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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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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…
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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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Like some of the very people who drive on them, a few Los Angeles streets have achieved the height of fame. Sunset Boulevard lent its evocative name to Billy Wilder's classic film noir. Pasadena's Colorado Boulevard appears on millions of television screens each New Year's Day as the route of the Rose Parade. And…
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Water, Power, and Technology: The Los Angeles Aqueduct, 1913-2013
Exhibit will run from September 9 through December 20, 2013 Honnold/Mudd Library, inside North Entrance (909) 607-3977
In November 1913, the City of Los Angeles completed construction of the first Los Angeles Aqueduct. In commemoration of the…
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The Autry National Center Libraries and Archives, the California State University, Northridge (CSUN) Libraries, and the USC Libraries will each host and mentor a Resident Archivist for an initial three-month supervised archival project, followed by three, three-month rotations at L.A. as Subject member archive sites,…
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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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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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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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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…
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The Whittier Local History Collection includes Whittier College yearbooks, local high school yearbooks, Whittier City Directories, local telephone books, Haines Directories, and titles by local authors. The entire book collection is cataloged and searchable through the online catalog.
There are various files and…
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Created in 1967, the CSUF University Archives and Special Collections (UA&SC) section preserves and provides access to sixty-six special collections, including the institutional history of California State University, Fullerton. These special materials form a very important augmentation to the general holdings of…
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In just one month's time, over 70 exhibitors will fill the halls of the USC Doheny Library to celebrate and showcase the artifacts, images, and primary sources that tell the history of Los Angeles.
Click here to learn more about the 10th Annual Los Angeles Archives Bazaar.