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One of the most breathtaking stops on our daily Docent-led Art and Architecture Tours is the majestic Grand Rotunda, encircled by the pastel-toned murals by Dean Cornwell. Eighty years after their unveiling, the 12 panels of scenes from California history still feel modern.
While new technology points toward every reference resource being digitized and on your hand-held something there are library beauties that can only be savored in person, in your actual hand kind of experiences.
I first learned of the Doheny Greystone tragedy while curating an exhibition of manipulated photographs taken from the library’s Herald Examiner photographs.
In the early 1960s, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy symbolized hope, change, and the dawn of a new era for a country that was caught in the clutches of Cold War fear, and in many cases, clinging to certain outdated social attitudes.
Many visitors to Central Library are curious to know what the oldest book in our collection might be. In recent months we have been fortunate enough to find out a great deal of new information about a very special item in our Rare Books collection.
Los Angeles in the late 1930s was a city in transition. It was suffering through the Great Depression with the rest of the country, but forging ahead with progress. Old Chinatown and La Grande Station were being erased, but Union Station and a New Chinatown would soon emerge.





