Glendale and Montrose Railway’s Relics – Part 2

The Glendale and Montrose Railway, an electrified trolley line, connected Montrose and the rest of the valley to the larger world of Glendale and Los Angeles during the big growth years of 1913 to 1930. After it closed, thanks to the Great Depression, the tracks were pulled up. The wooden ties were cut up for firewood and the trolley cars were sold off or scrapped. But some of the trolley’s infrastructure was repurposed and, despite the passing of a hundred years, still remains today. Last time we covered the roadways that are relics of the trolley line. Today, let’s talk about a couple of buildings that still remain from the trolley line.

The largest is the trolley car barn just below Montrose. It was built sometime around 1914 to house the trolley cars at night and to perform maintenance. The barn was huge, made of wood. Two arched openings in the front of the building allowed the trolleys entrance to the barn, on tracks that curved off the median in the center of Verdugo Road. Inside the barn was a machine shop along with maintenance pits where workers could access the undersides of the rail cars. The barn was located right behind where the old Montrose Theater was (today the parking lot for Andersen’s Pets on Honolulu Avenue). One old timer told us that at night when the trolleys rolled into the barn, people watching movies in the theater would feel the building shake as if from a small earthquake.

Anawalt Lumber had been located right next to the car barn on Verdugo. When the trolley line folded, Anawalt owners bought the car barn to store its wood in and moved their offices in front of the barn. They filled the maintenance pits and covered the ground, including the trolley tracks, with a layer of asphalt.

Over 100 years, later the barn is still there in daily use by Anawalt Lumber. You can make out the shape of the tracks under the asphalt at the opening to the lumber barn and one remaining electrical insulator from the trolley wires is still visible up in the rafters. This is probably the last trolley barn still in existence in Greater Los Angeles.

The second building that still exists in Montrose from the trolley line is the old generator house. The powerhouse for the Glendale and Montrose Railway was built in April 1913 to house the massive generators that supplied the 600 volts needed for the electric trolley line. The generators, weighing 30 tons, were acquired second-hand from the Pacific Electric Company. Moving them up to Montrose required a huge house-moving wagon pulled by a team of 14 horses and 12 mules, and it took two days to get up the Verdugo canyon from Glendale. This building was the second structure built in the Montrose subdivision, just after Fred Anderson’s real estate office.

The powerhouse was built to look like a regular home in order to fit in with the other residences in the new subdivision of Montrose. It was built in the then-popular Mission style with a Spanish tile roof. As homes grew up around it, it didn’t look out of place, even though it had a thick bundle of electrical wires coming out of its wall. And when the trolley line folded and the generators and wires were removed it did indeed become a house.

For a time it was one of the cottages for rent at the Montrose Motel, an old-style motor court. In more recent years, the cottages and the main building of the old motel have become a variety of small offices. Today, the powerhouse is the home of Pure Hair & Skin Lounge with an address of 2037 Montrose Ave. It’s hard to find as it’s hidden up a back alley behind the Montrose Healthcare Center, near the northeast corner of Verdugo and Honolulu. A peek with a flashlight in the crawlspace under the little building shows that the cement footings for the generator are still there. It has the distinction of being the oldest building in Montrose.

The next column will feature more relics of the old trolley line.