Pacific Electric Railway subway tunnel under construction at First Street and Glendale Boulevard, Los Angeles, 1926

Workers stand in and along a wide ditch that a back hoe is digging at center, billowing smoke. Further forward, three men stand, two of them looking at the back hoe with their hands in their pockets to either side of the third man, who is leaning in toward the window of an early pickup truck.

A hill can be seen in the background, from which steps and a railing descend to the left toward a widening road and a two-story house with clapboard veneer where the rest of the workers stand on the edge of the deep groove in the ground, watching.