Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Rare Books
San Francisco, California, 1850
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Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Visual Materials
Photo from a drawing of Admission Day celebration in a plaza.
photCL Pierce 05483
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Visual Materials
This collection contains approximately 1,000 printed 19th and early 20th century entertainment broadsides, playbills, and related advertisements, and forms a subset within the Jay T. Last Collection of Entertainment. These items advertise theatrical performances including plays, variety entertainment such as minstrel, burlesque, and vaudeville shows, and optical displays such as dioramas, living statues, and tableaus. Over 250 theaters primarily from the Northeastern United States are represented in the collection, though there are also materials from theaters in the Midwestern, Southern, and Western United States, and approximately 26 items from Canada, Ireland, England, and Scotland. The materials range in size from approximately 9 1/2 x 6 inches to 42 1/2 x 14 inches and consist of single-sheet unfolded advertisements for theatrical productions that were intended to be distributed by hand, posted on walls, fences, or in windows, or sold to playgoers entering the theater. Among the names given to these types of advertisements, according to their size and mode of distribution, are broadsides, dodgers, handbills, hangers, playbills, posters, and show bills.
priJLC_ENT_TBroadsides
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Visual Materials
The Jay T. Last sheet music collection consists of approximately 34,950 scores dating from 1794 to 1998. It includes a wide range of American popular music styles, as well as scores published outside of the United States. The collection encompasses ballads, blues, comic songs, jazz, minstrel scores, military scores, patriotic melodies, pop, ragtime compositions, religious hymns, rhythm and blues hits, show tunes, soul music, and 1960s surf music. The scores comprise various editions of lyrical and instrumental compositions, some of which are ornately designed and, in some cases, bear the signatures of creators and performers. Many of the scores have sellers' marks printed on the covers. Some of the names found in the nineteenth-century series overlap with those in the twentieth-century series. It is also important to note that this collection contains historical images and language that some library users may find harmful, offensive, or inappropriate.
priJLC_SMUS
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Rare Books
281163