Visual Materials

Historical Society of Southern California Collection: Leuschner Collection of Photographs

Description

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.

Historical Society of Southern California Collection of Photographs by Subject

Visual Materials

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.

photCL 400 volume 1

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Historical Society of Southern California -- Charles Prudhomme Collection of Photographs

Visual Materials

The collection consists of 249 black-and white-photographs (some exist in duplicate), 235 negatives, and 1 blueprint, dating from the 1870s to 1933 (bulk 1923-1933), that are primarily related to the history of the Los Angeles and the Southern California region. The collection was compiled by Los Angeles historian Charles J. Prudhomme, and Prudhomme took the bulk of the photographs. The images mainly depict sites within Los Angeles and California, as well as people associated with the history of the Los Angeles region. Included are images of streets in Central Los Angeles including Olvera Street; Los Angeles parks and squares; adobes and homes in the Los Angeles area; and photographs of members of pioneer families associated with the history of Los Angeles and Southern California. These include Don Juan Bautista Alvarado, members of the Alvarado family, members of the Dominguez family, Senora Luisa Avila de Garfias, Don Juan de la Guerra, members of the Lugo family, Senorita Josephine Ocampo, Eugene R. Plummer and members of the Plummer family, Andrea Alvarado Rowland and Viola Rowland, members of the Sepulveda family, members of the Tapia family, Francisco Viejar, and Maria Ybarra de Lopez. Some images exist only in negative format; cards indicating this are interfiled within the collection of photographs. Negatives are housed in Box 3.

photCL 400 volume 4

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Historical Society of Southern California Collection of Lantern Slides

Visual Materials

Volume 27 consists of 278 (3 x 4 inch) lantern slides, comprising a variety of different images of Southern California and its residents. The first section consists of images of central Los Angeles, primarily street scenes, including a number of images of La Fiesta de Los Angeles celebrations and World War I-era parades. Other landscapes and cityscapes in the collection include views of Hollywood and Santa Monica; locations in the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys, with an emphasis on Monrovia; communities in Orange, San Bernardino and Kern Counties; scenes in Yosemite and other central California locations; and Tijuana. Also included are a number of images of Santa Barbara in the late nineteenth century. The collection is notable for a number of images of Los Angeles area high schools and universities. It is especially rich in images of Los Angeles High School students from the early years of the twentieth century. Photographs by members of, and about, the Los Angeles Camera Club are included in the collection. These include photographs by C.C. Pierce, W.M. Frisbee, F.H. Maude, C.C. Valentine, and O. Granicher. Also included is a photograph of the Camera Club building in downtown Los Angeles and images of its logo. Studio portraits and group photographs can be found in the collection, the majority of which are unidentified. Among the identifiable images are an 1888 photograph of the Los Angeles City Council; Mrs. O.W. Childs, wife of the early Los Angeles pioneer; Isidore Dockweiler, an influential Southern California Democrat; Max Meyberg, organizer of the first La Fiesta de Los Angeles celebration in 1894; and Caroline Severance, founder of the Friday Morning Club. The collection also contains images of Native Americans, and Chinese in Chinatown. In addition to the Los Angeles Camera Club photographers, the collection contains images created by Penney and Bennett, James B. Blanchard, and Carleton Watkins.

photCL 400 volume 27

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Historical Society of Southern California Collection of Portrait Photographs

Visual Materials

This collection consists of 809 photographs of individual and group portraits, dating from circa 1850s-1997 (bulk 1860s-1930s), that formed part of the Historical Society of Southern California Photo Archives. It is a reference collection and includes images of both prominent and lesser-known Los Angeles and Southern California figures from both the 19th and 20th centuries. The collection contains images in a variety of formats that were created by a number of well-known California photographers. These include James B. Blanchard, Boyé, Curtis Studios, George N. Dewey, Edouart and Son, Garden City Foto Co., William M. Godfrey, A.C. Golsh, Hayward and Muzzall, Fred Hartsook, Hiller and Mott, Theodore C. Marceau, Francis Parker (as Parker and Co., Parker and Hasselman, and Parker's Photographic Parlors), Payne Stanton and Co., Henri Penelon, Steve A. Rendall, Frank G. Schumacher, William Shew, John Pitcher Spooner, George Steckel, Isaiah West Taber, William Nutting Tuttle (as Tuttle and Lee, and Tuttle and Co.), O.E. Tyler, Davidson Roby Weaver, Michael A. Wesner, James D. Westervelt (also in partnership with Charles J. Coules), and Valentin Wolfenstein. The Griggs portraits depict young women in various settings; the Kathryn Murdoch gift is primarily of album pages with snapshots of local sites in Los Angeles.

photCL 400 volume 31

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Historical Society of Southern California Collection - Marco Newmark Collection of Photographs, (bulk 1900-1920)

Visual Materials

The collection consists of photographs, many of which were used as illustrations in Harris Newmark's memoir, "Sixty Years in Southern California." The photographs include the Gerlemann Grocery Store (located at 811-813 Central Ave.) and H. Newmark & Co. (housed in the Arcadia Block), and the La Fiesta de Los Angeles parade. The collection also includes many portraits, including those of Dr. Griffin, Isaias W. Hellman, Col. James G. Howard, Don Antonio Coronel, Charles L. Ducommun, Juan Lanfranco, Homer Lea, C.E. Thom, and William Workman. A number of the photographs have C.C. Pierce's stamp on the verso.

photCL 400 volume 23

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Historical Society of Southern California Collection - Historic Los Angeles photograph album

Visual Materials

The album is composed of 19 black-and-white photographs of historic sites in Los Angeles, California, in 1945 including La Golondrina Restaurant (formerly the Pelanconi Winery); the Avila Adobe; Olvera Street; the Plaza; the Lugo Adobe; Pico House; the Plaza Church (Nuestra Senora La Reyna de Los Angeles); the Abbot Block and the Merced Theater; the Amestoy Block; the Baker Block; the United States Post Office Terminal Annex; views from Fort Hill; the Plaza de la Justicia and the Hall of Records; Union Station; the tomb of Los Angeles pioneer Robert Carlisle; and the remains of the Protestant cemetery.

photCL 400 volume 18

Historical Society of Southern California Collection: Leuschner Collection of Photographs

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Historical Society of Southern California Collection of Photographs by Subject

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Historical Society of Southern California Collection of Lantern Slides

Historical Society of Southern California Collection of Portrait Photographs

Historical Society of Southern California Collection - Marco Newmark Collection of Photographs, (bulk 1900-1920)

Historical Society of Southern California Collection - Historic Los Angeles photograph album