Nathan Masters
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Staff writer at the USC Libraries, the host institution for L.A. as Subject.
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Early photographs of Los Angeles surprise for many reasons, but often what's most striking is how empty the city looks.
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Native to Southern California, the oak tree has been a powerful force in shaping the region's human history.
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"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.
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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.
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These train depots, long since vanished, provided tourists' and emigrants' first introduction to Los Angeles, helping shape their ideas about the city.
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With "Gangster Squad," the world's attention turns to the criminal underworld of postwar L.A. and its pugilistic boss, Mickey Cohen.
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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.
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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.
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Every November beginning in 1928, elaborate holiday decorations transformed Hollywood Boulevard into Santa Claus Lane.
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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.
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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.
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Southern Californians have long maintained a complicated relationship with the Santa Ana River, accepting its life-giving water but fearing its wrath.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Posted From Footpaths to the Grapevine: A Brief History of Southern California's Ridge Route
in SoCal FocusA vital link between Los Angeles and points north, the winding Ridge Route traced historical routes through the mountains. -
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.
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According to at least one authority, Robinson Jeffers is the greatest poet to emerge from Los Angeles.
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In an era when labor tensions gripped Los Angeles, Pasadena businessman J. Sidney Torrance envisioned his new settlement as a model industrial town.
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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.
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In the late 19th century, Southern California's first amusement parks offered visitors up-close encounters with an ornithological curiosity: the ostrich.
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The site of Dodger Stadium was once home to the thriving Mexican-American community of Chavez Ravine.
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The freeway planners drew lines straight through established residential communities, with houses and local businesses along the freeway route no more an obstacle than existing surface streets or water mains.
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An extensive system of creeks, arroyos, and other watercourses once crisscrossed Los Angeles. Today, most of L.A.'s streams have been paved over, buried and converted into storm drains, or eliminated from the landscape altogether.
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In June 1943, L.A. witnessed some of its most surreal scenes of street violence: sailors coursing through the city streets in their Navy uniforms, carrying sticks and targeting anyone wearing a zoot suit.
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In 1896, Griffith J. Griffith gave Los Angeles 3,015 acres to create "a place of recreation and rest for the masses." Today, Griffith Park is nearly five times the size of New York's Central Park.
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There was a time when, far from being a defining characteristic of the city's landscape, freeways were merely an experimental impulse of traffic engineers.
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As Southern Californians tune into the infamously delayed coverage of London's 2012 Olympic games, L.A. as Subject member archives provide a look back at Los Angeles' two turns in the Olympic spotlight.
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In 1924, the downtown L.A. intersection of Seventh Street and Broadway was the busiest in the world with 504,000 people crossing those streets each day.
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The transportation hub has hardly stood still since it emerged from the bean fields of Westchester in the late 1920s.
Recent Actions from Nathan Masters
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Great piece on a complicated subject. I recently wrote an essay myself about the myth of the Los Angeles desert. It's remarkable how common the notion is -- even among L.A.'s most incisive commentators -- that under our freeways and...
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Commented on El Aliso: Ancient Sycamore Was Silent Witness to Four Centuries of L.A. History
in SoCal FocusFinding El Aliso in those old photos was simply a matter of triangulation, and the tree certainly stands out among the city's one and two-story buildings. The 1857 date for that photograph comes from a caption by C.C. Pierce on... -
Thanks for the fascinating information, Paul!...
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Really interesting trivia, Walt. Thanks for sharing!...
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Thanks so much for your kind comments, Ryan and Philip! I'm glad you enjoyed the piece....
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Commented on Civil War: How Southern California Tried to Split from Northern California
in SoCal FocusThanks so much for your comment, SuedeShirtTravel. These are all great stories, which are definitely worthy of inclusion in a more comprehensive piece on the subject. As for the the description of Sumner as Johnston's "eventual replacement," you're right, and...
Responses to Comments from Nathan Masters
No recommendations yet.
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Early photographs of Los Angeles surprise for many reasons, but often what's most striking is how empty the city looks.
-
Native to Southern California, the oak tree has been a powerful force in shaping the region's human history.
-
"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.
-
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.
-
These train depots, long since vanished, provided tourists' and emigrants' first introduction to Los Angeles, helping shape their ideas about the city.
-
With "Gangster Squad," the world's attention turns to the criminal underworld of postwar L.A. and its pugilistic boss, Mickey Cohen.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Every November beginning in 1928, elaborate holiday decorations transformed Hollywood Boulevard into Santa Claus Lane.
-
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.
