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. Felipe de Neve laid out the Los Angeles Plaza as the geographical center of the pueblo, drew the four corners to the four cardinal points of the compass and laid the streets out perpendicular from the plaza. The Los Angeles Plaza Park, also known as the Father Sera Park, was designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #64 in 1970 and California Historic Landmark #156. The Pueblo was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Los Angeles Plaza Historic District #72000231 in 1972. A fiesta was held in El Pueblo on September 4 1937, celebrating the 156 anniversary of the City of Los Angeles. Several historical societies including: the Alta California Society, Los Fiesteros, Pioneer Society, History and Landmarks club, and the Native Daughters of the American West, joined forces to recreate the arrival of Felipe de Neve to found the pueblo of Los Angeles in 1781. The sen~ors and sen~oritas of the Alta California Society, composed of California's oldest families, acted as hosts, wearing "the gay costumes of the old days," in addition to the reenactors who dressed as the padres (monks), the pobladores (settlers), soldiers and Indians did that first day of the city. This portrait includes the actor portraying Felipe de Neve as well as another monk and Catholic Indian children carrying the cross they planted to found the city and an incense censer.
Type
image
Format
1 photographic print :b&w ;11 x 15 cm. Photographic prints
Neve, Felipe de,--1724-1784 Historical reenactments--California--Los Angeles Costumes Crosses--California--Los Angeles Censers Plazas--California--Los Angeles Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments Los Angeles (Calif.)--History Los Angeles Plaza (Los Angeles, Calif.) Downtown Los Angeles (Los Angeles, Calif.) El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument (Los Angeles, Calif.) Group portraits Portrait photographs Schultheis Collection photographs
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