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. Designed by architects Mead & Requa and built in 1913, the Krotona Inn served as a lecture hall and housing for students of Theosophy. The Krotona Colony existed at this location from 1912 to 1926, when it relocated to Ojai. Exterior view of a Spanish style apartment complex, formerly the Krotona Inn, located at 2130 Vista del Mar Avenue in the Hollywood Hills; this view shows the complex as it appears from Primrose Avenue. The domed edicule, as seen in the center of the image, housed the former Esoteric Room. This room, inspired by Moorish architecture, is accessed through the roof from the south and through a door on the western side. Inside the dome was an altar in the form of a locked cabinet, where important spiritual documents and items were stored.
Type
image
Format
1 photographic print :b&w ;11 x 15 cm. Photographic prints
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