LOS ANGELES, Feb. 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Vulcan Materials Company, West Region, a company whose predecessor companies have operated in the Los Angeles area since the turn of the 20th century, this week donated its archive to the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, CA. Valued at over $34,000, photographs depicting the company's role in infrastructure development and the construction of area landmarks including Los Angeles' City Hall, Union Station, Hollywood Bowl, Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and Pasadena's iconic Colorado Street Bridge are the focal point.
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Daniel Lewis, the Huntington's Chief Curator of Manuscripts, explains that the archive "is a great fit with our other history of civil engineering collections." Images of the construction of California's first freeway, the Arroyo Seco Parkway, are among those that depict infrastructure development in the region. "Roads have been so important to Southern California for so long, so anything related to paving work really typifies the processes that have helped to grow Southern California," explains Lewis.
Beginning in the early 1920s, and for several decades thereafter, the company regularly retained professional photographers to document conditions at its plants, quarries, and projects, as well as many special events. Well-known Los Angeles photographers Dick Whittington, who photographed almost every major business and organization in Los Angeles between the 1920s and the mid-1980s; and Otto Rothschild, who served as the official performing arts photographer for the Los Angeles Music Center, Hollywood Bowl, and L.A. Philharmonic are among those who worked for the company. "The archive is extremely important as a resource for the development of Southern California," notes Jeff Weber, the owner of Weber Rare Books, and the appraiser of Vulcan's collection.
Jock Scott, former vice president of engineering, began collecting material for the Archive in 1979. "I was always interested in old machines, buildings and bridges, which is typical of a lot of engineers," he says. "When I joined the company, there were a lot of senior employees and retirees whose careers spanned many decades, and who had a huge array of first-hand knowledge of the company from the 1930s to the 1970s.