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Image / Digging a trench for the Los Angeles River

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Title
Digging a trench for the Los Angeles River
Alternative Title
Los Angeles Photographers Photo Collection;
Creator
Schultheis, Herman
Contributor
Made accessible through a grant from the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation
Date Created and/or Issued
Circa 1937
Contributing Institution
Los Angeles Public Library
Collection
Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection
Rights Information
Images available for reproduction and use. Please see the Ordering & Use page at http://tessa.lapl.org/OrderingUse.html for additional information.
Description
Title supplied by cataloger.; Herman J. Schultheis was born in Aachen, Germany in 1900, and immigrated to the United States in the mid-1920s after obtaining a Ph.D. in mechanical and electrical engineering. He married Ethel Wisloh in 1936, and the pair moved to Los Angeles the following year. He worked in the film industry from the late 1930s to the mid-1940s, most notably on the animated features Fantasia and Pinocchio. His detailed notebook, documenting the special effects for Fantasia, is the subject of a 14-minute short-subject included on the film's DVD. In 1949, he started employment with Librascope as a patent engineer. Schultheis was an avid amateur photographer who traveled the world with his cameras. It was on one of these photographic exhibitions in 1955 that he disappeared in the jungles of Guatemala. His remains were discovered 18 months later. The digitized portion of this collection represents the images Schultheis took of Los Angeles and its surrounding communities after he relocated to the area in 1937.
The 56-ft. wide, 1,370-ft. concrete arch Glendale-Hyperion Bridge was designed by Merrill Butler and completed in 1929; it was originally named the Victory Memorial Bridge, in honor of the men who had served in World War I. It crosses over the Los Angeles River, Riverside Drive, between Ettrick Street and Glenfeliz Boulevard, and since the 1950s, the Golden State Freeway. It is Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #164.; Originally an alluvial river that ran freely across a flood plain, the Los Angeles River's 51-mile path was unstable and unpredictable with the mouth of the river moving frequently from one place to the other. In March of 1938 there was a great storm that flooded one third of the city of Los Angeles killing 115 people. Later that year, due to public outcry, the Army Corps of Engineers began the 20 year project to create the permanent concrete channel which still contains most of the of riverbed today.
A line of men stand by watching as a power shovel and crane marked "V. R. Dennis" dig a out water filled trench in the natural bottom of the Los Angeles River. The Glendale/Hyperion Bridge can be seen in the background.
Type
image
Format
1 photographic print :b&w ;11 x 15 cm.
Photographic prints
Identifier
00097836
Herman J Schultheis Collection; Los Angeles Photographers Collection;
N-007-327 8x10
CARL0005075222
http://173.196.26.125/cdm/ref/collection/photos/id/37193
Subject
Channels (Hydraulic engineering)--California--Los Angeles
Canal construction workers--California--Los Angeles
Earthmoving machinery--California--Los Angeles
Power shovels--California--Los Angeles
Cranes, derricks, etc.--California--Los Angeles
Trenches--California--Los Angeles
Rivers--California--Los Angeles
Bridges--California--Los Angeles
Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments
Los Angeles River (Calif.)
Glendale-Hyperion Bridge (Los Angeles, Calif.)
Los Feliz (Los Angeles, Calif.)
Schultheis Collection photographs
Butler, Merrill

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