Los Angeles was, in 1879, a city of about 11,000 people. The roads were dirt, the buildings were wood. But there were oranges there, and later on they found a way to harvest and market people’s fantasies, and the city grew from this:

to this.

This is the story told in Historic Photos of Los Angeles, a book of neat pictures by Dana Lombardy. It’s a compilation of archival photos: page after page of buildings, vintage cars, movie stars, pricey bars and salty tars, presented with helpful captions explaining their historical context. 

It made me realize how history-starved I am. My complaint about this town has long been that there is no history here; I’ve been to London and every third pub has a plaque over a corner chair reminding you that Dickens used to drink right here or Henry V killed a couple of his wives here after hours. In Los Angeles that pub would have been torn down a dozen times by now and replaced with newer, flimiser pubs. Here in this book is the evidence, the buildings that are long gone; the ones that inexplicably survive surrounded by entirely new buildings.

Lombardy has an eye for good pictures too. It’s all monochrome fare from 1870-1967 (the last shot is of the first Super Bowl at the LA Coliseum) and mostly gorgeous, though one cannot guarantee quality when all the shots come from different photographers, let alone different camera technologies. And as a history of Los Angeles it’s imperfect; the captions are written around the pictures, so whatever history you get is designed to explain the image. If there isn’t a picture of William Mulholland, you don’t learn anything about the guy who brought us all that water. And I don’t know if there is one because there isn’t an index. I didn’t find a picture anyway. I did, however, have a glass of water while looking for it.

Still, why quibble. Your home town could produce a book like this but I bet you wouldn’t find a shot of Lana Turner or Lizbeth Scott. Or a shot of Frank Sinatra getting fingerprinted when he applied for a gun license. 

You know what? Maybe we got history after all.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 6th, 2008 at 4:03 am and is filed under General, Publishing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.