“Not half as old as I feel, darling.”
Enjoy this treasury of photographs showcasing the geology, botany, and fascinating social history of LA’s greatest park, now celebrating its 125th birthday.
The rancho adobe (in some form, since 1795!) was preserved as Park Ranger HQ.
This unbelievabvly rich land was Rancho Los Feliz — “the Felizes’,” the first (or second) rancho grant in California. It was granted as a reward to a retiring military intendente of Los Angeles. The Pueblo was successfully settled and competent, the Tongva successfully relocated to San Gabriel, and happy Mexican farmers were churning out grain in the vast riverbed. Griffith J. Griffith bought the rancho from Yankee speculators for a song, and when he offered it to the City, with his grand visions of civic adornment and classical education and human uplift and ecological connection — he practically had to beg the City to take it. They were afraid to take Griffith’s gift, thousands of untouched watershed acres, because Griffith personally, had problems… it turns out, he shot his wife in the face, in a hotel room on Santa Monica Beach. The City Fathers were afraid the voters’ wives’ ministers’ wives would reject the City Council socially, if they shook hands with a beast like Griffith. He did two years in Q.
It took decades before Victorian propriety thinned out enough for the City to take possession, and it took decades more (1930!) for them to get around to building the Observatory and the Greek Theatre; both were stipulated in the conveyance. The delay was a good thing too, architecturally, for the Observatory — by then, the grace of Art Deco had come in to soften the Greek of Griffith’s preference, and the Federal Fascism that looked forward to Roosevelt’s New Deal; and it could all coalesce with modern engineering. It is one of the most iconic buildings on planet Earth (which it turns out is where we are; go inside and they’ll explain.)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PqOmMc9dStEtvi2b-GYdFhgiXTlYQ_SK/view?usp=drivesdk
The Valley Village View 