Congratulations to Andre Sahakian, who used his first comment ever to correctly answer that the intersection closest to where this picture was taken back in the 1880s would be North Spring and College Streets, right by today's Gold Line Chinatown station, next to which the Capitol Milling building still stands. But we also have to give LA Map Nerd all the bonus points for schooling us with some fascinating tidbits about those cable cars.
In his comment, LA Map Nerd quotes an article from the Electric Railway History Association explaining that the cable cars are moving over a viaduct:
The purpose of this structure is to carry the cable lines over the Southern Pacific Railway Company's yards. The plans for it were prepared by Mr. S. G. Artingstall, of Chicago, and a remarkable feature about it is that the road is supported on single columns. This form of construction was necessitated because of a refusal on the part of both the Southern Pacific Railway Company and the city authorities to permit the planting of posts where they would have been necessary if double columns had been used; and we believe that this viaduct is the only instance in existence where two tracks are carried on single columns, although in certain parts of the elevated railway structure in New York a single track is thus supported. The length of this viaduct is 1,535 ft., of which 50 ft. at each end are occupied by concrete approaches, and the remaining 1,435 ft. represent the length of the metal work.
· Hint: Where Was This Rickety Old Cable Car Line in the 1880s [Curbed LA]