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 in 1929 by Allison & Allison, the Southern California Edison Company building was erected on the northwest corner of Fifth Street and Grand Avenue by the P. J. Walker Company. Occupying a site of 175 x 175 feet, and at a height of 222 feet, the fourteen-story building was about one-half the height of the Los Angeles City Hall. It is estimated that about 400,000 inches of bead were required to hold in place the 3500 tons of structural steel, fabricated by Consolidated Steel Corporation, and that every column and girder in the steel frame was braced and cross-braced with steel webs and plates, riveted and welded in such a way that the finished building would have a resistance to external forces not approached by any other type of construction. The frame was designed so that the building would be capable of withstanding a general conflagration, a major hurricane or an earthquake of large intensity. The steel-framed building follows a classically inspired Art Deco design, with the lower three stories made of solid limestone, and the upper stories and central tower faced with buff-colored terra cotta. On the facade, the spandrels contain a cubic Art Deco pattern, which is repeated in the central tower, lobby floor and elevator ceilings. The cost of the building, together with the value of the site, was estimated at approximately $3,575,000. It opened on March 20, 1931 as the Southern California Edison Company corporate headquarters. It is now known as One Bunker Hill. Exterior of the Edison Building, as seen from the park at Central Library, across 5th St.
One Bunker Hill Building (Los Angeles, Calif.) Office buildings--California--Los Angeles Art deco (Architecture)--California--Los Angeles Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments Lawns--California--Los Angeles Fifth Street (Los Angeles, Calif.) Bunker Hill (Los Angeles, Calif.) Downtown Los Angeles (Los Angeles, Calif.) Schultheis Collection photographs Allison & Allison
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