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Image / View of the entrance to Zoopark

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Title
View of the entrance to Zoopark
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 1937
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.
Opened to the public on June 20, 1915, the Selig Zoo, located at 3800 N. Mission Road, also served as a film production studio for the Selig Polyscope Company, and briefly the Louis B. Mayer Pictures Corporation. Dramatic entrance gates featuring statues of elephants and lions were designed by Italian sculptor Carlo Romanelli, with interior structures by Arthur Burnett Benton. Selig Polyscope became insolvent in 1918, and over the years the zoo changed names and ownership. It was known as the Selig Zoo (1915-1925), Luna Park Zoo (1925-1931), L.A. Wild Animal Farms (1931-1932), the California Zoological Gardens (1932-1936), and Zoopark (1936-1940). The zoo officially closed in 1940 and many of the animals were relocated to the Los Angeles Zoo in Griffith Park. The Mission Road grounds would subsequently serve as the Lincoln Speedway and the Lincoln Amusement Park, before being redeveloped in the 1950s. The entrance gates would remain standing into the 1960s, before being dismantled and moved to an Inland Empire junkyard. The statues were rediscovered in 2000 and donated to the Los Angeles Zoo, where some of them are now on display.
This view of the elaborate entrance to Zoopark captures Mission street, driveways, two arched buildings with attached colonnades flanking the central sign and sculptures, as well as a crowd of people milling around an elephant on the ground.
Type
image
Format
1 photographic print :b&w ;11 x 15 cm.
Photographic prints
Identifier
00098500
Herman J Schultheis Collection; Los Angeles Photographers Collection;
N-007-940 8x10
CARL0005088613
http://173.196.26.125/cdm/ref/collection/photos/id/38498
Subject
Zoopark (Los Angeles Calif.)
Zoos--California--Lincoln Heights (Los Angeles)
Elephants--California--Los Angeles
Gates--California--Los Angeles
Animals--Statues--California--Los Angeles
Elephants--Statues--California--Los Angeles
Bas-relief--California--Los Angeles
Palms--California--Los Angeles
Architecture--California--Lincoln Heights (Los Angeles)--Spanish influences
Lost architecture--California--Lincoln Heights (Los Angeles)
Streets--California--Lincoln Heights (Los Angeles)
Parks--California--Lincoln Heights (Los Angeles)
Lincoln Park (Los Angeles, Calif.)
Mission Road (Los Angeles, Calif.)
Lincoln Heights (Los Angeles, Calif.)
Panoramic views
Schultheis Collection photographs
Romanelli, Carlo
Time Period
1931-1940

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