Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Rare Books
Las Vegas Hot Springs : [New Mexico, on the line of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railroad]
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Rare Books
Image not available
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Image not available
Manuscripts
The papers provide a unique perspective of 20th century California history and American business history and more specifically, a view of business practices in Los Angeles. The Business Files, the largest series of the collection has 6,436 items. This material includes invoices, receipts, bills of lading, purchase orders, bid requests, bids, statements, and other general account and job information including handwritten notes, drawings, construction plans and diagrams. The Correspondence series contains 768 items. Most of the correspondence is also business-related. The Photographs and Negatives series contains 1,110 items. The photographs (and negatives) include views of jobs (at various stages of completion), plants, machinery, as well as a few aerial views of the company's jobs. The Ephemera series contains 124 items. The series includes: business-related newsletters and bulletins, brochures and publications, newspaper clippings; tax forms, several LA Paving Company related artifacts, a copy of the 1926 Who's who in Los Angeles and a copy of Scratches: a volume of cartoons and caricatures of Los Angeles citizens, 1911 (Ernest R. Werdin is in both volumes). There is also one folder related to E. Russell Werdin's involvement in the USC Alumni Association. The 38 volumes include bid requests, daily job reports, invoices, journals, one photograph album, a plant and shop register, and stock certificates.
mssLA Paving Co records
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Manuscripts
The documents provide insight into the business history and practices of the South Riverside Land and Water Company as well as the Jameson Packing House, which shipped citrus fruit, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
mssSouth Riverside Land and Water Company records
Visual Materials
Image of a map of the United States showing the railroad routes from Kansas to California and Mexico of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe, and connecting lines; map verso contains panels with railroad timetables, promotional descriptions, and fold-up map covers with images of a grenadier soldier holding a sword and charging across the country in a helmet with a locomotive head lamp and billowing smoke stack, and a view of a steam locomotive approaching on tracks inset among palm trees.
priJLC_TRAN_001053
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Rare Books
This collection consists of railroad photographs, ephemera and publications, 1829-2010, with the bulk of material from the early- to mid-20th century. The focus is chiefly locomotives and trains (steam and diesel) of major railroads and interurban electric railways of the United States and Canada. Also represented in the collection are smaller shortline and narrow-gauge railroads; other foreign railroads; streetcars (or trolleys); and burgeoning light rail and subway systems. Most of the ephemera is printed material produced by railroad companies for promotional and business purposes, such as annual reports, brochures, route maps and guides, timetables, tickets, dining menus, stationery, stock certificates, bond coupons and other items. There are also many city and state tourist guidebooks describing sights along rail routes or promoting land available for farming, mining or home-building across the United States. Also included are items produced for or by railroad employees, such as instruction and safety manuals, train orders, freight bills and in-house newsletters. Railroad industry publications, statistics and reports can be found in the American Association of Railroads files, which are part of Donald Duke's subject files on railroad-related topics. Throughout the ephemera files are newspaper and journal clippings, often from scarce small press and trade publications such as The Railway and Engineering Review, The Railroad Gazette, The Santa Fe Magazine, The Western Railroader, Railway Age and others. In addition to railroad history, other topics of social and cultural historical interest in the ephemera are: Depictions of African Americans and Native Americans in mass-marketed train travel brochures. There are many examples that reflect American cultural and class stereotypes in the early- to mid-20th century. Selected files are noted in the container list. Occupational safety and health: See railroad worker safety manuals and accident prevention literature in ephemera files. History of food and drink: See numerous dining and beverage menus throughout Railroads and Foreign Railroads ephemera files (not always noted in container list). History of graphic design and typography: See examples of early- and mid- 20th century popular styles in printed ephemera throughout collection. Photographs and negatives: The photographs depict locomotives, freight and passenger trains, logging railroads, electric interurbans and streetcars across the United States. This was primarily a publishers file of ready-for-press photographs, which are almost all 8 x 10-inch black-and-white prints, made approximately 1950s-1980s. The photographs were made chiefly by various amateur train photographers, including Donald Duke, but most are uncredited. There are some copy prints (photographs of other photographs), and a few original photographs from the late 19th-early 20th century. Some photographs have locations and dates written on the back, but many are unidentified other than the name of the railroad. There are a few files on Ward Kimball (1914-2002), one of the original animators for Walt Disney Studios and an avid rail enthusiast. There are some photographs, biographical materials, and a file on his personal backyard narrow-gauge steam railroad, Grizzly Flats Railroad, in San Gabriel, California.
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