Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Rare Books
Reminiscences of the Chicago fire on Sunday evening, October 9th 1871
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Rare Books
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Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
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Visual Materials
This is a collection primarily of negatives and photographic prints depicting the growth of Santa Monica and Los Angeles, California, from 1860s to 1980s. Many views are cityscapes or street views, showing buildings, storefronts, homes and roads, and documenting the use of railroads, trolleys, streetcars, and automobiles. There are many card photographs by early professional photographers, and also a number of snapshots made by amateurs, some in personal photo albums. The collection's scope also includes early views of many other communities in Southern California (and a few in other states); the beginnings of aviation in Santa Monica, including the first Douglas Aircraft Company buildings; a photo album of residents in Topanga Canyon, ca. 1913; automobile racing in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, 1920s; maritime views; a photo album of U.S. troops in France during World War I; a 1949 real estate development in Apple Valley, California, and others. Besides photographs, a portion of the collection consists of scarce publications and historical ephemera, primarily related to Santa Monica and Los Angeles, including brochures, advertising cards, menus, event programs and other materials. Highlights of the Santa Monica images are aerial views of the buildings along the coast and pier (1920s); several views of the Arcadia Hotel (1880s); the Long Wharf and adjoining railroad and train depot; the first bath houses on the beach; the beach club culture of the 1920s and 1930s; the amusement piers of Santa Monica, Ocean Park and Venice; and the beginnings of the Douglas Aircraft Company. There is a large set of promotional photographs made late 1920s-1930s by Powell Press Service depicting people enjoying Santa Monica's beaches, clubs and outdoor recreation. An important subset within the collection is 407 negatives made ca. 1890 - 1908 by Los Angeles historian and amateur photographer George W. Hazard (1842-1914). Hazard travelled around Los Angeles and vicinity photographing the adobes, houses, streets and storefronts that told the early history of the city. Many of Hazard's negatives have handwritten identifications, naming streets, former homeowners, ranchos, and other historical details. There are a large number of cabinet cards and other card-mounted prints and stereographs. There are 1,264 stereograph prints, highlighted by the works of photographic pioneers William M. Godfrey, Francis Parker, Hayward & Muzzall, and Carleton Watkins. Other formats represented are: glass and film negatives; panoramic prints; 7 photograph albums, photographic postcards, 20th-century color prints and transparencies; and a small number of tintypes, cyanotypes and a set of chromolithographs.
photCL 555
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Rare Books
Reminiscences by various persons, from manuscript and printed sources
84410
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Manuscripts
A collection of approximately 3000 items from 1770 to 1871, it consists of the personal and professional papers of John Arnold Rockwell, chiefly his incoming and outgoing correspondence. The papers document Rockwell's legal career; the development of the U.S. Court of Claims; politics; the Constitutional Union Party of 1860; land development, particularly in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan; transportation, including land grants in aid of canals and railroads such as the Illinois Central and the projected Pacific Railroads; mining; and banking. Correspondents include, among others, John William Allen, Reverdy Johnson, Charles William Rockwell, and Dixwell Lathrop, who was a member of the Rockwell Land Company and one of the founders of Rockwell Colony in La Salle, Illinois. Also included are a letter book, plats, Dixwell Lathrop's notebooks, newspaper clippings, and the 1857 legal brief in the case of the United States, appellants vs. Charles Fossatt, regarding the New Almaden Quicksilver Mines. The earliest portion of Rockwell's correspondence includes letters from his father Charles Rockwell and brother Charles William Rockwell who had moved to Savannah, Georgia in 1817 to run a shipping business. The post-1861 part of the collection consists mainly of the incoming correspondence of John A. Rockwell's youngest son Alfred Perkins Rockwell, a Yale graduate, mining engineer, Civil War veteran, and businessman. Also included is correspondence of the Perkins and Tisdale families, including Rockwell's father-in-law Joseph Perkins who died in 1832 and was a Revolutionary War soldier, a Major in the Connecticut militia, physician, and businessman; also, Simon Perkins, John Tisdale, Elkanah Tisdale, and others. This correspondence deals chiefly with the properties in Connecticut and the Western Reserve.
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