That might have been a protest against the raising of the fare to 17¢
Gotta love the cow-catcher on the front! Wouldn’t it be headed, though, for USC since UCLA at the time was over on Vermont on the campus that’s now LACC?