Shifting perspectives on the Elysian Park landslide of 1937: Chicken Corner has heard from her friend Scott Fajack, an architect for LA DWP and Echo Park community activist who is knowledgeable about Elysian Park. Scott writes first to clarify the location of the scenes depicted in photos (re-posted here after the jump) I posted Monday. He also says that the 1937 landslide most likely was caused by natural causes, possibly the "overcut of the slope due to the proximity to the river, prior to development, and the nature of the marine-type sandstone decomposing over time."

Regarding location, Scott writes:

The images are of Riverside Drive, which has been rerouted and reconfigured for the 5 Freeway (if you drive south on the 5 below Elysian you can see the old walls of Riverside Drive and bench seats for the bus stops--still there on the south side of the freeway at the northern slopes of the park).

The second photo shows the transition ramp from Riverside to Figueroa Street Tunnels (now the southbound connector to the Arroyo Seco south). After the slide, which took weeks to finally fail, traffic was diverted into the river and around the collapsed viaduct while it was being rebuilt. ... You can see the edge of the Dayton Street Bridge in the second image, top left. That was the southern limit of the slide.

In 1937, it was a national story; The New York Times called it the "moving mountain." Now it's purely local history -- unless you're a geologist or engineer ...