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The View From Above By Anne Pautler

IT ALL STARTED WITH A RESCUE MISSION AND A BEQUEST. In 1965, after four decades of supplying aerial photos to city planners, mapmakers, geologists and news services across the U.S., Fairchild Aerial Surveys was sold. Its new owners decided the vast collection of negatives in its L.A. office was too expensive to store and maintain, so they opted to dump all but the most recent images. A former employee, desperate to save the irreplaceable negatives, started frantically calling professors at local universities to find new homes for the tens of thousands of images. One who answered was in UCLA’s geography department, which was happy to find space for 43,000 of them.

Meanwhile, in 1971, photographer Robert Spence decided to retire and close down his Southern California aerial photo company, Spence Air Photos. He bequeathed his collection of more than 77,000 negatives — some dating back to 1918 — to UCLA. Today, the two collections of aerial photography are housed in the Benjamin and Gladys Thomas Air Photo Archives in Bunche Hall. Together, they provide an invaluable historical record of urban and environmental change in the 20th century, especially in California.

The photos are oblique — taken at an angle, instead of straight down — and provide a unique look at the buildings, roads, shorelines and hillsides that have shaped America. Historians, developers, environmentalists and other researchers have long used the air photo archives to document development, from records of individual properties to the channelization of the Los Angeles River. But beyond their utility, many of the images are just breathtakingly beautiful — moments in time captured from the clouds.

The magic of the photos is perhaps best summarized in a quote from Fairchild photographer Edith Keating in 1929. “You cannot know the real beauty of town or country until it is seen from the air,” Keating said. “When I fly over New York, I always see it as a dream city. I never remember it in terms of concrete and steel; to me, it appears as a city of dreams, beautiful beyond description in the sunlight, and seen through a haze, as if often the case, it becomes a mirage — gigantic, awe-inspiring and unreal.”

The same could be said about the collection itself, a crown jewel of photography at UCLA.

Los Angeles Courthouse, Union Station and the Terminal Annex

GOING DOWNTOWN

October 8, 1951

Imagine a conversation among these civic landmarks. Los Angeles City Hall, proudly front and center, proclaims its importance as the tallest building in the biggest city in California. The cop show Dragnet will debut two months after this photo is taken, filling TV screens each week with stentorian Sgt. Joe Friday’s badge, with its embossed image of the building. Echoing this theme of civic order and justice is the Spring Street Courthouse, just to the north of City Hall, its severe lines projecting strength and permanence. Near top left, the Terminal Annex murmurs endlessly of ingoing and outgoing mail, keeping the city connected to the nation and the world. To the right of the Terminal Annex, Union Station rumbles with its own stories of connection, trains and travel. All four buildings have survived, but in a more vertical downtown, they no longer dominate their surroundings.

Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum

ALL HAIL THE OLYMPIC GAMES

August 7, 1932

Smooth lawns and orderly ranks of trees surround the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The Olympic torch burns over the peristyle entrance on the final day of track and field events. Tickets for the morning session are 50 cents or $1; the afternoon session is $2. Well-heeled fans flaunt a $22 Olympic Stadium Pass in a custom leather case. The spectators crowded into the stands cheer the U.S. men’s relay teams as they set world records in winning the 4x100 and 4x400. Fans see Babe Didrikson compete in the high jump, finishing second on a technicality when officials rule she jumped headfirst. Only six women’s events are held in these games; Didrikson competes and medals in three of them, winning gold in 80-meter hurdles and the high jump. The official report on the 1932 Olympics salutes “the mass spirit of the spectators” and “a spiritual something that permeated the atmosphere.”

Westwood Village

THE BIRTH OF WESTWOOD VILLAGE

December 8, 1933

“Mud, dust and confusion” is how Provost Ernest C. Moore characterized the UCLA campus in 1929. Four years later, the lawns are velvety, the buildings complete. But the 5,930 enrolled students face a dusty trudge past empty lots in Westwood Village. At the corner of Westwood and Weyburn, the clock tower of the Holmby Hall building marks time. To the west is the distinctive Fox Theatre tower. At the V-shaped intersection of Westwood and Broxton is the Janss dome, which served as headquarters for the developers, whose visible legacy is the village’s Mediterranean style. Just north, on Westwood Boulevard, is the Kelly Music Building (most recently Tanino Ristorante); its African American architect, Paul Revere Williams, could not legally own or rent office space in the village because of the Janss brothers’ restrictive racial covenants. For decades, that invisible Janss legacy will make the village unwelcoming to students of color.

Oceanpark Shoreline, Venice, CA

BY THE BEAUTIFUL SEA

1922

Hot sand underfoot, cool surf foaming in the shallows … in 1922, beachgoers hopped on the Pacific Electric streetcars for the ride to Santa Monica and Venice, where amusement piers flavored the ocean breezes with snippets of dance music and the mechanical racket of carnival rides. In the foreground here is Pickering Pier, where a menagerie of handcarved animals circled on a Dentzel carousel; the Blarney Racer, despite its peppy name, was thought a rather pokey roller coaster. Immediately behind Pickering, Lick Pier shows off the taller — and scarier — Zip Roller Coaster. These summertime pleasures were fleeting: In January 1924, both piers would burn to the waterline. Ocean Park Pier — and later, Pacific Ocean Park — would rise from the ashes, but each would also perish in turn. Today, only Santa Monica Pier, north of the piers in this photo, survives.

Hollywood Bowl with the Goodyear Blimp

A BLIMP’S-EYE VIEW OF THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL

September 24, 1932

Many Hollywood Bowl memories are entwined with starry nights and fireworks, but the amphitheater is a daytime venue as well. Here, the Goodyear Blimp hovers above the oval, packed with an audience listening to a speech. The canyon setting is still fairly rustic; in 1940, the Hollywood Freeway will rudely intrude. Today, the Bowl celebrates myriad events: Easter sunrise services and commencements, politicians and comedians. But more than anything else, the Bowl celebrates music: Operas and musicals, symphonies and Playboy jazz, folk singers and film scores, Luciano Pavarotti and the Beatles … the music floats into the summer skies while patrons sip wine, nibble from picnic baskets, and surrender to the charms of the setting, the sounds and the breezes.

Lower Manhattan and Battery Park, Manhattan, NY

WE’LL TAKE MANHATTAN

January 16, 1937

At the southernmost tip of Manhattan Island, the waters of the Hudson and East rivers mingle with those of New York Harbor. Piers and ferry terminals edge the busy waterways; onshore is Battery Park, an oasis of pedestrian pathways, lawns and trees, named for the line of cannons that once protected the harbor. The circular building cut off by the left edge of the photo is Castle Clinton, once a fort. In 1937 it houses the New York City Aquarium. Manhattan’s financial district, already crowded with skyscrapers, towers over the park. When this photo was taken, the New York City skyline was the tallest in the world. The Empire State Building is lost in the mist to the north, but just right of center is the pinnacle of the Bank of Manhattan Trust Building, which telegraphs a distinctly muscular, American brand of financial acuity to the world.

THE ARCHIVE

Aerial images

The archive offers a limited selection of photos, primarily of Los Angeles and New York, that can be ordered as framed or unframed prints or as sticker paper. Proceeds go to digitization and preservation of the collections.

Credits:

Images courtesy of Airphotos.org.