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Title
Casa de Adobe courtyard and Southwest Museum
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.
Charles F. Lummis founded the Southwest Museum in 1907. The collections were housed in two temporary spaces until 1914 when the architectural firm of Hunt and Burns completed the Spanish Colonial Revival style Southwest Museum building located at 234 Museum Drive in Highland Park. In 1920, the same firm designed a Mayan Revival style entry tunnel from Museum Drive. The museum was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. In 2003 the Autry Museum of Western Heritage merged with the Southwest Museum creating the Autry National Center. The landmark closed in 2006 for rehabilitation and reopened in 2012. The Casa de Adobe, located below the Southwest Museum at 4605 N. Figueroa Street, was completed in 1918 by the Hispanic Society of California and donated to the museum in 1925. Modeled after the San Diego County landmark, Rancho Guajome, a pre-1850s Spanish California rancho, the Casa was designed by the office of architect Theodore Eisen. Constructed in the traditional manner by local adobe craftsmen, the rooms were decorated with antique furniture and the courtyard was planted with jasmine, oleander, fig trees, and grapevines. Casa de Adobe is now California Historical Monument #493 and is operated by the Autry National Center.
The Southwest Museum looms on the hill over the interesting gardens and fountains of the Casa de Adobe.
Type
image
Format
1 photographic print :b&w ;15 x 11 cm.
Photographic prints
Identifier
00098269
Herman J Schultheis Collection; Los Angeles Photographers Collection;
N-007-709 8x10
CARL0005082768
http://173.196.26.125/cdm/ref/collection/photos/id/37911
Subject
Casa de Adobe (Los Angeles, Calif.)
Southwest Museum of the American Indian
Adobe houses--California--Los Angeles
Museums--California--Los Angeles
Architecture--California--Los Angeles--Spanish influences
Fountains--California--Los Angeles
Courtyards--California--Los Angeles
Gardens--California--Los Angeles
Roofs--California--Los Angeles
Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments
California Historical Landmarks
Highland Park (Los Angeles, Calif.)
Mt. Washington (Los Angeles, Calif.)
Schultheis Collection photographs
Eisen, Theodore
Hunt & Burns

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