Historical Society of Southern California Collection of Photographs by Subject

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  Historical Society of Southern California Collection: Leuschner Collection of Photographs

  Visual Materials

  Collection of 83 loose card photographs primarily depicting Los Angeles, California, from circa 1893 to 1905. The photographs were originally donated to the Historical Society of Southern California by Herbert Leuschner. The images consist of 22 (9-1/2 x 6-3/4 inch) mounted photographs and 61 (5 x 8 inch and smaller) mounted photographs. The collection includes a number of photographs by the Garden City Foto Company and F. H. Maude and Company depicting Los Angeles parks, homes and buildings; California missions; the Fiesta de los Flores of 1901; Mount Lowe attractions; and Catalina Island. Number 1-48 are almost exclusively by the Garden City Foto Company and F. H. Maude and Company. They depict Los Angeles parks, homes and buildings; California missions; the Fiesta de los Flores of 1901; Mount Lowe attractions; and Catalina Island. Number 49-68 are predominantly images of the Fiesta de los Flores of 1901 taken by the Garden City Foto Company. Photographs show participants in the Fiesta parade, including children, as well as flower decorated carriages, wagons, floats, automobiles, and bicycles. Unidentified marching bands, military and civilian groups, and spectators are also depicted. There are also unidentified floral parade photographs which may be depictions of participants in the same event. The Fiesta de los Flores was a later embodiment of the Fiesta de Los Angeles which had been cancelled for three years due to insecurities about its Spanish character during the Spanish-American War. Like the Fiesta de Los Angeles, the celebration was meant to attract tourists and stimulate commerce for the city of Los Angeles and the surrounding communities, but its themes focused less on California's Spanish Colonial past and highlighted its more contemporary and patriotic attributes. The first Fiesta de los Flores coincided with President William McKinley's visit to Los Angeles in 1901. Number 69-78 are miscellaneous images. This group includes photographs by the Garden City Foto Company, one portrait by the Dewey Company, and one stereo image published by Underwood and Underwood.

  photCL 400 Volume 29

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  Historical Society of Southern California Collection - Souvenir views of Southern California

  Visual Materials

  4 sets of souvenir views: "Winter Scenes in Los Angeles" and "Southern California: The Land of Fruit and Flowers" in book format and "Miniatures: Catalina Island" and "Souvenir Views: Catalina Island" in card format. The photographs depicting views of Santa Catalina Island and scenes of Los Angeles and vicinity (including central Los Angeles streets and buildings), Pasadena, Sierra Madre Villa, Santa Anita Rancho (E.J. Baldwin residence), Mission San Gabriel, Riverside, San Bernardino, Hotel del Coronado, and San Diego.

  photCL 400 volume 30

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  Historical Society of Southern California Collection--Krueger Collection of Photographs

  Visual Materials

  The Krueger Collection consists of 103 black-and-white photographs and 103 negatives depicting sites and locations within the greater Los Angeles, California, area. Images of Los Angeles include the Lugo Adobe; Olvera Street; Ord Street in Chinatown; Union Station; the United States Post Office Terminal Annex; City Hall; the Hall of Justice; the Old Hall of Records; the Post Office and Federal Building; the California State Building; the Los Angeles Times Building; Pershing Square; streets in downtown Los Angeles decorated with Christmas decorations; and the Ambassador Hotel. Images of Hollywood include views of Hollywood Boulevard (some showing Christmas decorations); Grauman's Chinese and Egyptian Theaters; the Florentine Gardens nightclub; CBS facilities, including KNX/CBS Radio Playhouse with the Lux Radio Theater; NBC facilities; the Earl Carroll Theatre; the Hollywood Scenic Gardens (Bernheimer Gardens); the Brown Derby Restaurant (the Hollywood and Wilshire Boulevard locations); and Griffith Observatory. Other sites in greater Los Angeles include Exposition Park; Westlake (MacArthur) Park; and the Bernheimer Gardens in Pacific Palisades. Also included are views of Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California; views of Long Beach, including the Pike, City Hall, the Public Library, and the Municipal Auditorium; and views in and around Lake Arrowhead.

  photCL 400 volume 32

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  Historical Society of Southern California Collection – Frank Rolfe Collection of Negatives and Photographs

  Visual Materials

  The Rolfe collection consists of 325 photographs (the majority of which are housed in two photograph albums), 574 negatives, one book, and ephemera, created and collected by Los Angeles civil engineer and local history enthusiast Frank Rolfe between 1899 and 1959 that depict locations throughout California and the Western United States. Many of these were locations where Rolfe worked on various surveys, including the Los Angeles aqueduct survey. The majority of the photographs appear to have been taken by Rolfe, but there are a few, in the photograph album in Box 2, credited to Charles J. Prudhomme. The collection begins with Rolfe's photographs of the initial Los Angeles aqueduct survey, the majority of which are housed in an album. These photographs depict Owens Valley and Black Rock Springs. The collection also contains a published work on the aqueduct. A second album contains photographs taken primarily by Rolfe; these are photographs of Los Angeles (central Los Angeles and neighborhoods where Rolfe and his wife lived); the San Gabriel Valley and other locations in Los Angeles County (Devil's Gate Dam, the San Gabriel Mountains, the St. Francis Dam and San Francisquito Canyon); San Bernardino County (the San Bernardino Mountains, Big Bear Lake); Riverside County (the Coachella Valley, Tahquitz Canyon, the Temescal Valley, Riverside, the San Jacinto Mountains); Kern County; and commercially produced images of Yosemite. Boxes 3 and 4 contain negatives depicting street scenes in central Los Angeles, including the wrecking of the Temple Block, the Amestoy Block, the Hall of Records, and Bunker Hill. Also included are views of the West Adams neighborhood; houses where Rolfe and his wife lived in the 1920s and 30s; the snowstorm of 1932; and the 1920 Inglewood earthquake. The collection also includes images of Hollywood and vicinity (including a number of photographs of the Mulholland Dam and images of Brentwood and Bel Air); Santa Monica (including the Santa Monica Mountains and Decker Canyon); Santa Catalina Island; north Los Angeles County (including the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys, the ruins of the Saint Francis Dam and San Francisquito Canyon, and the "golden spike" celebration at Lang); the San Gabriel Valley (including many views of the San Gabriel Mountains); Orange County (including Modjeska's home, Santiago Canyon, San Juan Capistrano, the Puente hills, and Santa Ana Canyon); San Diego County; San Bernardino County (including a number of photographs of mining camps, including Ivanpah and Camp Roach; construction of the Ludlow and Southern Railway; and mining operations, such as the Bagdad Chase Mine and the Bagdad Mining and Milling Company); Riverside County (including the Temescal Tin Mine, Temescal and the Temescal Valley, Hog Lake, the San Jacinto River, Mount San Jacinto, and Idyllwild); Ventura County; Kern County (images of the Kern River); Inyo County; Yosemite; northern California (including Stanford University and Susie Lake); Nevada (Truckee River dam projects); Oregon; Washington; Utah; Glacier Park, Montana; people (Rolfe, his family and friends); and miscellaneous photographs (a number of desert views, mostly Southern California). The collection also contains commercial photographs of the Rolfe family, many in carte-de-visite format. These were produced by California photographers Bradley and Rulofson, Ellis and Son, Frank G. Schumacher, George Steckel, Carleton Watkins, Michael A. Wesner, and James D. Westervelt, as well as A.J. Beals and Sutterly and Company (Nevada), A.F. Burnham (Faribault, Minnesota), E. Balch (New York City), Charles C. Hartwell (Maine), and Hart's Arcade Photographic Gallery (Watertown, NY). The ephemerial materials consist of a letter written in 1862 from Sutter Creek by Rolfe's father Ovid to his brother Alfred in Dorchester, Massachusetts; biographical sketches of members of the Rolfe family; clippings compiled by Rolfe; Rolfe's high school and college diplomas; card files on Rolfe family history, covered wagons in Los Angeles, and Temescal history; and negative books. Some photographs exist in duplicate. The majority of the negatives are unprinted. Some negatives have deteriorated or are damaged. Original negatives exist for 15 of the photographs in the second album; 2 copy negatives exist of photographs in the first album.

  photCL 400 volume 12

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  Historical Society of Southern California Collection -- Charles Puck Collection of Negatives and Photographs

  Visual Materials

  The Puck Collection consists of more than 11,000 photographs and negatives both taken and collected by Los Angeles resident and local history enthusiast Charles Puck. Puck took (and collected) photographs of buildings, monuments, civic happenings, modes of transportation, flora and fauna, and anything else that captured his particular interests. He had a penchant for construction, demolition, and disaster of both the natural and human variety, making systematic photographic surveys of anything that fell within these broad categories. He compiled several scrapbooks on topics such as adobes and buildings of Los Angeles, illustrating them with his photographs and annotating them with historical anecdotes and personal recollections. Puck also collected the work of noted Los Angeles photographers like Charles C. Pierce and James B. Blanchard to supplement his own archive; on many of these pictures he wrote comments on the verso. At the time of his gift to the Historical Society of Southern California, Puck had amassed a large array of images documenting the changing face of Los Angeles and its environs. An avid tourist and automobile adventurer, Puck traveled throughout California to historical points of interest. He motored around the sites of the Gold Rush, and frequently ventured into the Sierra Nevada Mountains on camping trips. Aside from pictures of Los Angeles, Puck took shots in many other counties of the state including Orange County, San Diego County, Imperial County, Riverside County, San Bernardino County, Kern County, Ventura County, Santa Barbara County, San Luis Obispo County, Inyo County, and the counties in the eastern and central portions of California. Puck also traveled by car to places outside California, mostly in the Southwestern states and to Mexico. Pictures of trips taken between 1918 and 1953 to such places as Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Nevada and Mexico are included in the collection, primarily in the form of negatives.

  photCL 400 volume 2 & volume 3

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  Miscellaneous reproduced photographs for the Southern California Quarterly

  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