On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Good Morning All,
This weekday feature is for Juicers who are are on the road, traveling, or just want to share a little bit of their world via stories and pictures. So many of us rise each morning, eager for something beautiful, inspiring, amazing, subtle, of note, and our community delivers – a view into their world, whether they’re far away or close to home – pictures with a story, with context, with meaning, sometimes just beauty. By concentrating travel updates and tips here, it’s easier for all of us to keep up or find them later.
So please, speak up and share some of your adventures and travel news here, and submit your pictures using our speedy, secure form. You can submit up to 7 pictures at a time, with an overall description and one for each picture.
You can, of course, send an email with pictures if the form gives you trouble, or if you are trying to submit something special, like a zipped archive or a movie. If your pictures are already hosted online, then please email the links with your descriptions.
For each picture, it’s best to provide your commenter screenname, description, where it was taken, and date. It’s tough to keep everyone’s email address and screenname straight, so don’t assume that I remember it “from last time”. More and more, the first photo before the fold will be from a commenter, so making it easy to locate the screenname when I’ve found a compelling photo is crucial.
Have a wonderful day, and enjoy the pictures!
Today, pictures from valued commenter ?BillinGlendaleCA.
Los Angeles Central Library
(I take requests, sort of, within reason)Commenter Mnemosyne said this in a thread on Monday:
“G and I were down at the Los Angeles Central Library this weekend and they have a set of cool art murals installed that are designed to comment on the “history of California” murals that were painted in the early 1930s. My pictures didn’t turn out, so Bill should go down and take some for us!”
It turns out that I’ve already gone down there and taken some pictures .
The LA Public Library dates back to 1944 when Los Angeles was a small town with a population of under 1,500. The library had a number of temporary locations, a saloon, a room in the old brick City Hall on Broadway and in a department store(the Broadway, IIRC). In the early 1920’s there was a push to build a permanent home for the library and they finally, after a number of failed tries, got voters to approve a bond to build it. The city was able to purchase the land to build the library from the state for $1, using the site of the old Normal School which had moved to Hollywood and had already become the Southern Branch of the University of California(latter UCLA). The city hired Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue to design the library(he had already designed the Nebraska State Capitol). He designed an Egyptian styled building(this was a thing in Southern California in the early 20’s) with a square central rotunda topped by a pyramid. Within this rotunda are the murals that Mnenosyne referred to depicting the History of California painted by Dean Cornwell in the late 20’s and early 30’s. The Central Library building was completed in 1926, though without Goodhue who died in 1924. By the early 60’s the library was running out of space and there were proposals to tear the building down and build a bigger library, but fortunately voters never approved funding. Moving forward to the early 80’s, a new idea for funding the renovation and expansion of the library was devised; sell the “air rights” or the right to build a tall building(the US Bank tower) next to the library. The need for renovation was hastened by two fires in the library on April 29, 1986 and September 3, 1986 with the first destroying 20% of the library’s collection and damaging(water damage) a good portion of the remainder. The library reopened in 1993 with the Goodhue building being restored to it’s former glory and the 8 story Tom Bradley wing* on the east side and a restored garden(it was a parking lot before the fire) on the west.
*Fun Fact: the elevators in the Bradley wing use old cards from the library’s card catalog as a wall covering.
Goodhue building from the west.
Taken on 2016-07-18
Los Angeles, CA
The Goodhue building has a square rotunda with a tiled pyramid on the top. The tile on the pyramid was reflecting quite a bit of light, so I’ve darkened it a bit.
Night shot of the Goodhue building
Taken on 2016-12-29
Los Angeles, CA
This shot is closer to the entrance so you can see the pyramid portion just peeking up over the roof.
Top of the rotunda.
Taken on 2016-07-18
Los Angeles, CA
They have a lighting fixture at the top of the rotunda shaped like a globe with the Cornwell painting on each of the four arches with windows in them. The rotunda is named after Lod Cook, the former chairman of ARCO(they raised quite a lot of money for the restoration, being that their headquarters was across the street).
Founding
Taken on 2016-07-18
Los Angeles, CA
This mural is on the west panel.
Mission
Taken on 2016-07-18
Los Angeles, CA
This mural is on the east panel.
Americanization
Taken on 2016-07-18
Los Angeles, CA
This mural is on the south panel.
Thank you so much ?BillinGlendaleCA, do send us more when you can.
Travel safely everybody, and do share some stories in the comments, even if you’re joining the conversation late. Many folks confide that they go back and read old threads, one reason these are available on the Quick Links menu.
One again, to submit pictures: Use the Form or Send an Email
truth squad
that group in cole’s story are fucking filth and deserve to die asap
Baud
Ooh, another round of Mnemosyne vs Billin, SoCal Celebrity Photographer Death Match! Awesome.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Well…I’d already taken the pictures.
ETA: I was actually going to go with pictures of the Chinese Garden at the Huntington.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Oops. I read too quickly and thought these were Mnemosyne‘s shots. She needs to step up her game.
eclare
Wow, some library!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: No, she had the ones from Bruin Woods on the shore of Lake Arrowhead.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@eclare: It’s really amazing, and to think they thought of tearing it down.
(Then again, it was LA in the 50’s and they tore a bunch of stuff down and put in parking lots.)
Quinerly
Great pics!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Quinerly: Thanks, folk have been asking where you’ve been.
raven
@Quinerly: People been freaking out about your absence!
OzarkHillbilly
Love that night shot.
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Sacrilege!
Baud
@Quinerly: Welcome back. People here don’t let you take holiday.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: As I mentioned, they tore a whole bunch of stuff down in the 50’s: the first high school building that was about 100 years old, a bunch of nearly 100 y/o buildings down by the plaza and near City Hall, some “newer” buildings from the early 20th century as well. The school building(it had been moved once) was torn down for the Hollywood Freeway and the rest became parking lots. It’s really sad to look back at the heritage that we lost in the 20 years after WW2.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly:
I took that one night that I took the train downtown to get some ‘golden hour” shots and then walked up from the financial district to Union Station getting shots along the way. I got a whole lota great shots that evening.
Quinerly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: @Baud: @raven: Thanks for the kind words. Since the site changes a few weeks ago, the threads don’t load fully on my Microsoft Windows phone….plus, the comments don’t load at all. Have no idea why but it’s the only site that does it now. Been busy and too lazy to pull out the laptop or Kindle. I’m in NC at the beach for a few days then an an hour in land to continue packing up, cleaning up the house I grew up in. Two year anniversary of my mom’s death is the 17th. Yesterday was the two year anniversary of her car accident. This will be a rough week. In better news, yesterday was another two poop on the beach morning for Baud’s running mate. Poco’s body gal only had one bag. We buried the evidence. Beach was empty. Let’s not let this info get out. OK?
Baud
@Quinerly:
If I wanted scandal, I’d name Weinstein as my Veep.
rikyrah
The pictures are beautiful, Bill.?
Thanks.
PS-I hope that you are safe from the fires.
Quinerly
@Baud:
Since obviously you won’t speak out about Weinstein, Poco is ready to make a full throated statement. He wants to make it clear that his documented history of goosing the ladies has been totally innocent. It’s a cultural thing.
Baud
@Quinerly: When you’re a dog, they let you do it.
Quinerly
@Baud:
Don’t you dare tell Poco he is a dog. He thinks he’s your running mate. He wants to know if you jog……☺
Mary G
So Cal developers tore down a lot of great old buildings with the excuse that they weren’t earthquake safe. Cheaper to build new than to retrofit, so I am glad the library survived. It is a beautiful building inside and out.
rikyrah
@Quinerly:
Good Morning!!!
Say hi to Poco, Ivan and John Lennon :)
Steeplejack (phone)
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
L.A. population 1,500 in 1944? That doesn’t sound right. Maybe 1844?
. . . Hmm, Wikipedia says the library was founded in 1872.
NotMax
Alain, site has reverted from having a thin solid line separating comments back to the roll of toilet paper look with dashed lines. Deliberate change or unintended?
Laura
@Quinerly: Hey stranger, we’re you been? Still got that doggie?
Miss Bianca
Yay, libraries! The greatest American public institution. Great photos, Bill, thanks for sharing!
Major Major Major Major
Ah yes, one of the beacons of occult power that helps protect Los Angeles from those who would do it harm.
bob7094
Is that the rotunda where Penelope Akk stole the Orb?
Mnemosyne
Even fun-er detail that G pointed out to me when we rode in the elevator — there’s a little “window” in the side of the elevator that looks into the elevator shaft, which is also covered in catalog cards, and those cards correspond to what’s on the floor you’re going to. So the floor with Philosophy will have philosophy catalog cards showing, etc. It’s pretty cool.
Oh, and they’ve finished remodeling their gift shop. I spent way too much there.
Mnemosyne
For those who missed the original discussion, the reason the library and its California history murals came up is that there are some dissenting murals installed right now as part of the Pacific Standard Time art exhibit.
Pacific Standard Time is a thing sponsored by the Getty where local museums get together and all do exhibitions based around a particular theme. This year, the specific theme is Mexico and migration, so this exhibition is part of that, and there are different exhibitions all around town on the same theme, with LACMA’s being probably the largest one.
(If I weren’t on the iPad, I could have more links, but the damn thing reloads the page and erases what I wrote if I try to get a link to another page.)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Quinerly: It was nice to see you here, thought it might be that you were traveling and the an issue with the smarty pants phone. I do manage to use one bag with the girls for more than one poop, sometimes as many as 4!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@rikyrah: Thanks; the fires are about 35 miles southeast of us, just a bit of smoke and ashfall.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mary G:
They probably had a point about that, another reason is that some areas(Bunker Hill) were just a slum and the city wanted to redevelop it. There are some really sad stories(the castle, the saltbox, and the rockchester) that they tried to save and it ended badly.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack (phone): The 1944 is a typo, it should be 1844, the date is from an article in the LA Times.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Miss Bianca: You’re welcome.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: No, the Lindbergh beacon is on City Hall.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@bob7094: Don’t know, but we do know it ended up in KSA.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: I did notice the little window, the card catalog thing is really a nice touch. You should visit some of the other rooms, there’s more Cornwell murals!