Roar back to 1920s Hollywoodland

These unique photographs document real estate development in the hills and canyons of Hollywood, Los Angeles. Newly built homes and roads under construction dramatically altered the landscape of the fast-growing metropolis from 1924 to 1929.

 

For more information on these photographs and the complete record, click here.

The Commercial Catalogs at the California Historical Society

"The comforts of home while on the road are assured to all owners of Mendel Wardrobe Trunks," customers of Cincinnati’s Mendel & Co. read in the tenth edition of the J. Prince Trunk Co. catalog. "No wearisome packing or unpacking. Everything in sight when you open the trunk and every garment accessible without disturbing any other garment.”

At home on the road At home on the road - The J. Prince Trunk Co., San Francisco, Cal. [Cover: Mendel & Co., Cincinnati catalog]- Publ.: Mendel & Co., Cincinnati [Edition 10]

“Commercial catalogs collection, California Historical Society, CC M 52.001”

The pages below depict the Mendel Make wardrobe trunk - "the best wardrobe trunk made" - in its closed position, along with a warning to avoid imitations that don't bear the company's triangle brand. "Demand our name plate and label as shown above," the company urged. A range of styles offered in this catalog ensured that every traveler could be "at home on the road."

The Mendel Make - Mendel Wardrobe Trunk [p.2 Mendel & Co., Cincinnati catalog] Publ.: Mendel & Co., Cincinnati [Edition 10]

"Commercial catalogs collection, California Historical Society, CC M 52.002”

At home on the road - The Standards of Quality [p.3 Mendel & Co., Cincinnati catalog] Publ.: Mendel & Co., Cincinnati [Edition 10] “Commercial catalogs collection, California Historical Society, CC M 52.003”

Hundreds of commercial catalogs dating from the 1850s to the 1950s are found in the collections of the California Historical Society. From gardens to farm equipment to terra-cotta tile, they offer a wealth of information to an endless variety of researchers: architectural preservationists, fix-it hobbyists, and landscape historians among them. Fun and quaint to the untrained eye, to those seeking real data or period observations about society, catalogs are the ultimate primary source.

Allen's Water Gardens, Los Angeles, Calif. [Catalog cover] Printed by: C. Wesley Denning Co. Los Angeles, CA

“Commercial catalogs collection, California Historical Society, CC AL 5.2.001”

For a complete listing of the collection, click here.

Shelly Kale
Managing Editor

Dick Dobbins Collection on the Pacific Coast League

It’s spring and baseball is in the air.  California baseball fans who can’t get enough of their Giants, Dodgers, A’s, Angels, and Padres might want to go back in time and dip into the history of the Pacific Coast League (PCL), composed of Seals (San Francisco), Oaks (Oakland), Solons (Sacramento), and Tigers (Vernon), among many other teams from San Diego to Hawaii. 

The PCL was founded in 1903, and for the next 54 years, it was the dominant baseball presence on the West Coast.  For much of that time, the PCL had no contractual affiliation with the rest of professional baseball, and was often referred to as the “Third Major League.”  Some of our nation’s greatest players began their careers in the PCL, including Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Tony Lazzeri, “Lefty” Gomez,  Ernie Lombardi, and Harry Heilmann.  Shortly after the arrival of Major League Baseball to California, the PCL was incorporated into Major League Baseball’s national farm system.  The PCL still operates today as a triple-A minor league.

The CHS is home to the extraordinary Dick Dobbins Collection on the Pacific Coast League, which includes programs, scorecards, yearbooks, player sketches, administrative records, baseball cards, photographs, and much more.  Never heard of the Mission Reds or the Hollywood Stars?  Make the discovery in the Dobbins collection.  Visit our library and cover all the bases of West Coast baseball.   

See the guide to the DickDobbins Collection on the Pacific Coast League  on the Online Archive of California.

Wendy Welker
Archivist & Special Collections Cataloger

From the Archives: Girls’ High School

Girls’ High School opened at Bush and Stockton streets in 1864. Originally part of the city’s first high school, San Francisco High, the school separated genders in 1864, creating Girls’ High School and Boys’ High School. In 1919 – the year this Girls’ High School Journal was published – the school was located on Scott Street between O’Farrell and Geary.

Girls’ High School was an accredited, public school that drew young women from all socio-economic classes and neighborhoods of San Francisco. Upon commencement Girls’ High graduates were automatically admitted to any course of study at the University of California or Stanford University. Girls’ High School also offered the Normal Course preparing young women for the teaching profession and offering teaching certificates.

The cover of the December 1919 Girls’ High School Journal celebrates the holiday season with its holly berry motif and young woman bundled in a coat, scarf, and muff. More interesting are the pages of the journal listing the 57 Girls’ High graduates, called “57” Varieties – a play on the H. J. Heinz Company advertising slogan most commonly seen on tomato ketchup bottles. Presumably the exercise required a bit of self-reflection on the part of each graduate; she is asked to fill in the blanks after the prompts “Name,” “Is,” “Wants to be,” “Will be,” and “Indoor sport.” The answers to these prompts supplied by these 57 graduates reveal a class of young women whose goals and aspirations certainly vary, as do their attitudes and understandings of the cultural and societal limitations and expectations placed on women during the suffrage era. Their answers demonstrate both confidence (E. Judge) and doubt (M. Hardiman); high self-esteem (G. Quarre) and insecurity (I. Bley); good-natured sense of humor (H. Richards) and self-effacing humor (M. Ludwig). Some express a strong sense of self (E. Meyer) while others express a desire to be something wholly unexpected (H. Hutchins). Also included is an image from the journal with a selection of school portraits with whimsical drawings next to each girl’s photo. Virginia Jurs yearns for Stanford, while Therese Kutner declares, “I’m a jazz baby!”

Overall the young women demonstrate a youthful ambition to be appreciated, successful, and to have all opportunities made available to them. Less than a year after publication of this journal the 19^th Amendment giving women the right to vote would be passed on August 18, 1920. One cannot help but think about how the right to vote, coupled with other achievements gained by the first wave women’s movement, including reform in higher education, the workplace, and health care and access, continued to influence the Girls’ High School class of 1919. 

Wishing you well, Chez Panisse!

On the morning of Friday, March 8, 2013 celebrated Berkeley restaurant Chez
Panisse was damaged by fire. Our best wishes for a speedy re-opening.

Photographed below is the Chez Panisse menu for Saturday, June 25, 1977, printed by Wesley B. Tanner from the Kemble Ephemera Collection.

Scanning the Horizon

The Society of California Archivists will hold its 2013 Annual General

Meeting on April 11-13, in Berkeley, California.

Complete schedule, registration, and hotel information is available at

http://calarchivists.org/AGM_2013

This year's conference theme, "Scanning the Horizon," invites you not

only to gaze at the Golden Gate views afforded by our bay front hotel

location, but also to look ahead at the world of archives and historical

research in the 21st century. The program includes sessions that take

stock of the impact of digital technology, online primary resources, and

trends in digital humanities. There will be even more offerings

addressing traditional processing, reference, public outreach, grant

management, and audiovisual preservation, among other engaging topics.

Photo by Ansel Adams. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library

In addition to two days of sessions, the SCA AGM offers two

pre-conference workshops, an opening reception at the Berkeley Hillside

Club, and numerous opportunities to network and mingle at repository

tours, vendor exhibits, and a new member happy hour!

The venue will be the DoubleTree Hotel at the Berkeley Marina.

Follow SCA on Facebook and Twitter for additional updates:

http://www.facebook.com/calarchivists

@calarchivists  (use the hashtag #sca13 to follow all AGM-related

tweets)

Be Our Vintage Valentine

In the spirit of Valentine's Day, the California Historical Society 

has gathered this charming selection of vintage Valentines! 

This set of colorful keepsakes are from our 

Kemble Collections on Western Printing & Publishing. 

Whimsical, romantic, and even cheeky: 

these Valentines are artifacts of adoration that have endured the test of time. 

We invite you to share and send the love around!

Sheet Music Cover - Kemble Collections on Western Printing & Publishing

 

 

Birds of Paradise Lost - book event with author Andrew Lam

This event takes place on Friday, March 1, 2013, 6:00pm

Reservations are required

Free event at the California Historical Society 

678 Mission Street

San Francisco

Join us for the evening as Andrew Lam shares excerpts from his new book Birds of Paradise Lost.

The thirteen stories in Birds of Paradise Lost shimmer with humor and pathos as they chronicle the anguish and joy and bravery of new Americans, the troubled lives of those who fled Vietnam and remade themselves in the San Francisco Bay Area. Past memories -- of war and its aftermath, of murder, arrest, re-education camps and new economic zones, of escape and shipwreck and atrocity --are ever present Andrew Lam’s wise and compassionate stories.

Andrew Lam is the author of Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora, which won the 2006 PEN Open Book Award, and East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres. He is an editor and cofounder of New American Media, an association of over two thousand ethnic media outlets in the US.

He was a regular commentator on NPR'’s All Things Considered for many years, and was the subject of a 2004 PBS documentary called My Journey Home. His essays have appeared in newspapers and magazines such as the New York Times, The LA Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Baltimore Sun, The Atlanta Journal, the Chicago Tribune, Mother Jones, and The Nation, among many others.

Please RSVP at andrewlamchs.eventbrite.com and we look forward to seeing you! 

The Sound of Rural California

This event takes place on Thursday, February 28, 2013, 6:00pm 

Reservations are required

Free event at the California Historical Society
678 Mission Street
San Francisco 

What does rural California sound like?  What makes up the days, and what's on the minds, of people who live in the state's small towns? And how can reporters convey that accurately and evocatively to an urban audience? To complement the California Historical Society exhibition I See Beauty in This Life: A Photographer Looks at 100 Years of Rural California, five public radio reporters will share audio from across the state and discuss the joys and challenges of  reporting in rural California. A panel discussion will be moderated by I See Beauty curator and writer/photographer Lisa M. Hamilton.

Lisa Morehouse is an independent public radio producer.  Stories from her project After The Gold Rush: The Future of Small Town California air on KQED's The California Report and NPR's Latino USA. Julie Caine is an independent journalist whose work is regularly heard on KALW, where she is currently the lead producer onAudiograph, a project documenting sound-rich stories from the nine Bay Area counties. Michael Montgomery is a producer-reporter with the Berkeley-based Center for Investigative Reporting and a regular contributor to KQED and American RadioWorks. Molly Samuel is a multimedia producer at KQED, where she reports on science and environment. Dan Brekke is a reporter and editor with

Please RSVP at ruralsounds.eventbrite.com and we look forward to seeing you! 

Squeezebox Stories: Rural music, immigration, & the accordion

This event takes place on Thursday, January 24, 2013, 6:00pm

Reservations are required

Free event at the California Historical Society

678 Mission Street

San Francisco

Squeezebox Stories: Rural music, immigration, and the accordion in California's Central Valley

When Carlos Mendoza immigrated to California from Oaxaca in the 1980s to work in the fields outside Madera, he brought his beloved Chilena music along with him. Now a full-time musician, Mendoza will play some of these traditional Oaxacan songs and talk with producers Julie Caine and Marié Abe about the role the accordion has played in carrying culture to a new land.

Squeezebox Stories is an award-winning public radio documentary that uses the rich history of the accordion to tell immigration and migration stories to California.  Produced by radio journalist Julie Caine and Boston University ethnomusicologist Marié Abe, this project is supported by the California Council for the Humanities and the Arhoolie Foundation.

During this event, we'll hear the story of some of rural California's newest residents, and learn how their journey north has given new life to traditional music that embodies cultural pride in a new land. The most recent wave of Mexican immigrants to California are mostly indigenous people from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca–many of whom don’t even speak Spanish as their first language, and who are often discriminated against within mainstream Mexican culture for their indigenous heritage. We hope you can join us for this special event. Light refreshments will be served. 

Please RSVP at squeezeboxchs.eventbrite.com and we'll see you there!