Angels Flight: The Railway That Explains Bunker Hill
Listen at the stop, then read the transcript and follow the sources behind the story.
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Transcript
Angels Flight is tiny enough to feel like a novelty.
Its original purpose was serious urban transportation.
The funicular opened in 1901, carrying passengers between commercial streets below and residential Bunker Hill above.
At the time, Bunker Hill was filled with large Victorian houses, apartment buildings and hotels.
The slope was steep.
A short cable railway made elevation easier to negotiate.
Then Bunker Hill changed dramatically.
By the mid-twentieth century, many older houses had been divided into apartments.
The neighborhood became associated with lower-income residents and aging buildings.
City leaders labeled large areas blighted.
Under urban-renewal programs, almost the entire historic district was cleared.
Residents were displaced.
Hilltops were regraded.
Office towers, cultural institutions and parking infrastructure replaced the fine-grained residential streets.
The original Angels Flight closed in 1969.
A rebuilt railway later opened nearby using restored historic cars and structures.
That means the attraction is both authentic and relocated.
Its survival can accidentally romanticize the neighborhood whose destruction made the original line unnecessary.
For locals, this is one of downtown's most beloved pieces of transportation heritage.
Use that affection to ask a harder question:
Why did one tiny railway deserve reconstruction when an entire residential landscape did not?
Preservation is selective because cities are selective.
Angels Flight tells the story of old Bunker Hill precisely because almost nothing else around it still can.