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Articles by Nathan Masters
Unlocking the Hidden, Human History of Bunker Hill
An old key helps one family reconnect with their Bunker Hill roots as USC's Bunker Hill Refrain rebuilds a vanished L.A. neighborhood. A key can unlock more than just a door. Sometimes, it can unlock a long-forgotten family history.
The Justice Department Was Indeed Weaponized-a Century Ago Original
Last month, a House subcommittee chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) convened to investigate the alleged "weaponization of the federal government." Witnesses, including two former F.B.I. special agents, testified to their belief that the U.S. Department of Justice and its Federal Bureau of Investigation have been targeting political opponents of the Biden administration. No bombshells dropped, but Jordan promises more to come.
Review: 'Crooked,' by Nathan Masters
Despite our compulsion for appending "-gate" onto every governmental misstep, Watergate was not our first scandal and Richard Nixon was not the first politician to abuse his office. As Nathan Masters lays out in "Crooked," the origin of both American political scandal and the playbook still employed when investigating such crimes dates back more than a century, to Warren G. Harding's administration.
The Mysterious Death of a D.C. Power Broker
Most of Washington was still asleep on the morning of Memorial Day 1923 when a gunshot rang out from a sixth-floor apartment in the fashionable Wardman Park Inn. The first law enforcement officer on the scene was none other than William J. “Billy” Burns, director of the Bureau of Investigation. Burns, who happened to live one floor down, was the nation’s most famous detective, the twentieth century’s Allan Pinkerton, instantly recognizable in his derby hat and bristled mustache.
Nathan Masters, in conversation with David Kipen, discusses Crooked: The Roaring '20s Tale of a Corrupt Attorney General, a Crusading Senator, and the Birth of the American Political Scan | Vroman's Bookstore
Warning message Mean Menu style requires jQuery library version 1.7 or higher, but you have opted to provide your own library. Please ensure you have the proper version of jQuery included. (note: this is not an error) Many tales from the Jazz Age reek of crime and corruption. But perhaps the era's greatest political fiasco--one that resulted in a nationwide scandal, a public reckoning at the Department of Justice, the rise of J.
Negotiating L.A. 'Stack:' 22 Lanes, 8 Directions, 7 Bridges
Fifty-eight years ago today, the Four Level interchange first opened to traffic. This iconic concrete ribbon that binds the 101 and 110 freeways is an almost inescapable feature of many Southern Californians' commute. Admired by some and feared by others, the Four Level was-like many other highway innovations in Los Angeles-the first of its kind and destined to be copied elsewhere.
Crooked
The riveting, forgotten narrative of the most corrupt attorney general in American history and the maverick senator who stopped at nothing to take him down Many tales from the Jazz Age reek of crime and corruption. But perhaps the era’s greatest political fiasco—one that resulted in a nationwide scandal, a public reckoning at the Department of Justice, the rise of J. Edgar Hoover, and an Oscar-winning film—has long been lost to the annals of history.
Railroads Build - and Destroy: Competing Narratives of L.A. Union Station's Birth
Photographs reveal the celebrations surrounding the birth of L.A.'s Union Station, but also present the indiscernible loss of "Old Chinatown," a neighborhood lost to make way for the railroads. Time rolled on, and shutters clicked.
How a Japanese American-Owned Real Estate Firm Broke up Racist Covenants in Southern California
Back in the mid-1940s, a Mrs. Lopez called up Kashu Realty in L.A.’s Crenshaw district and asked to speak with real estate agent Kazuo K. Inouye.
From Rail to Roads and Back Again: The Rebirth of L.A.'s Public Transit
A 1925 map of the Los Angeles Pacific Electric Network. | Transit Maps Los Angeles is famous for its freeways and traffic jams, but the metropolis actually began as a railtown — and looks like it may become one again soon. This is the story of a railtown's rise, demise and rise again. In this episode of "Lost L.A.," "Who Killed the Red Car?," host Nathan Masters investigates what happened to one of the greatest rail transit systems in the nation. Watch this preview. Who Killed the Red Car?
The Man Who Almost Conquered L.A.'s Skies
Drawings from the 1910 booklet "The Latest Development in Aerial Navigation" of the Lowe Planet Airship — a perspective view of the power launch, passenger cabin and navigating room of planet airship (left) and passenger cabin interior (right). | California Historical Society Collection/ USC Digital Library The following post is republished in partnership with USC Libraries. As a young man, Thaddeus Sobieski Constantine Lowe had come close to conquering the earth's atmosphere.
How California Got Its First National Forest
A San Gabriel Timberland Reserve ranger mounted on a mule, circa 1900 — around the time ranger forces were deployed to enforce the new law of conservation put in place by President Harrison that preserved 555,520 acres of the San Gabriel Mountains from entry or settlement. | California Historical Society Collection / USC Digital Library The following post is republished in partnership with USC Libraries.
These Two Women Spent Decades Highlighting the African Heritage of L.A.
A composite photograph of Charlotta Bass, left, and Miriam Matthews, right. Both Bass and Matthews spent their lives shining a light on the L.A.'s early African heritage. On the 200th birthday of Los Angeles on September 4, 1981, Angelenos crowded in front of the steps of City Hall to witness a celebrity-filled bash. Mayor Tom Bradley cut the ornately-decorated birthday cake alongside actress Bernadette Peters.
L.A.'s 'Black Beverly Hills' Still Threatened by Racist Past
The 1920s subdivision of View Park earned its nickname the "Black Beverly Hills" by becoming one of the largest, wealthiest and most architecturally distinct Black neighborhoods in Los Angeles. In 2016, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places due to its ethnic heritage and architectural integrity. But it owes its significance to a complicated racial history.
The Convoluted Logic of L.A.'s Numbered Avenues
In Los Angeles, an 1867 map shows the streets and avenues that make up the city. | The Huntington Library, San Marino, California As Los Angeles expanded, a need to clear up confusion for citizens came when duplicate numbered streets and avenues appeared throughout the city. The following post is republished in partnership with USC Libraries. There's an obvious logic to Manhattan's numbered street grid.
The Lost Plan to Create a National Park in L.A.’s Backyard
The following post is republished in partnership with USC Libraries. Stephen Mather admired the view from the pine-scented summit of Mount Wilson on the evening of November 29, 1916. In the sky above, a billion stars twinkled. On the coastal plain below, Los Angeles was an apron of artificial light. It was a beautiful sight, he admitted. But Mather wasn't convinced that he was standing inside America's next national park.
They Built This City: How Labor Exploitation Built L.A.'s Attractions
Under the guidance of the California Commission of Immigration and Housing, rail labor camps implemented classes in service and construction industries. Photographed is a class in woodwork and carpentry in Macy Street School, Los Angeles. | California Commission of Immigration and Housing.
Edgar Lucien Larkin: The Wizard of Echo Mountain
Astronomer Edgar Lucien Larkin inside the Lowe Observatory on Echo Mountain. | California Historical Society Collection, 1860-1960 / USC Digital Library The following post is republished in partnership with USC Libraries. Up they came, night after night, whisked above the clouds by Professor Lowe's Great Incline railway, to glimpse the secrets of the cosmos. Two peaks over on Mount Wilson, Edwin Hubble might have been shifting paradigms with his discoveries.
How African American Debutantes Shaped a New Vision of Black Womanhood
Nat King Cole and former United States President John F Kennedy greeting an African-American debutante during a cotillion at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Beverly Hills, California, 1962. | Afro Newspaper/Gado/Getty Images The history of the young Black "deb" illuminates African American women's history and the complexity of racial representation. Theirs is a story of challenging institutionalized stereotypes that limit the role and potential of Black girls. On November 18, 1961, President John F.
What Cinco de Mayo Has to do with the French in Early L.A.
This story is published in collaboration with Picturing Mexican America. This Cinco de Mayo, let's celebrate France and Joseph "José" Mascarel, French immigrant to California and mayor of Los Angeles from 1865-66. France? Perhaps you know that Cinco de Mayo isn't Mexican Independence Day (that's September 16), but what's France got to do with it? Everything! José Mascarel's political career sheds light on 19th-century Franco-Mexican relations.
When the Los Angeles Angels Played Ball Inside an Amusement Park
A ballgame takes place in the top-left of this image, behind the amusement attractions at Chutes Park. | California Historical Society Collection/ USC Digital Library The following post is republished in partnership with USC Libraries. The crack of the bat. The roar of the crowd. The screams of men and women plunging down an 85-foot-tall water ride?
From Plaza Abaja to Pershing Square: L.A.'s Oldest Park Through the Decades
Downtown L.A.'s emergence as a residential neighborhood has focused attention on the area's dearth of green park space and, with it, the perceived shortcomings of the city's oldest park: Pershing Square. In its 163-year journey from open pasture to urban park, Pershing Square has weathered nagging complaints and survived multiple, radical renovations.
A Diner Shaped Like an Oil Can? It Happened in Montebello
Title The Oil Can restaurant in Montebello, 1928. Courtesy of the USC Libraries - Dick Whittington Photography Collection. There are greasy spoons, and then there was The Oil Can. Located on Whittier Boulevard in Montebello, this tiny diner mimicked the shape of the cans once used to lubricate machinery, complete with a giant handle and a spout that towered above the building's domed roof.
The Lost Wetlands of Los Angeles
What did the L.A. Basin look like before there was a Los Angeles? A common misconception – one that resonates with genuine concerns about the city's aridity and reliance on imported water – is that the city's natural state is desert. But early accounts of the landscape painted a different picture, depicting a patchwork of grassy prairie, wetland, scrub, oak woodland, and dense willow thickets where freeways, office towers, and houses stand today.
Why Did a 1542 Spanish Voyage Refer to San Pedro Bay as the 'Bay of the Smoke'?
Title The San Gabriel Mountains on fire in 1924. Courtesy of the Title Insurance and Trust, and C.C. Pierce Photography Collection, USC Libraries. Note: Over the past few weeks, we have looked at what most regard as the first photograph, drawing, and map of Los Angeles. This series on the earliest-known representations of the Los Angeles area concludes with the first written account. In 1542, a tiny armada of two ships sailed up the California coast, flying the flag of Spain.
Truths Unsilenced: The Life, Death and Legacy of Rubén Salazar
Editor's note: The following article has been updated to reflect the Rubén Salazar was not the first Mexican American to be employed at a major newspaper. Salazar was aslo not called back to Los Angeles after his Tlatelolco coverage. He was reassigned to the Metro desk in late spring and was scheduled to return months before the autumn olympics.
When Camels Came to Los Angeles
It was a spectacle no Angeleno had witnessed before: a caravan of fourteen Arabian camels ambling through the streets of Los Angeles. Arriving in town Jan. 8, 1858, the humped-and-hoofed animals represented an ambitious U.S. government experiment to introduce the so-called “ship of the desert” to the arid lands of the American Southwest.
Counterspy: The Russian Plot to Take Over Hollywood
They wanted a spy at the center of the industry. He had bigger ambitions. The wild true story of wheeling and dealing double agent Boris Morros and the woman who became his nemesis. Hollywood producer Boris Morros was famous for his wild antics, but even he might not have believed the outrageous scheme he was about to hatch in this flamingo-pink booth. Across from him sat Vasily Zarubin, the NKGB’s top spy in America.
CityDig: The Explosive Beginnings of Silver Lake’s Red Car Property
Home L.A. History CityDig: The Explosive Beginnings of Silver Lake’s Red Car Property Was this peaceful place, now on the verge of becoming a park, really born out of man-made explosions? On October 2, 1903, a series of blasts tore apart Hard Luck Hill, a knob of sedimentary rock one and a half miles north of Echo Park in what is now L.A.’s Silver Lake district.
The Santa Monica Cycle Path: L.A.'s First Bike Lane
Title The Santa Monica Cycle Path at Washington and Third Ave. Courtesy of the USC Libraries - California Historical Society Collection. Call it L.A.'s first bike lane. Completed in 1900, the 18-mile Santa Monica Cycle Path paralleled rutted wagon roads, traversed bucolic fields and meadows, and gave Los Angeles cyclists their first reliable route to the sea. In the 1890s, Southern California was hot with bicycle fever.
L.A.'s Famous Four-Level Freeway Interchange, 'The Stack,' Turns 58
Title The Four Level interchange as seen from above in 1959. Courtesy of the California Historical Society Collection, USC Libraries. Fifty-eight years ago today, the Four Level interchange first opened to traffic. This iconic concrete ribbon that binds the 101 and 110 freeways is an almost inescapable feature of many Southern Californians' commute.
The View from Dodger Stadium in 1877
BY Nathan Masters | Nov. 26, 2019 Learn more about Dodgers history in our documentary “Dodgers Stories: 6 Decades in L.A.” If Instagram had been around in 1877, Dodger Stadium would not have been the world’s second most geo-tagged site — a distinction it attained in 2014. Not an inning of baseball had yet been played on the site, a steep hill and gaping ravine unaltered by mechanized grading equipment. Wild scrub brush rather than manicured Bermuda grass carpeted the ground.
Was Western Avenue Once L.A.'s Western Boundary?
It seems logical enough -- Western Avenue, as the oft-repeated explanation goes, is so named because it once formed Los Angeles' western boundary. But is there any truth to this just-so story? Some streets did once mark L.A.'s western city limit. Most notably, West Boulevard's name dates to 1915, when the city's annexation of the Palms district made the street the city's western boundary. And Hoover Street runs along the westernmost limit of L.A.'s original pueblo lands.
Enduring Spirit: The Photography of Paul Kitagaki Jr. | KCET
Title WATCH: Learn more about how photographers all had differing perspectives on capturing the Japanese American internment during World War II on "Lost LA" S4 E2: Three Views of Manzanar - Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange and Toyo Miyatake. In a room crowded with anxious families, 14-year-old Kiyoshi Kitagaki sits with his sister and parents. It is May 6, 1942, and the Kitagaki family is at the Oakland Wartime Civil Control administration station.
Riots, Love Fests, Buried Secrets: Griffith Park's Hidden Histories
Los Angeles, city of dreamers and doers; perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in over 4,300 acres of rolling hills, steep inclines and blessed flat land. Bordered by the 5 and the 134 freeways, Griffith Park, a sprawling landscape of chaparral, brushy scrubs and oak woodland, has been the canvas on which many Angelenos have drawn their dreams and aspirations. Take for example, the Griffith Park Teahouse.
Three Decades Before Porter Ranch, a Methane Explosion Derailed L.A.'s Subway Plans | KCET
Title A 1985 methane explosion in L.A.'s Fairfax district turned a Ross Dress for Less into a disaster scene. Photo by Dean Musgrove, courtesy of the Herald-Examiner Collection - Los Angeles Public Library. Ancient forces lurk beneath the paved surfaces of Los Angeles - powerful natural processes that, when touched by humanity and its creations, threaten public safety.
Documenting and Preserving L.A.'s Olympic History
Map detailing sporting venues for the 1932 Olympics. Click to enlarge. Courtesy of the LA84 Foundation. As Southern Californians tune into the infamously delayed coverage of London's 2012 Olympic games, many will inevitably think back to the Los Angeles games of 1984, and a few may even remember the games' first appearance here in 1932. Though short-lived, Los Angeles' two turns in the Olympic spotlight loom large in Southern California's history.
From Mines Field to LAX: The Early History of L.A. International Airport
Mines Field, known today as Los Angeles International Airport, circa 1930. Courtesy of the Title Insurance and Trust / C.C. Pierce Photography Collection, USC Libraries. With a renovation of the Tom Bradley International Terminal underway, and with Metro considering a fixed-rail transit connection, change is again afoot at Los Angeles International Airport — the transportation hub that has hardly stood still since it emerged from the bean fields of Westchester in the late 1920s.
From Mines Field to LAX: The Early History of L.A. International Airport
Relive the excitement of man’s first steps on the moon and the long journey it took to get there with 20 new hours of out of this world programming on PBS SoCal’s “Summer of Space" Watch out for “American Experience: Chasing the Moon” and "Blue Sky Metropolis," four one-hour episodes that examine Southern California’s role in the history of aviation and aerospace.
Why L.A. Has Clashing Street Grids
Title Street grids clash in this 1939 aerial photograph of Los Angeles. Courtesy of the California Historical Society Collection, USC Libraries. Los Angeles is a city with its vision so firmly pointed toward the future that traces of the past often escape its sight. Headlines proclaim new mega-developments downtown and transportation projects on the Westside. Even historical reminiscences of the city often focus on what was lost—hills, tunnels, and Victorian mansions—rather than what persists.
How a Hollywood Director Almost Launched L.A.’s First Commercial Airline
June 12, 2019 Support Provided By In the early 1960s, Walt Disney proposed a Polynesian-themed restaurant featuring a musical floor show with trained birds. With technology purchased from the nuclear weapons program, mechanical performers would make Disney’s vision a reality.
This 1835 Decree Made the Pueblo of Los Angeles a Ciudad - And California's Capital | KCET
Title Grand pageantry marks each September 4 in Los Angeles, the traditional (if not actual) anniversary of its 1781 founding as a Spanish colonial pueblo. Fewer remember April 4, the date in 1850 when Los Angeles incorporated as an American municipality – several months before California achieved statehood. But the city seems to have completely forgotten another weighty legal anniversary: May 23.
Seventh & Broadway: Photos of Downtown's Crossroads through the Decades
Title A traffic jam at the downtown L.A. intersection of Seventh and Broadway, circa 1920. Courtesy of the Photo Collection, Los Angeles Public Library. Quoting John E. Fisher of the L.A. Department of Transportation, the L.A. City Nerd recently shared this interesting fact on Facebook: in 1924, the downtown L.A. intersection of Seventh Street and Broadway was the busiest in the world with 504,000 people crossing those streets each day.
Mercantile Place: The Tiny, Lost Shopping Street of Downtown L.A.
Title A private, open-air shopping street, Mercantile Place stretched 325 feet between Spring and Broadway in downtown Los Angeles. Courtesy of the Photo Collection - Los Angeles Public Library., by klxadm Long before the Grove, Third Street, or even Universal CityWalk, Angelenos flocked to another open-air shopping promenade: Mercantile Place -- a tiny, private street that stretched between Spring and Broadway from 1904 to 1923.
Majestic Mammoths: A Brief History of L.A.'s Moreton Bay Fig Trees
Title It lacks the native charm of the sycamore or oak. It wants for the palm's exotic appearance. It doesn't have the pepper tree's romantic associations with California's mission past. It never enjoyed, unlike the eucalyptus, the passionate advocacy of a forester like Abbot Kinney.
Pillars of Fire
America’s first policewoman protects the unprotected in a Los Angeles brewing with danger. Mocked and hampered at every turn, and paid 73 cents on the dollar, Alice Wells tracks a missing heiress to an insidious cult — and transforms policing. For three months the world searched for Lily Maud Allen, who had vanished from her London home in November 1910. Some looking for her were convinced she was actually the mistress — and probable accomplice — of a man convicted of poisoning his wife.
Remembering L.A.’s Other Trolleys: The Yellow Cars Los Angeles Magazine
Home Uncategorized Remembering L.A.’s Other Trolleys: The Yellow Cars Photograph by Alan Weeks/Courtesy of the Metro Transportation Library and Archive Los Angeles remembers its Red Cars with an almost mythic reverence. Replicas of the Pacific Electric Railway’s red-liveried trolleys now transport tourists through a Disney theme park, while Angelenos swap wistful stories about the streetcar that would take you to the beach, deep into the Inland Empire, or all the way down to Orange County.
How "Golden Apples" - Oranges, That Is - Sold the Golden State | KCET
Title Call it an early version of viral marketing. Promoters of two products -- a fruit and the region that grew it -- created hundreds of images of oranges, orange trees, and orange groves during the reign of Southern California's Orange Empire. They then leveraged the social network of the time -- the mail -- to broadcast those images far and wide.
When North Hollywood Was a Town Named Toluca, or Lankershim
Title The town of Toluca (now North Hollywood) in 1894. Courtesy of the USC Libraries - California Historical Society Collection. Some of Southern California's "lost towns" never actually vanished; they simply assumed new identities. That's what happened to one small San Fernando Valley farming village that sprang up in the late 1880s -- a village we know today as North Hollywood. The town's name was born unstable; in its early years, residents feuded over what to call their home.
How the Miracle Mile Got Its Name: A Brief History of L.A.'s Unlikely Retail District
Title Learn more about the Miracle Mile. Watch Artbound "Third L.A.: Wilshire Grand." In 1921, the stretch of Wilshire Boulevard now known as the Miracle Mile was a 20-foot-wide dirt road, flanked by oil wells and barley fields. Today, the strip is a busy thoroughfare, home to museums, the La Brea Tar Pits, and a collection of historic Art Deco structures.
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