Ambulance|North Broadway Viaduct — 1911 Arches Under a Helicopter

The oldest bridge still standing over the Los Angeles River carries North Broadway from Chinatown into Lincoln Heights. It opened in 1911 as the Buena Vista Street Viaduct, built by the city engineer's office in reinforced concrete when that material was still an argument, and it runs 968 feet on Beaux Arts arches with balustrades, lamp standards and stair towers down to the riverbed.

Ambulance sends the stolen rig across it with police helicopters overhead. The shot works because the bridge is stubbornly of its period. Everything around it is freeway ramp, rail yard and chain link; the viaduct is a piece of 1911 civic pride that nobody got around to replacing, and an ambulance on it reads instantly as out of place and out of time.

It is also a real crossing that thousands of cars use daily, which is the whole method of this film. Bay's team locked and released public streets in rolling blocks rather than building anything.

Both sidewalks are open. Walk out from the Chinatown side around dusk, when the downtown towers light up behind you and the trains move in the yard below. Look over the rail at the concrete channel — that flat grey trench is where the chase goes next.

Photo: "907 North Broadway-Buena Vista Street Bridge No. 53C0545" by The City Project, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 via Flickr.