Historical Society of Southern California Collection of Photographs by Subject

The collection consists of 3511 photographs, negatives, and ephemera in various formats, dating from the 1850s to 1982, that formed part of the Historical Society of Southern California Photo Archives. The collection was compiled from the gifts of various donors and covers a wide breath of subject matter. The images mainly depict Southern California, with the largest number representing the City of Los Angeles, and provide comprehensive information about many activities and events important to Southern California in the late 19th and early 20th century. 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); the 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 collection include industry and manufacturing (including iron and steelworks; brick and terracotta; clothing manufacture; and the motion picture industry); agriculture; mining and other extractive industries; infrastructure (including images depicting dams, 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 group of ephemera pertaining to the Wilshire Boulevard Miracle Mile. The collection includes photographs produced by 140 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 Studio; Charles F. Lummis; F.H. Maude; Harold Parker; Putnam Studios; F.H. Rogers; Julius Shulman; Spence Airplane Photos; Stagg; A. Sturtevant; Carleton E. Watkins; and "Dick" Whittington Studio. A complete list of known photographers is included in this finding aid. There are also photographs made by or for the companies they depict. These include American Trona Corporation; Douglas Aircraft; Estelle Mines Corporation; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; Paramount Pictures; Selznick International Pictures; Studebaker Corporation; Union Pacific Railroad; and United Artists. Stamps on the backs of some photographs identify images produced and compiled by the Federal Writers' Project of Southern California, Los Angeles, and the Federal Writers' Project of Northern California, San Francisco, in the late 1930s and early 1940s as part of the Works Progress Administration. These photographs are indexed in the Contents List, and include photographs by Viroque Baker, Horace Bristol, Burton Burt, Fred William Carter, Fred R. Dapprich, Luckhaus Studio, Julius Shulman, Art Streib, and others. Some of these photographs also bear the stamps of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and the Los Angeles Board of Education. Some photographs exist in multiples. Many have identifying information on the verso such as a description, date, provenance or photographer information, a caption for an article or other type of publication, or information regarding use of the image in the Southern California Quarterly.