The Subway Terminal was designed by Schultze and Weaver in an Italian Renaissance Revival style, and the station itself lay underground below offices of the upper floors, since repurposed into the Metro 417 luxury apartments.

When the underground Red Line was built, the new Pershing Square station was cut north under Hill Street alongside the Terminal building, divided from the Subway's east end by just a retaining wall.

[5][3] The Belmont Tunnel, under Bunker and Crown hills, led from the station onto the Toluca Electric Substation and Yard at the Beverley viaduct over Glendale Boulevard, near Westlake and Echo Park.

Thirty-one feet below Hill Street, the Subway Terminal underground enclosed six platforms, the tower where engineers fetched their schedules, and overhead electric cables that powered the trains.

Faster than the automobile and at 6¢ a fare, ridership reached an all-time high during World War II: in 1944, electric trains carried an estimated 65,000 passengers in and out of the Subway Terminal each day, which reckons out to more than 20 million per year.

[6] Shortly thereafter, Southern Pacific lifted the tracks from the yard and tunnel, shut up the Subway Terminal, disconnected the Toluca Electric Substation, and abandoned the properties.

In 2014, the new owner, San Francisco real estate investment firm MacFarlane Partners, announced that the Park Fifth development was going ahead with 650 units in a high-rise apartment building instead.