The Los Angeles City Historical Society invites you to watch a previously recorded webinar Britton Gustafson, UCLA History PhD student, who will discuss how the Los Angeles Pneumonic Plague Epidemic of 1924 served as the final urban plague outbreak in the U.S., and how a robust public health intervention prevented the outbreak from engulfing the entire city.
by Geraldine Knatz, LACHS Board Member
In WWI soldiers were forbidden to carry personal information with them into battle, particularly photos or letters that might have addresses on them. But an enterprising Los Angeles business figured out a way to satisfy a soldier’s longing to be near to his loved ones and not get in trouble with the military –using specially designed buttons made by the Liberty Manufacturing Company of Los Angeles.
by Geraldine Knatz, LACHS Board Member
Long before the term “Bridge to Nowhere” became an object of national ridicule in the early twenty-first century’s fight over congressional earmarking for impractical and unnecessary infrastructure projects, Los Angeles’ own Vincent Thomas Bridge was at one time dubbed a “bridge to nowhere.”
by Geraldine Knatz, LACHS Board Member
Los Angeles was not much more than a pueblo when J. C. Dotter arrived in 1859 from Kansas, via Salt Lake City. He started a furniture business in the 1860’s just off the old plaza on Commercial Street. He and his early partners would supply furniture to the surrounding haciendas, their stock coming by ship to San Francisco and then by wagon down to Los Angeles.
by Geraldine Knatz, LACHS Board Member
In September, 1923, the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce declared that the City of Los Angeles had surpassed the 1 million mark in population. Having a million residents had actually been foretold before this auspicious announcement as evidenced by the 1920 Los Angeles brass watch fob commemorating Los Angeles’ stride toward a population of one million.
by Geraldine Knatz, LACHS Board Member
The Los Angeles City Historical Society held a lecture about the Italian immigrants to Los Angeles as part of the Marie Northrop Lecture series. Always on the lookout for Los Angeles historical memorabilia, I happened to find an advertising mirror that advertises the Tartaglia and Bros. Tailors with their motto, “Six Brothers, Six Reasons.”
by John E. Fisher, LACHS Board Member
Since the beginning of history, the human race has depended on animals — horses, mules, camels and oxen — for long distance transportation across land. Such was the case in Southern California. Los Angeles and other settlements along El Camino Real were accessible only by horseback and stagecoach. That would begin to change with the efforts of a person who would become known as the “King of Transportation,” Phineas T. Banning.
