Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Rare Books
Ornithological observations in San Diego County
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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
The collection consists of 3511 photographs, negatives and ephemeral items circa 1850s-1982 covering a wide breadth of subject matter. The collection includes images of Los Angeles streets and city views; neighborhoods (including Olvera Street, the Plaza, and Chinatown); Los Angeles office buildings and blocks, municipal buildings and facilities (including city halls, court houses, federal buildings, and postal facilities); Los Angeles County communities (including Culver City; Beverly Hills; Watts; Compton; the Hollywood/Cahuenga area; Mt. Washington; Redondo Beach; Hermosa Beach; Venice Beach; Santa Monica; San Pedro; Wilmington; Long Beach; Burbank; Glendale and the San Fernando Valley; Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley; Avalon and Santa Catalina Island); San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains; San Diego, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Francisco Counties; Los Angeles County homes, residential buildings, and gardens; Los Angeles parks; Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside County schools, colleges and universities; Los Angeles County churches and synagogues; Los Angeles area country clubs; hotels and theaters in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, San Bernardino Counties, and the city of San Francisco; and Los Angeles County department stores, newspaper buildings, storefronts, and restaurants. General subjects represented in the collections include industry and manufacturing (including iron and steelworks; brick and terracotta; the motion picture industry; and the clothing trade); agriculture; mining and other extractive industries; infrastructure (including dams and roads, and photographs taken for Caltrans documenting the construction of the Pasadena Freeway, also known as the Arroyo Seco Historic Parkway); water and power (including photographs depicting the irrigation of the San Fernando Valley in the 1910s); transportation; sports and leisure activities (including images depicting the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles); fairs and expositions (including trade and industrial fairs; the Panama Pacific Exposition; the California Pacific International Exposition; the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition; and the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition); fiestas and parades (including the Fiesta de Los Angeles, the Fiesta de las Flores, and the Pasadena Tournament of Roses), circuses and circus wagons; missions in California, the Southwest United States, and Mexico; and California adobes and ranchos. Miscellaneous images include national and state parks; the California Gold Rush and mining towns; the armed forces in California; native and indigenous culture; local flora, including trees; unidentified people; unidentified scenery; documents; maps; and a small grouping of ephemera pertaining to the Wilshire Boulevard Miracle Mile. The collection includes photographs produced by 141 identified photographic studios, photographers, and publishers including Blanchard; Cromwell and Westervelt; Frasher's Studio; Garden City Foto; Harold W. Grieve, T.E. Hecht; William Henry Hill; Keystone Photo Service; Luckhaus; Charles F. Lummis; F.H. Maude; Harold Parker; Putnam Studios; F.H. Rogers; Julius Shulman; Spence Airplane Photos; Stagg; A. Sturtevant; Carleton Watkins; and "Dick" Whittington Studio. There are also photographs made by or for companies including American Trona Corporation; Douglas Aircraft; Estelle Mines Corporation; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; Paramount Pictures; Selznick International Pictures; Studebaker Corporation; Union Pacific Railroad; and United Artists. Images produced and compiled by the Federal Writers' Project Southern and Northern California branches include photographs by Viroque Baker, Horace Bristol, Burton Burt, Fred William Carter, Fred R. Dapprich, Luckhaus Studios, Julius Shulman, and Art Streib.
photCL 400 volume 1
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Visual Materials
photCL 400 volume 2 & volume 3
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Manuscripts
2 items: booklet, "History of Julian," Julian Historical Society, 1969 ; booklet, "Portrait of a Boom Town - San Diego in the 1880s," Copley Books, 1977 ; booklet, "California Pacific International Exposition Official Guide," 1935,
mssLAT
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Visual Materials
The collection consists of approximately 6,700 photographs, which includes photographic prints and 4 x 5 inch and smaller glass negatives, glass positives, film negatives and lantern slides depicting Southern California (mainly Los Angeles and nearby communities). The collection provides quite a comprehensive picture of the growth and development of Los Angeles at the turn of the twentieth century. The smaller format items are mostly copy negatives (not originals) taken by Ellis of images in other collections. Ellis copied the photographic holdings of, among others, Bancroft, Behrendt, Tyler, Hill, Ingersoll, Forman, Rowan, Foxley, Guinn, Fryer, A.W. Francisco, McPherson, Charles Prudhomme and William Burton. The collection is particularly strong in images of Central Los Angeles from the 1880s to the 1910s and Los Angeles County beach communities in the 1900s and 1910s. Also of note are images of sites and themes of historic or cultural significance, and portraits. In addition to images of central Los Angeles, the collection includes images of Los Angeles County beach communities, Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley, and Orange, Ventura, San Bernardino and San Diego Counties. The historic and cultural sites include photographs of missions and churches; commercial, municipal and residential buildings, including historic adobes; schools and parks; railroads, emigration, and stagecoach routes; Campo de Cahuenga; Busch Gardens in Pasadena; the Modjeska home in Santa Ana; the Lake Vineyard, Sunnyslope, and the Rowland properties in the San Gabriel Valley; and images of Native Americans and Native American culture. Portraits include those of California pioneers, prominent Angelinos and San Diegans, including J. Lancaster Brent, George Horatio Derby, Hillard Dorsey, the Ellis Family, Judge A.J. King and family, Vicente Lugo, Charles Prudhomme, Truman H. Rose, William Rubottom, Abel Stearns, 1st Worshipful Master of the California Masonic Lodge Levi Stowall, and the Workman family. Some of the 4 x 5 inch and smaller glass negatives and lantern slides depict historic sites of Northern California, including mining camps of the California Gold Rush. There are also miscellaneous images pertaining to themes with no direct relationship to California or the American West, such as Freemasonry and general United States history. The United States history images include copies of Abraham Lincoln portraits and the Lincoln home in Kentucky as well as early American figures including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.
photCL 188