Elmer Belt, Collector of Ideas Exhibit
In 1961, Los Angeles urologist and bibliophile Dr. Elmer Belt donated to UCLA his magnificent collection of books and materials about Leonardo da Vinci and the Italian Renaissance. A fiftieth anniversary tribute to the collector and his Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana is on display in the lobby gallery of the Department of Special Collections (Charles E. Young Library, A-level) through January 6. Highlights of the exhibit include Luca Pacioli’s De divina proportione of 1509, which contains Leonardo’s perspective drawings of the regular solids and his elegant roman capital alphabet; Roberto Valturio’s De re militari of 1483, extensively referred to by Leonardo in his notebooks; and the 1550 edition of Giorgio Vasari’s Vite de’ piu eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori…, the first modern book of art history, in which Leonardo’s life figures prominently. Elmer Belt, M.D. (1893-1980) moved from Chicago to California at a young age and never looked back. His dedication to book collecting emerged in high school in Los Angeles with the dime novels of Thomas Bird Mosher. It was reinforced in medical school, when a history of medicine class assignment at Berkeley with George W. Corner sparked an interest in the work of Leonardo da Vinci. Following a residency with physician and noted bibliophile Harvey Cushing in Boston, Dr. Belt opened a urological practice back in Los Angeles in the 1920s and purchased the first facsimile edition of Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical drawings. Belt recruited antiquarian bookseller Jacob (Jake) Zeitlin and art historian Kate Steinitz to help him build the foremost research collection in the world of books about all facets of Leonardo’s works and the Italian Renaissance. Although Vinciana was his core interest, Belt immersed himself in the ideas and accomplishments of several other intellectual forebears and contemporaries, and built renowned collections around nursing educator Florence Nightingale, neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell, and his own friend, the writer/activist Upton Sinclair. Elmer Belt and his wife Ruth spread their tremendous involvement throughout Los Angeles but focused their passion, influence, and philanthropy on UCLA. This culminated in the 1961 gift of the Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana, whose volumes include more than 70 incunables or books produced during the fifteenth-century infancy of printing with movable type.
(Above) Reviewing the 1961 gift, from left to right: Rosanna Pedretti; Vinciana librarian Kate Steinitz (1889-1975); Carlo Pedretti (now UCLA Professor of Art History, emeritus); Dr. Elmer Belt; and Leonardo scholar Ladislao Reti (1901-1973). For information about using items, see: Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana. Twenty-eight books from the Vinciana collection, focusing on editions of the Treatise on Painting, are digitized and available through the Internet Archive. Books from Dr. Belt’s Florence Nightingale Collection, donated to the Biomedical Library in 1958 in honor of School of Nursing founding dean Lulu Wolf Hassenplug, also are online through the Internet Archive. In 1976, Dr. Belt described the inspiration for his bookplate (at top): “[W]e selected the little quick sketch by Leonardo of an artist looking through a peephole at a transparency upon which he is tracing the lines of a three dimensional object seen beyond the screen upon which he is drawing. This semi-scientific instrument in active use seemed to me to express so exactly Leonardo’s approach and method of thinking in general that I adopted it as a bookplate for our Leonardo da Vinci Library.” Russell Johnson and Jane Carpenter UCLA Library Special Collections
In the News: Goodbye Smoke!
Today, in concert with the 36th annual Great American Smokeout, UCLA hospitals and health science campuses are becoming smoke-free environments, according to an announcement by UCLA Health System. A mini-exhibit in the Biomedical Library (main floor) echoes the Smokeout theme with original century-old documents from the Anti-Cigarette League of America. The League, founded in 1890 by Woman’s Christian Temperance Union member Lucy Page Gaston, campaigned for smoking bans in public places as well as bans against the manufacture, sale, possession, and use of cigarettes. Gaston maintained that cigarette smoking was especially threatening to the young, hence the slogan, “Save the Boy”. The League’s influence waned as the fight for alcohol prohibition became more prominent. Anti-cigarette and anti-smoking laws were repealed by states following World War I, with Kansas finally changing its legislation in 1927. submitted by Russell A. Johnson History and Special Collections for the Sciences
Evidence in the "Crime of the Century"
By Yasmin Damshenas, Center for Primary Research and Training
If you picked up a newspaper or turned on the radio in the spring of 1932 you would have been inundated with news about the kidnapping and subsequent death of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Junior. The 20 month old son of Charles Lindbergh, world-famous for his solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, and his wife Anne, was discovered missing from his crib on the night of March 1, 1932 and was found dead near their Hopewell, NJ home two months later. The kidnapping was called the “Crime of the Century” and the term “Lindbergh baby” is as recognized today as it was nearly eighty years ago. Recently I had the opportunity to finalize processing of the Leon Hoage collection and came across a fascinating piece of the kidnapping’s aftermath.
Hoage was a crime analyst brought in to examine the Lindbergh case by New Jersey Governor Harold Hoffman. The man convicted of the crime was German émigré Bruno Richard Hauptmann—he proclaimed his innocence right up to his execution in 1936. After reviewing the police files in the late 1930s, Hoage alleged that the original investigation was flawed, the crime was an “inside job” and that Hauptmann was innocent. His files include copies of police records, testimonies and statements, photographs, notes, and some of the many copycat ransom notes sent to the Lindberghs. After his tenure in New York working the case, Hoage eventually settled in Los Angeles where he continued his research and writing. Today, a portion of his files on the Lindbergh case are part of the Leon Hoage Collection of Material about the Lindbergh Kidnapping Case (Collection 1066).
Charles Lindbergh Jr. was not yet two years old when the story of his kidnapping became the center of a media storm. Here he's pictured on a tricycle shortly before the abduction.
The family's household employees were thoroughly questioned. Violet Sharpe, the parlor maid, committed suicide during the investigation.
The Lindberghs received a number of false ransom notes, sent by people who wanted to have a piece of the ransom payment.
Correspondence in the collection indicates that Hoage spent part of his time in Los Angeles at 511 S. Oxford Avenue. Here’s how his apartment building looks in 2011. (Photo by Yasmin Damshenas)