Photo: USC Libraries
LA as Subject
Hosted by the USC Libraries, L.A. as Subject is an association of more than 230 libraries, cultural institutions, official archives, and private collectors dedicated to preserving and telling the sometimes-hidden histories of the Los Angeles region. Our posts here provide a view into the archives of individuals and institutions whose collections inform the great narrative -- in all its complex facets -- of Southern California.
LA as Subject:
Early photographs of Los Angeles surprise for many reasons, but often what's most striking is how empty the city looks.
LA as Subject:
Native to Southern California, the oak tree has been a powerful force in shaping the region's human history.
LA as Subject:
"Never Built: Los Angeles" presents an alternate history -- and an alternate present -- for a place where inspirational solutions to the city's problems have often been downscaled, defeated, or altogether forgotten.
LA as Subject:
During World War II, Catalina Island reinvented itself as a training camp for the U.S. armed forces, including the forerunners to today's CIA and Navy SEALs.
LA as Subject:
These train depots, long since vanished, provided tourists' and emigrants' first introduction to Los Angeles, helping shape their ideas about the city.
LA as Subject:
With "Gangster Squad," the world's attention turns to the criminal underworld of postwar L.A. and its pugilistic boss, Mickey Cohen.
LA as Subject:
Mission bells along Highway 101 imply that motorists' tires trace the same path as missionaries' sandals. But much of El Camino Real's story was imagined by regional boosters.
LA as Subject:
Although best known today for whisking tourists up San Francisco's hilly streets, cable cars were once a widely used public transit solution in cities across the U.S., including L.A.
LA as Subject:
Every November beginning in 1928, elaborate holiday decorations transformed Hollywood Boulevard into Santa Claus Lane.
LA as Subject:
This month, Manhattan Beach celebrates its centennial. Known for its lively seaside promenade, the Strand, and for its associations with surf culture, the city has its origins as a coastal resort built atop shifting sand dunes of the South Bay.
History:
With streetcars likely returning to downtown L.A. after a five-decade absence, take a look back at the city's very first streetcars -- diminutive, horse-drawn vehicles that spawned L.A.'s first suburbs.
LA as Subject:
Southern Californians have long maintained a complicated relationship with the Santa Ana River, accepting its life-giving water but fearing its wrath.
LA as Subject:
With many of the imported goods sold across the county at deep discount this Black Friday having passed through the twin seaports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, explore the story of Southern California's unlikely harbor -- and how it came to be divided between two cities -- through selected images from the region's photographic archives.
LA as Subject:
Each winter, the Raymond Hotel in South Pasadena invited well-heeled tourists to escape the frosty East Coast for the sunny skies of Southern California.
LA as Subject:
Los Angeles' first hotel, the Bella Union, functioned as more than simply temporary lodging for out-of-town visitors. For decades after it opened in 1849, it was the heart of civic life in the rough-edged, newly American city.
LA as Subject:
A vital link between Los Angeles and points north, the winding Ridge Route traced historical routes through the mountains.
LA as Subject:
Triggering allergies, fraying nerves, and alarming fire-prone communities, Santa Ana winds have long been a fact of life in Southern California -- the unadvertised price residents pay for the region's otherwise idyllic weather.
LA as Subject:
According to at least one authority, Robinson Jeffers is the greatest poet to emerge from Los Angeles.
LA as Subject:
In an era when labor tensions gripped Los Angeles, Pasadena businessman J. Sidney Torrance envisioned his new settlement as a model industrial town.
LA as Subject:
What could Jedi knight Luke Skywalker, novelist Ayn Rand, and Malibu rancher May Rindge possibly have in common? The answer: their stories are all documented in Southern California's archives.
SoCal Focus is a daily blog about the people, places and issues in and around Southern California.
I Am Los Angeles: On His Way Back
A video portrait of a man whose dreams and determination allowed him to get off the streets and into a stable life.
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