It operated under the Pacific Electric Railway and served as the substation for Pasadena area lines.

[4] In 2016, the Pacific Southwest Mennonite Conference opened a thrift store in the building.

The high voltage AC entered the substation, was dropped in level by a transformer, and the resulting lower voltage AC was then fed to a device called a rotary converter for the conversion to 600 volts DC.

Substations existed on every trolley and interurban line in the United States and often still do for today's subway and light rail lines, although the very large and cumbersome rotary converter, as much as 8 feet (2.4 m) in diameter and rotating, has been replaced by solid state converters.

This article about a property in Los Angeles County, California on the National Register of Historic Places is a stub.