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Title
Auto Club building, Figueroa
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 1938
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 Automobile Club of Southern California, one of the nation's first motor clubs dedicated to improving roads, proposing traffic laws, and improvement of overall driving conditions, was founded on December 13, 1900 in Los Angeles. The Auto Club was responsible for producing state road maps, as well as posting thousands of porcelain-to-steel traffic signs throughout the state to create a uniform signing system - which it continued to do until the task was taken over by the State of California in the mid-1950s. The building located at 2601 South Figueroa Street originally served as the Auto Club's main office. It was built between 1922-1923 by architects, Sumner P. Hunt, Silas R. Burns, and Roland E. Coate in the Spanish Colonial Revival style. Today, this beautiful building serves as the Los Angeles district office, but the administrative offices have moved.
This view down long lawns captures the Auto Club building on the left as well as cars parked along Figueroa.
Type
Image
Format
1 photographic print :b&w ;15 x 11 cm.
Photographic prints
Identifier
00098996
Herman J Schultheis Collection; Los Angeles Photographers Collection;
N-008-367 8x10
CARL0005092986
http://173.196.26.125/cdm/ref/collection/photos/id/38424
Subject
Automobile Club of Southern California--Headquarters
Automobiles--California, Southern--Societies, etc
Architecture--California--University Park (Los Angeles)--Spanish influences
Lawns--California--Los Angeles
Streets--California--University Park (Los Angeles)
Figueroa Street (Los Angeles, Calif.)
University Park (Los Angeles, Calif.)
Schultheis Collection photographs
Hunt, Sumner P
Burns, Silas Reese
Coate, Roland E

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