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Nathan Masters

Nathan Masters (2018)

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.

Nathan Masters (2018)
Jim Kepner | Courtesy of the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries.
The science fiction collection of pioneering LGBTQ rights activist Jim Kepner reveals hidden harmonies between sci-fi fandom and LGBTQ activism in the 1950s.
Artist: Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. Offset, 1967 Los Angeles. Courtesy of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics.
Through a series of short films and articles, Monomania L.A. profiles five L.A. as Subject collectors who have turned a monomaniacal obsession with a…
David Boulé has assembled perhaps the largest single collection of materials related to the production and promotion of California oranges.
Passed by Congress in 1869 and ratified by the states on Feb. 3, 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment prohibited race-based restrictions on voting. Courtesy of the National Archives.
The amendment gave black Angelenos the right to vote, but the county clerk at first refused to register them anyway.
The slow-motion landslide blocked Riverside Drive where the Golden State (I-5) Freeway now passes Elysian Park. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive, Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA.
A slow-motion, 1.5-million-ton landslide drew huge crowds of spectators.
The First-Beverly Viaduct over Glendale Boulevard in 1956. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive, UCLA Library.
The First Street-Beverly Boulevard Viaduct is something of an infrastructural anomaly.
Third Street in 1970, when it was known as the Santa Monica Mall. Courtesy of the Santa Monica Public Library Image Archives.
Since 1965, the pedestrian rather than the automobile has reigned over a three-block stretch of downtown Santa Monica.
A circa 1935 postcard of downtown Los Angeles. Courtesy of the Werner von Boltenstern Postcard Collection, Department of Archives and Special Collections, William H. Hannon Library, Loyola Marymount University.
A New York import, the term "downtown" arrived in Los Angeles by the late 1870s.
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Before Dodger Stadium, there was Mount Lookout -- one of the best vantage points for sweeping views of Los Angeles.
Bellevue Terrace appears prominently within the larger, trapezoidal Bellevue Terrace Tract in this 1868 map of Beaudry's real estate holdings. Courtesy of the Map Collection - Los Angeles Public Library.
Bellevue Terrace and Beaudry Park could have become jewels of L.A.'s parks system.
The Oil Can restaurant in Montebello, 1928. Courtesy of the USC Libraries - Dick Whittington Photography Collection.
There are greasy spoons, and then there was The Oil Can.
Motorists celebrate Sunset Boulevard's completion in 1904. Courtesy of the Automobile Club of Southern California Archives.
Sunset may have been its name, but the boulevard's grand opening on May 14, 1904, marked the dawn of a new age in Los Angeles.
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