(mellow music) - [Announcer] Here's a little something about San Diego with Ken Kramer.

- [Ken] First of all, here's a building in New York, very famous because it's strange looking, made to fit on a triangular lot between streets that come together in an angle, considered a wonder of the 20th century when it was built in 1902.

Even today, they sometimes call it the Flatiron building in Manhattan because it's shaped a little bit like an iron you'd use to press clothes.

So that's in New York.

Here's another one in San Francisco, one on Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Flatiron buildings.

And then did you know San Diego has a flatiron on a little island of land at 26th and National in Barrio Logan?

Upstairs are apartments in this building that's had several owners dating back to 1911, downstairs has been a market, a liquor store, a tavern, and a beauty parlor.

It's a striking site on a little triangular lot where Sicard Street intersects with 26th and National.

Okay, a few blocks up where 26th makes a turn and becomes Logan Avenue, go back in time to the 1940s and earlier.

Here's a great old photo.

You can see it's a streetcar making that turn.

Well, that picture is in a frame here at a historic restaurant in Barrio Logan for a very good reason, because more than 70 years ago, this place was a streetcar.

- Yeah, it's actually an old streetcar that was built in 1912.

- [Ken] Carolina Santana says when the Logan Avenue Street car line shut down in the forties, there was a property owner here, a man named Al Johnston, really interesting guy.

- He was an artist, he was a musician.

He supported community members.

He hosted community meetings in his space.

- [Ken] And he noticed one of the old streetcars was abandoned right out on Logan Avenue, left there for junk.

- Him and a bunch of guys literally lifted the streetcar and had it landed on on his property.

- [Ken] He cleared out the passenger seats inside, added a stucco wall to the front and a kitchen, and named it Carrito, meaning little car.

More than 70 years later now, here, it still is, uniquely positioned right where he left it as maybe the most unlikely business building in San Diego.

You look at the walls and the ceiling, and I mean, you can really tell what this was.

Carolina and her dad own it now.

Her mom created the recipes.

They like to celebrate its history.

Little reminders here and there, and she says, well, sometimes it is a tight fit.

- So small, it's like a closet.

It's literally like, you could probably expand your arms from end to end, and you could go like this and touch both sides, both walls.

- [Ken] And as for Al Johnston, could he have ever imagined his streetcar would still be here 70 years later?

- You know what?

I don't think he ever imagined and probably not even in his wildest dreams, but I'm sure he'd be very, very proud.

- So there to this day is his El Carrito and the Flatiron Building of Barrio Logan each in its own way, something quite remarkable about San Diego.

Which brings us to this story, if you go back in time, that streetcar system was really important to the way people got around San Diego.

And one place they wanted to go more than a century ago was the exposition in Balboa Park.

So many people came to Balboa Park for the exposition, saw the various attractions and distractions.

But here's the question.

How'd they all get there?

Did they motor up in their 1915 cars and drive to the park?

- Some did.

- [Ken] Did they hitch up the horse and go?

- A lot of 'em did, yes.

- [Ken] Yes, but do you know how about one in every four visitors got to and from the park in comfort and style?

(bell rings) ♪ Clang, clang, clang went the trolley ♪ ♪ Ding, ding, ding went the bell ♪ - [Ken] They took the trolley.

It was quick, convenient, and cost about five or 10 cents to get you there, Michael Redding says.

- Very good possibility that up to a million people rode the trolley over the two years of the exposition.

- [Ken] But what trolley, where?

There's no trolley to Balboa Park, no station here, not anymore.

But a century ago, let's say you were from the East Coast or just coming down from LA to see the exposition.

- Came in by train on the Santa Fe to the brand new depot downtown, and waiting right out front was the trolleys of the San Diego Electric railway.

They would go up Broadway to 12th Avenue Park Boulevard today, and the depot was right behind us.

They would come and get off the trolleys there and come right into the exposition.

- [Ken] Look down the Prado and see those arches down there?

That was the eastern entrance to the park and just beyond that was this, a wonderful station where the street cars pulled right up filled with passengers going to the exposition.

You'd walk down some stairs.

There was an underpass that went below the tracks and then you were just steps from the gates, Welcome to Balboa Park.

But today, there's nothing left of it.

The gates were right about where the lawn is here.

The station and the tracks were where Park Boulevard is today.

No tracks, no trolley.

- Unfortunately not anymore.

Those were all either buried or torn up by 1949 when the system shut down.

- [Ken] In fact, back in the late forties on the day the last of the old street cars were retired, there was a celebration of sorts, a parade of new modern buses that would take their place.

You wonder how much of our traffic problem around the park today would be solved if we just kept what we once had.

Imagine you took it right to the door of the exposition for a day of fun.

- And then get back on the streetcar and take it back home.

♪ To the end of the line ♪ - Times where you used to be able to take a street car from downtown San Diego directly to Mission Beach and from there right on up to downtown La Jolla and it took 25 minutes.

Of course, now we do have a system that gets us to UCSD and surroundings, but it's a different route.

None of where that trolley goes now even existed back then.