The Library's Garden Level (Lower Level) is currently closed due to storm flooding. More about garden-level closure. (Posted on: 03/08/2024 03:24pm)
The Old China Hands Archives in the Special Collections and Archives Department holds materials from a variety of individuals that lived and worked in China during the early 20th century, including two small collections of materials from Scandinavian ship captains who moved to China and worked with international shipping companies...
Natural disasters, as most of us know, are inevitable and can sometimes cause a lot of damage. In Los Angeles, we often experience earthquakes, fires, and occasionally, floods. In recent years, we have had tsunami scares, tornados touching down, and major fires in the area. Special Collections and Archives holds several collections that document various disasters...
World War I, also called the Great War, took the lives of more than 9 million people, and devastated millions more. It also brought invention, destroyed long standing empires, redrew some political borders, and created new ones. Like all wars before and since, it separated families, and had a dramatic impact on the social welfare of all involved nations...
Special Collections and Archives holds many books and collection materials that illustrate the unique history of Los Angeles in the years surrounding the turn of the twentieth century. The Los Angeles "Booster Myth," an outgrowth of Manifest Destiny, was largely perpetuated by real estate investors, commercial industry, and civic leaders in an effort to bring more settlers to Los Angeles and prolong the real estate boom of the 1880s...
Bess Lomax Hawes (1921-2009) was a folk musician, folklorist, and professor of anthropology at San Fernando State College (now California State University Northridge). During her time as a musician she wrote many songs, including the Kingston Trio hit “M.T.A.” She also performed and collaborated with such American folk luminaries as Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. Her father, John Avery Lomax, and brother, Alan Lomax, were famous folklorists and musicologists who traveled across the United States collecting thousands of folk songs and interviews for the Archive of American Folk Songs in the Library of Congress...
The China Marines were originally defined as those who served as part of the 4th Marine Regiment assigned guard duty at the International Settlement in Shanghai from 1927 to 1941. Another group of Marines from the 1st and 6th Marine Divisions who were members of the U.S. occupying army in north China would also become known as China Marines. These Marines were stationed in China from 1945 to 1948...
November 5th, 2013 marks the one hundred-year anniversary of the completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Special Collections and Archives celebrates this achievement with the release of the digital collection, Water Works: Documenting Water History in Los Angeles, and the opening of the Catherine Mulholland Collection, donated by author and historian Catherine Mulholland, granddaughter of the Aqueduct’s chief engineer, William Mulholland...
On March 14, 1947, a yacht in Newport Harbor exploded with two people aboard, Walter Overell, a wealthy businessman, and his wife, Beulah. Both were seemingly killed by the blast, and the yacht sank to the ocean floor. While the initial report suggested the explosion might have been caused by an engine malfunction and leaking gasoline, it was soon discovered that the blast was actually caused by dynamite....
In 1961, Mary Ellen Crawford, an African-American teen, attempted to enroll at South Gate High School, the closest high school to her home. The Los Angeles Unified School District refused her request, and directed her to enroll at the more-distant Jordan High School. Jordan’s student body was 99% African-American, while South Gate High's was 98% caucasian. Crawford's parents filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging that the Los Angeles Unified School District exercised discriminatory attendance boundary practices....
Water history, particularly the controversy surrounding water rights and access, has dramatically and incontrovertibly shaped the growth and development of Los Angeles. Nearly 100 years ago, the dedication and opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct on November 5, 1913 was the culmination of many years of work on the part of William Mulholland and others at Los Angeles' Department of Water and Power. More than any other ...
