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UCLA Library Department of Special Collections

California

California holdings provide resources to study the entire history and development of the state and the rise of southern California, particularly Los Angeles. This long history is traced through a variety of collections. The foundation for the department's printed Californiana is the second collection of bookseller and librarian Robert Ernest Cowan. His Bibliography of the History of California, 1510-1930 (San Francisco: Printed by John Henry Nash, 1933) listed 4,700 titles. UCLA's collection has more than 80 percent of these titles, as well as many works he did not identify. This collection of printed material has been carried forward since its acquisition, although in recent years the focus has shifted to collecting works about and works printed in southern California. Among California book collections is that formed by Carolyn See of Hollywood novels. There is a collection of cookbooks and a complementary collection of books about California viticulture.

The department has manuscript materials for the study of California, including documents from the Mexican period, and papers from the 1840s on. These are the traditional materials collected for historical research and include deeds and other documents, correspondence, journals, and business records. There are the papers of Archibald Gillespie, a figure of importance at the time of the war with Mexico; Cornelius Cole, early California senator; and William S. Rosecrans, Civil War general who settled in California.

In the 19th century the nature of the materials for the study of the history of California broadens. Carleton E. Watkins's photographs of the missions show them as they were in the 1880s. Helen Hunt Jackson's novel Ramona presents them romanticized; the department has a collection of over 200 editions of this novel. Booster materials -- such as real estate brochures and maps, hotel brochures, postcards, citrus labels, and other advertising -- show the further development of these and other California images, real and idealized. Later, detective fiction and the motion picture extended these images, particularly of Los Angeles. The materials broaden again to include motion picture scripts and stills, while papers of architects such as S. Charles Lee show how the motion picture palace was created to entice viewers to attend.

Manuscript material other than that for literary works mentioned later in this guide includes records of the many interconnected activities in the development of California and Los Angeles: agriculture, architecture and landscape architecture, the book trade and fine printing, civic development, civil liberties, crime, education, journalism, labor relations, local politics and reform, the motion picture and television industries, real estate developments, water resources, and special events in the history of the region, such as the 1932 and 1984 Olympic games. These holdings are summarized in "California Collections at UCLA," in Guide to the History of California (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988). The contributions of women and ethnic and racial groups are noted.

The collections comprise a remarkable assembly of creative talent, interpreters of California, and actors in its history. These personal papers -- many supplemented with UCLA oral histories -- have shaped the collections at the UCLA library: those of booksellers Ernest Dawson and Jake Zeitlin; architects A. Quincy Jones, Richard Neutra, and Lloyd Wright; landscape architects Ralph D. Cornell, Edward Huntsman-Trout, and Philip Chandler; photographers Ansel Adams, Will Connell, and Edward Weston; librarian and author Lawrence Clark Powell; and historians such as John Caughey, J. Gregg Layne, Carey McWilliams, and W.W. Robinson. Many of these persons interacted with authors, such as Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin, long associated with Los Angeles.

The books, pamphlets, and ephemera of the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation and the papers of Dr. Haynes and Franklin Hichborn document early 20th century California and Los Angeles reform politics. Complementing these are the papers of Edward A. Dickson and Katherine Philips Edson, while the Clifford E. Clinton papers and the Joseph Shaw papers document, from different perspectives, reforms of the 1930s and 1940s. Papers of Congressman Edward Roybal and Congressman Augustus F. Hawkins carry this study forward, along with the archives of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. Records of the California Democratic Council and the California Republican Assembly provide material for the study of the important grass roots politics of California from the 1930s on.

The Mayor Tom Bradley Administrative Papers (1973-1993) record the administrative activities of Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, whose tenure in office covered a record five terms. Some material can be found for the period prior to 1973 when Bradley served on the Los Angeles City Council, but by far the majority of the collection covers the twenty years of his term as mayor.

Over 1400 cubic feet of the 1800 cubic foot collection is organized into record series identified by staff member. The remainder carries an "Administration" identification. A few election materials are included, but the collection focus is on the daily administration of the office of the highest elected official in what was to become the second largest city in the United States.

A database searchable by staff member, date, and subject has been established for the collection.

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