New Book Releases

At 5:55 p.m. on March 10, 1933, Southern California was rocked by a massive earthquake. Wood-frame bungalows lost their chimneys, and engineered concrete buildings suffered minimal damage. But unreinforced masonry buildings near the epicenter failed catastrophically, and Long Beach was particularly hard hit. Nearly three-quarters of the school buildings, as well as many other structures, were rendered unusable until repaired or rebuilt. The Art Deco style, in addition to being fashionably modern in 1933, met the criteria of earthquake safety, and many new structures showed its influence. Both the Zigzag Moderne style of the 1920s, which boasted many structures that survived the earthquake, and the Streamline Moderne style that came into vogue in the 1930s relied on sleek lines with decoration incorporated into the design. This volume celebrates, in both word and image, the Long Beach that rose from the rubble to become a premier Art Deco city.

At sunset, the San Gabriel Mountains form a rosy sculptural backdrop for Pasadena, a city of stately street trees and lush gardens. Attracted by a paradisiacal climate, health seekers and wealthy Easterners flocked to its resort hotels--the Green, the Maryland, the Huntington, the Painter, the Raymond--and built grand residences along Orange Grove and Grand Avenues. Scores of commercial and industrial buildings rose downtown, punctuated by public works, civic buildings, schools, and churches that doubled as works of art, like the Colorado Street Bridge, the Christian Science Church, and the California Mediterranean-style city hall. Preservation efforts have succeeded in putting Old Pasadena and the Pasadena Civic Center on the National Register of Historic Places, and continued restoration has made the city's unique architectural treasures a major attraction in Southern California.

Petaluma's past is uniquely reflected in its historic architecture. The town's earliest commercial buildings tightly lined the waterfront of the Petaluma River, at one time the busiest transportation corridor in the North Bay. After the railroad arrived, an already thriving dairy and manufacturing city became the nation's largest poultry and egg producer. A vital economy brought factories like the impressive Sunset Line & Twine plant, hatcheries, vast warehouses, and grain elevators that have become defining Petaluma landmarks. Its handsome downtown, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is noted for its Italianate cast iron-front commercial buildings, and a variety of pre-World War II residential styles surround it in charming neighborhoods. A favorite of moviemakers, its classic main streets played a
central role in the film American Graffiti.

The unreliability of the San Diego River compelled the Franciscan fathers to construct the area's first dam in 1813 to conserve drinking and irrigation water for the Mission San Diego de Alcalá. This water-driven circumstance continued and expanded in the ensuing American era. Lacking a reliable water source at the turn of the 20th century, San Diego County was destined to experience modest growth. The region's semiarid conditions, cyclical droughts, and existing river systems determined that the only effective way to maintain a ready water supply was to conserve runoff and river floodwaters behind dam-created reservoirs. Between 1888 and 1934, private and municipal interests constructed a series of massive structures that made San Diego County the dam-building center of the world. The county featured some of America's first multiple arch dams and earliest hydraulic fill dams. Into the mid-1940s, dammed reservoirs remained the principle water source for county consumers and made the municipal expansion of the city of San Diego possible.