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Image / L.A. River flooding, two collapsed bridges in North Hollywood

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Title
L.A. River flooding, two collapsed bridges in North Hollywood
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
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.
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.
Snapped wooden pylons don't quite reach the railroad tracks that hang free of any support structure in the Los Angeles River in North Hollywood after the flood. A pedestrian bridge stops midway across and trees and other debris including a brick wall clutter the riverbed.
Type
image
Format
1 photographic print :b&w ;11 x 15 cm.
Photographic prints
Identifier
00099548
Herman J Schultheis Collection; Los Angeles Photographers Collection;
N-008-742 8x10
CARL0005102228
http://173.196.26.125/cdm/ref/collection/photos/id/38954
Subject
Floods--California--Los Angeles
Flood damage--California--Los Angeles
Natural disasters--California--Los Angeles County
Railroad bridges--California--Los Angeles
Bridges--California--Los Angeles
Bridge failures--California--Los Angeles
Rivers--California, Southern
Los Angeles River (Calif.)
North Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.)
Schultheis Collection photographs

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