Content
Nominations for the L.A. as Subject (LAAS) Executive Committee members are now being accepted. There are 5 seats that need to be filled for the incoming 2013-2015 Executive Committee term, including the Executive Committee Chairperson. Please send your nominations for Executive Committee members and/or chair directly…
Content
L.A. as Subject has honored private collector Wally Shidler with its 2013 Avery Clayton Spirit Award.
Wally Shilder has been amassing his “Historical Collection of Southern California Ephemera” since he was a teenager. He is a third generation Angeleno and his interest in history was piqued by his grandmother who…
Content
The Institute for Arts & Media, Department of Journalism at California State University, Northridge has received a $290,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the creation of a digital database of the university’s African-American photography collection, which contains more than 550,000 images…
Content
Glance at an old map of the Hollywood area like the one above and two things stand out. First, the land is remarkably empty. There are few roads and even fewer structures. Second, two separate towns appear where we would expect one: Hollywood, destined for stardom, and Colegrove, destined for obscurity. What happened to…
Content
Call it 19th-century L.A.’s idea of a thrill ride. Leaving the safety of the granite slopes, trolley cars raced out onto a creaking, cantilevered wooden trestle, soaring over a 1000-foot sheer drop—with no reassuring seat belts or safety bars.
Keep reading the full post on Los Angeles Magazine's CityThink blog.
Content
Wrigley Field: baseball fans will forever associate the name with the Windy City. But for decades the City of Angels boasted a Wrigley Field of its own—the longtime home of the minor-league Los Angeles Angels.
Los Angeles’ Wrigley Field was, in fact, the first to bear the name. Though it had been open since 1914, Cubs…
Content
Los Angeles history comes alive at the 8th-annual Los Angeles Archives Bazaar. Organized by L.A. as Subject and presented by the USC Libraries, the annual event celebrates the diversity of Southern California’s history. For scholarly researchers, journalists, history buffs, and those simply interested in exploring the…
Content
Palm trees arc across cans of Golden Road’s Point the Way IPA, and a haloed Los Angeles City Hall peeks through the logo of Angel City Brewery. As craft brewers embrace the city’s unique iconography, transform historic downtown buildings into meeting houses, and find other ways to establish a connection with Los Angeles…
Content
Without the handwritten caption reading "Part of Los Angeles," it might be difficult to place the above drawing -- generally considered to be the oldest extant drawing of the city. The Los Angeles that William Rich Hutton saw when he first arrived on July 7, 1847, is virtually unrecognizable today.
Hutton came to Los…
Content
Angels Flight: a downtown Los Angeles landmark. Its orange, beaux-arts archways and simple, Edwardian technology stand in contrast to the modern skyscrapers of the financial district. This cherished historical monument is a remnant of an earlier age. In the early decades of the twentieth century, from downtown L.A. to…
Content
With apologies to Woody Allen, making a right turn on a red light is certainly not Los Angeles’ only cultural advantage. In fact, while it was once a Los Angeles idiosyncrasy, today the maneuver is permitted nationwide, with some local exceptions.
Keep reading the full post on Los Angeles magazine's City Think…
Content
Orange County was more farmland than suburb—a landscape of orange groves and cow pastures rather than tract houses and fairytale castles—when Walter Knott opened his first roadside produce stand in 1923. The dusty highway passing through Knott’s berry farm was fast becoming the principal route between Los Angeles and…
Content
The Department of Archives and Special Collections, William H. Hannon Library, Loyola Marymount University, has opened to researchers an extensive collection documenting Mexican immigrant and Mexican-American history in Los Angeles. This is the Venegas Family Papers, which consist of correspondence, photographs,…
