Nathan Masters
Nathan Masters is host and executive producer of Lost L.A., an Emmy Award-winning public television series from KCET and the USC Libraries. The show explores how rare artifacts from Southern California's archives can unlock hidden and often-surprising stories from the region's past. Nathan’s writing has appeared in many publications, including Los Angeles Magazine and the Los Angeles Times. He also helps manage public programs and media initiatives at the USC Libraries, home to the L.A. as Subjectresearch consortium.
Brentwood's Mandeville Canyon was once home to the California Botanic Garden, whose planners envisioned a vast, 800-acre natural playground. Today, among the gardens' only remnants are the aging trees that shade the neighborhood's multimillion-dollar h...
How did a cow path become the city's premier commercial corridor? The Miracle Mile's stunning transformation is part of the larger narrative of L.A.'s decentralization.
Founded on March 30, 1912, Owensmouth -- renamed Canoga Park in 1931 -- represented one of L.A.'s first steps in a march that eventually transformed the San Fernando Valley from farmland to suburbia.
The Metro Expo Line traces a historic rail route to Santa Monica. Trains first steamed down its right-of-way in 1875. Red trolley cars followed in 1908.
Southern California's photographic archives richly document the region's troubled relationship with the four classical elements.
In December L.A. announced that it would remove the railroad tracks running down Alameda Street between First and Seventh streets. Lying dormant for years, the rails represent one of the last remnants of Southern California's first railroad: the Los An...
We asked the members of L.A. as Subject to search through their collections for one notable map that informs our understanding of Southern California.
What did the L.A. Basin look like before there was an L.A.? A team of scientists, geographers, and other researchers recently released a report that reconstructs the historical landscape of the Ballona Creek watershed.
A statue of JunÃpero Serra has represented California in the U.S. Capitol's Statuary Hall since 1931, but over the past few decades scholars have come to view the Franciscan priest's mission-building project as a disaster for the state's native inhabi...
Lost for decades, several historic landmarks from L.A.'s past will soon reappear thirty miles to the south at the Disney California Adventure theme park in Anaheim.
When a piece of L.A. history disappears, it's often lost forever, but in some rare cases, that history is only hidden, preserved by accident for later generations to rediscover.
Modern Los Angeles is a city without a center. In its early years, however, L.A. was built around a well-defined center, the Plaza, which remained its political, social, and commercial heart even as it grew from a Spanish colonial outpost into a boomin...