Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Rare Books
Report of the state of the government of Quebec in Canada
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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 collection contains 71 lantern slides of primarily unidentified scenes including slides depicting people, children, scenery, and farming. Many of these scenes appear to be in the Southern California area, though there are a few from other locales including Canada and England. Among the identified slides are Mission San Gabriel; Champlain Monument in Quebec, Canada; a 1798 letter to the Maryland Free Masons; the steamship "Parisian" in Liverpool, England; Palmdale, California train station; the 1925 Santa Barbara earthquake; and Lucky Baldwin's Ranch in Arcadia, California. Photographers are not identified.
photCL 518
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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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Rare Books
343092
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Rare Books
350264
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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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