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Forgetting is famously what Los Angeles does best. But despite erasure, memories do have a place in Los Angeles. Some are official monuments. Some are in ruins and need critical excavation. Some require the imagination to be seen. Here are some places of memory lost to time.
Edward Roybal served his constituents as California's first Latino in Congress for 30 years, yet it was his work as a Los Angeles City Councilman that not only laid the foundation for his national career but also speaks to a number of issues affecting Angelenos today.
Booster optimism, unregulated stock speculation, a culture of civic corruption, the power of new advertising media and the cunning of stock promoters fed the Julian Pete swindle — a scandal that defrauded tens of thousands of investors of over $150 million.
While poinsettias had already been available at nurseries across the U.S. and Los Angeles, it was the Ecke family who transformed the poinsettia market from selling cut flowers as bouquets to selling them as indoor potted plants for Christmas.
On May 22, 1958, a series of oil spills and explosions ignited the Hancock Oil Refinery in Signal Hill, burning for two days and sending thick plumes of black smoke into the air. Writer D.J. Waldie, who was 9-years-old at the time of the fires, recalls the explosive event.
In the mid-1800s, public clocks served as type of civic authority as they centralized the town's time while introducing the idea of organizing days around the hours and minutes of clock time.
The socially and historically complex Terminal Island has become a mono-culture of standardized, containerized commerce. Writer D.J. Waldie recounts a personal history of a once scruffy seaside that is now the nation’s top cargo port.
Every year, Southern California museums, libraries and archives come together at the annual Archives Bazaar to exhibit historic items and artifacts. Here are 8 collections and historical organizations whose archives tell a fascinating story of L.A.
The history of commercial avocados in California comes from a collection of chance discoveries, Indigenous heritages exploited and improbable survivals that were ultimately hitched to the power of California's industrialized agriculture.
Authors, former students, colleagues and friends reflect on the legacy, impact and generous spirit of the late Mike Davis — a social historian and professor emeritus whose writings and teachings on power and social class in Los Angeles inspired and guided an entire generation of L.A. and urban historians.
The deaths of early Angelenos didn't always lead to eternal rest. When the first Catholic, Jewish and Protestant cemeteries in Los Angeles were abandoned by 1910, the displaced dead were scattered to other cemeteries — but not all were found and reburied.
In November 1935, Los Angeles Times reporter Timothy Turner and staff artist Charles Owens began a year-long ramble through the historic core of downtown. The Times published more than 40 vignettes of the city's aging Victorian mansions, derelict theaters and other survivals of the 19th century.