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Call it an early version of viral marketing. Promoters of two products -- a fruit and the region that grew it -- created hundreds of images of oranges, orange trees, and orange groves during the reign of Southern California's Orange Empire. They then leveraged the social network of the time -- the mail -- to broadcast…
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In this land of newcomers and transplants, Ernest Marquez can trace his California lineage back further than most. Born in 1924 on land that the Mexican government granted to his great-grandparents in 1839, Marquez has devoted much of his life to documenting a family history that began in 1771, when his…
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It seems logical enough -- Western Avenue, as the oft-repeated explanation goes, is so named because it once formed Los Angeles' western boundary. But is there any truth to this just-so story?
Some streets did once mark L.A.'s western city limit. Most notably, West Boulevard's name dates to 1915, when the city's…
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What happens when collecting becomes more than a hobby? File cabinets conquer living rooms. Boxes scrape the ceilings of garages. A trip to a paper ephemera show becomes a grail quest. Even dumpsters offer the promise of a new acquisition.
Such collectors perform a tremendous service to scholars and the public by…
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The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (“Metro”) won an Emmy in the public programming category for the Metro Motion show on Union Station’s 75th Anniversary. The 30-minute episode aired just prior to the Union Station anniversary celebration on May 3, 2014:…
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Earlier this year, LA as Subject was announced as one of the 17 recipients of the Cal Humanities Community Stories grant. Community Stories (formerly the California Story Fund) gives expression to the extraordinary variety of histories and experiences of California’s places and people.
The grant project, Monomania LA,…
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It was announced on Saturday, July 26 that the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (“Metro”) won an Emmy in the public programming category for the Metro Motion show on Union Station’s 75th Anniversary. The 30-minute episode aired just prior to the Union Station anniversary celebration on May 3,…
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With his stalwart dam of concrete and steel in place, William Mulholland began flooding the meadowlands of Ivanhoe Canyon in November 1907. The waters rose, sedges drowned, and red-winged blackbirds fluttered away in search of undisturbed wetlands. Within a few months, Mulholland had created Silver Lake.
Keep reading…
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Never mind that Tinseltown was five or even fifty miles away. By the mid-1920s, the Hollywood brand was so strong that communities across Southern California were affixing it to their names. Toluca became North Hollywood. Sherman became West Hollywood. And in distant Ventura County, Oxnard Beach became…
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The Institute for Baseball Studies, the first humanities-based research center of its kind associated with a college or university in the United States, has announced its public hours for the 2015 spring semester at Whittier College. Effective immediately through May 1, the Institute will be open on Fridays from 12:00…
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As twilight faded over Pasadena on September 9, 1894, an artificial sun flickered to life for the first time. High above town in the San Gabriel Mountains stood a wonder of the new electric age: a 60-inch General Electric searchlight, by many accounts the largest in the world. This massive projector first dazzled…
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Had one of Tomorrowland's flying saucers gone missing? When the Anaheim Convention Center's arena opened in the summer of 1967, it looked as if a spacecraft from another world had touched down directly opposite Katella Avenue from Disneyland.
Designed by Los Angeles-based architects Adrian Wilson and Associates, the…
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Cloaked in mystery and until modern times available only to the elite, the orange has been known as the fruit of the gods, the food of emperors, a token of gratitude, and the symbol of health, wealth, and love. The dream of California since its discovery by Europeans has been that it is a place of plenty, of potential,…
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Rising conspicuously above the red-tile roofs and big-box stores of suburban Tustin, California, these two massive hangars stand as monuments to a lost age of aviation, built when lighter-than-air dirigibles held promise as the future of air travel—and air warfare.
They rank among the largest wooden structures in the…
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King of the road? Since 1965, the pedestrian rather than the private automobile has reigned over a three-block stretch of downtown Santa Monica. Today, the Third Street Promenade is one of the Southland's best-known examples of a public space that prioritizes pedestrians over cars.
But while it's tempting to view the…
