#LAasSubject

[riversidearchives]

Got your popcorn?

125 years ago today, Vitascope’s first theatrical exhibit took place in New York City. In April 1902, Tally’s Electric Theatre opened in Los Angeles, California.  Home of Hollywood, Los Angeles is no stranger to movie-making or theatres.  The image we’re sharing with you today of a movie theatre at the Connell Naval Club on the Submarine Base, Los Angeles, while taken in 1922, is eerily similar to today’s images of empty theaters.  Hang in there, LA.  We can’t wait to see you at the movies! 

Item: [Movie theatre at the Connell Naval Club on the Submarine Base, Los Angeles. File Unit: 61 Photographs [submarine base]. Series: Central Subject Files, 1924 - 1958. Record Group 181: Records of Naval Districts and Shore Establishments, 1784 - 2000. (National Archives Identifier 295430). 

[anniekoh]

urban highways

Contemporary urban planning consensus is that the urban highways of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s were a misguided and ultimately counterproductive attempt to rationalize traffic and revitalize the urban core. What is not commonly taught however is how city residents challenged that pro-highway regime. Raymond Mohl is one of the few scholars who has written extensively on this topic. His 2004 article "Stop the road freeway revolts in American cities" in the Journal of Urban History is illustrative. 

He describes how Baltimore’s “traffic committee” hired Robert Moses as a consultant, who unsurprisingly issued a report that recommended the “displacement of some 19,000 people in the central city, mostly slums, Moses said, and ‘the more of them that are wiped out the healthier Baltimore will be in the long run.’” Moses’ view was supported by the “10-D highway engineers [who] favored expressways that cleared out “blighted” housing.” However,

The Moses plan drew widespread opposition, primarily from people in the targeted neighborhoods but also from respected Baltimoreans; journalist H. L. Mencken, for instance, labeled the Moses plan “a completely idiotic undertaking.” Some on the mayoral committee challenged the Moses plan on several grounds. The New Yorker’s report, one member of the Harbor Crossing-Freeway Committee suggested, was nothing more than a “sales brochure” that purposely obscured the true cost of the highway, glossed over serious relocation problems, and drew “illusory” conclusions about the positive impact of the freeway on nearby neighborhoods.

... Baltimore’s civic elite did not anticipate the extent of community opposi- tion to 10-D. At public hearings on different sections of the system, business and political leaders spoke in support of expressways, but large crowds turned out to challenge, heckle, and shout down highway advocates. In 1962, some 1,300 persons showed up at a public hearing on the 10-D east-west expressway, angry that the engineers and planners had declared their neighborhoods expendable slums. 

...

In the late 1960s and the early 1970s, Baltimore’s freeway fighters took on the so-called highway hawks. Organized in November 1966, RAM represented a coalition of middle-class black activists from Rosemont and militant working-class blacks in the Franklin-Mulberry corridor. Given patterns of previous highway and urban-renewal projects, blacks in Baltimore had good reason to be concerned about the interstates: between 1951 and 1964, about 90 percent of all housing displacements took place in Baltimore’s low-income black neighborhoods. 

Beginning in the late 1960s, Movement Against Destruction (MAD) became the most influential antifreeway voice in Baltimore. Founded in 1968 as a biracial coalition of thirty-five neighborhood groups, MAD engaged the energies of freeway fighters from across the city who persisted well into the late 1970s in a battle to prevent Baltimore from becoming a “motorized wasteland.”

And the sheer longevity of the opposition!

By necessity, MAD activists became experts on highway matters, refuted official highway statistics and data with hard evidence of their own, and confronted and confused highway engineers and local politicians with expert rebuttals at public hearings and council meetings.

MAD leaders also connected with freeway fighters in other cities. Minutes of MAD meetings reveal discussions of expressway battles in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and suburban Virginia. Washington freeway fighters from the Emergency Committee on the Transportation Crisis (ECTC) attended some MAD meetings to discuss antihighway strategy... The national environmental movement was deeply involved in this battle as well. In 1971, the environmental lobby group Environmental Action spun off the Highway Action Coalition (HAC) to stop freeway construction, combat suburban sprawl, and promote rail mass transit. HAC put out its own newsletter, The Concrete Opposition, and initiated litigation using federal environmental requirements “as its chief weapon” in the courts. “Bulldozer Blocking,” a regular column in The Concrete Opposition, kept readers informed about the latest developments in the national freeway revolt. Helen Leavitt, author of a popular antifreeway book, Superhighway-Superhoax (1970), followed up the book’s success by publishing a monthly newsletter, Rational Transportation, that attacked highway building and advocated mass transit. By 1970, Baltimore groups such as RAM and MAD had become part of a nationwide network of freeway fighters that shared information and legal strategies.41

[Image and caption source: They Moved Mountains (And People) To Build L.A.’s Freeways Concrete pylons replaces houses and other structures in L.A.'s University Park neighborhood in 1961. The view looks east toward downtown L.A. [USC Libraries - Los Angeles Examiner Collection]

Here is a West Coast example written up by Eric Jaffe @e_jaffe at City Lab, via  L.A. as Subject (@LAasSubject): The Forgotten History of L.A.'s Failed Freeway Revolt: http://t.co/zkLssoAIBk

But the history of urban highway revolt is far more checkered than this highlight reel suggests. As UCLA historian Eric Avila reminds us, in a recent issue of the Journal of Urban History, plenty of anti-freeway crusades have failed over the years, leaving residents to live in the shadows of the roads they never wanted. Such stories are often "invisible" to us, he writes, because the people living in these areas too often lack a political or mainstream cultural voice:

Beverly Hills defeated a highway project in 1975 that would have run through its center. With no such resources, the heavily Hispanic area of Boyle Heights watched six freeways slice through the neighborhood over the years, including two massive interchanges less than two miles apart.

And for what is now planning’s conventional wisdom....

[Urban Freeways: Devastation and Opportunity, Congress for the New Urbanism. May 30, 2012] 

This session will explore the history of urban freeways such as Miami's Overtown Expressway, New Orleans' Claiborne Expressway, and Boston's Big Dig. Panelists will discuss how urban freeways destroyed traditional, often poor, neighborhoods, and what is being done today to repair the urban fabric and make cities whole again. John DeStefano, Jr., Mayor of New Haven, City of New Haven Anthony Garcia, Principal, The Street Plans Collaborative John O. Norquist, President and CEO, Congress for the New Urbanism Alison Richardson

[neonbender]

Some highlights from the @laassubject #archivesbazaar today!

[carlsbailbonds-blog]

Tweeted

Look for our Resource Centers (Asian Pac, Black, Chicano, Native Am) at this Sat's #Archives Bazaar! @LAasSubject https://t.co/ss9Hu3wxHf http://pic.twitter.com/M26hs3boPW

— LA County Library (@LACountyLibrary) October 17, 2017

[circuitmouse]

#LAasSubject #LosAngeles #LosAngelesArchivesBazaar #USC #archivesbazaar (at Doheny Library)

[santamonicalibr]

Happening now at the lovely USC Doheny Library, the LA as Subject 11th Annual Archives Bazaar http://laassubject.org/archives-bazaar. If you are in the neighborhood, stop by to see us and check out all of the fab displays.

[riversidearchives]

Chinese Heritage Mission

Hey Angelinos!  What can you tell us about Marchessault Street?  We can tell you about Gee Len, who lived at 321 Marchessault Street in 1895.  Come discover Gee Len’s story and that of so many other Chinese immigrants who passed through southern California.  

Our first group of records from the Los Angeles District Office is now available through the National Archives Catalog, and we couldn’t wait until they were all done to share! 

[riversidearchives]

Chinese Heritage Mission

We couldn’t leave you hanging...we’ve been working so hard to digitize our Chinese Exclusion Act Case Files that we just couldn’t bear the thought of waiting until things “returned to normal” to share these exceptional records with you. 

So for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, we are sharing the first group of records created by the Los Angeles District Office of INS.  These records document Chinese immigrants in communities throughout Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara, Riverside, San Bernardino and Orange Counties and even some in Kern and San Luis Obispo counties. This is just the first part, so keep an eye out for more of this series!  

[carlsbailbonds-blog]

Tweeted

Discover Southern California's history this Saturday at our 12th-annual Archives Bazaar. 9-5 at @USCLibraries. https://t.co/qQF5JMrmpq http://pic.twitter.com/KExwlTLMGw

— L.A. as Subject (@LAasSubject) October 16, 2017

[carlsbailbonds-blog]

Tweeted

Look for our Resource Centers at this Saturday's Archives Bazaar! #history #archives #losangeles @LAasSubject https://t.co/ss9Hu3eWiF http://pic.twitter.com/m8IwjKzdKY

— LA County Library (@LACountyLibrary) October 16, 2017

[carlsbailbonds-blog]

Tweeted

Spend a day at the @LAasSubject Archives Bazaar! Check out our #vintage material from the 60's to the 80's. @USCLibraries @laacollective http://pic.twitter.com/nrlRCIQcjC

— ADSAUSAGE (@adsausage) October 11, 2017

[carlsbailbonds-blog]

Tweeted

Who called California home before America's borders reached the Pacific? Find out in tonight's Season 2 premiere of #LostLA. 8:30 on @KCET. http://pic.twitter.com/fQeMyRcZzm

— L.A. as Subject (@LAasSubject) October 10, 2017

[santamonicalibr]

Here’s the scene from/of our booth at the 10th Annual Los Angeles Archives Bazaar happening today until 5pm at USC’s Doheny Library, bit.ly/1MwciFB , a wonderful event for history buffs, archivists, librarians, and historians. Isn’t that just about everyone? And we are very fortunate to be participating once again.