La La Land - Filming Locations: The Bridge (at sunset)

(B.) 59:55: We see Mia & Sebastian strolling, at dusk, along a romantic bridge with glowing globe lights, and mountains visible in the background.

This is the Colorado Street Bridge in Pasadena, CA.

You will find it between 500 & 550 Colorado Blvd, in Pasadena, CA.

It's just a mile south of the town's famous Rose Bowl.

Photo courtesy of www.californiathroughmylens.com

In the scene, Mia & Seb are walking west along the south side of the bridge.

The Colorado Street Bridge was built in 1912, and at the time was the highest concrete bridge in the world. It was named after the street it is on, back when the current Colorado Blvd was still named Colorado Street.

A vintage postcard of the bridge:

It is 1,486 feet long, and its highest points are 150 feet high. But it is only two lanes wide.

The then-new bridge essentially connected Pasadena, to Los Angeles and other points west. Up until then, Pasadena

was somewhat isolated by the city's deep Arroyo Seco gorge (Spanish for "dry creek").

Because of its beauty (including its Beaux Arts arches), the Colorado Street bridge is on the National Register of Historic Places.

In part, that beauty is attributable to its distinct curving shape ( it curves 50 degrees to the south ), but the choice to build it with a curve was actually a practical solution to the architectural challenges to spanning the deep Arroyo Seco.

( Unfortunately, despite its romantic look, the bridge has an unfortunate history of suicides. Over 100 people have jumped to their death from the tall bridge. )

Do be warned that the streets in that area are a serpentine maze of onramps and offramps to not only this old bridge but also to the larger and more modern Ventura (134) Freeway bridge that runs just 100 yards to the north, across the same Arroyo Seco. Locating just the right onramp to drive onto the Colorado Street Bridge can be tricky.

If you're thinking about walking the bridge, the only safe approach seems to be from the north end of a cul-de-sac street called S. Grand Ave, where a curving sidewalk leads from a grassy residential area onto the walkway that runs along the south edge of the bridge. But do note that the bridge this is a busy street in its own right, and you'll be walking right next to oncoming traffic... so I would urge reasonable caution during your walk.

Here is a matching StreetView of that part of the bridge:

Here is that very short scene from the montage: