GOOGIE MODERN: ARCHITECTURAL DRAWINGS OF ARMET DAVIS NEWLOVE
Spring 2022. Angel City Press.
I first discovered the book years ago in the house I grew up in, which was also owned by Santa Monica Mayor Edmond S. Gillette in the 1930’s. The 1902 book contained 110 interior and exterior photographs of houses and businesses in what we know today as western Santa Monica and a few images from other locations around Los Angeles. When I picked it up again, creating a comparison book seemed like a natural idea.
I spent a few months researching and verifying the locations using 1902 and 1909 Sanborn Insurance Maps, Google Maps and the Santa Monica Digital Library. Once I had all of the addresses confirmed, photographer Jens Lucking and I biked or walked to every location, carefully matched the camera angles, and re-shot the historic photographs. Traversing Santa Monica by foot and bike made me appreciate how the people of the day must have experienced the City. The slower pace of transportation (and life) in 1902 may have allowed them to enjoy the city’s character in a more personal way than most people do today–until now.
“Santa Monica: A Look Back to 1902 from Today” is a side-by-side comparison that was more than a century in the making, a juxtaposition of the past and present as seen through lenses focused on one of California’s most vibrant, accessible and diverse beach cities.
-Michael Murphy
A book of a book from the Stephen Raul Anaya Collection, a rare and mostly unseen look at the Santa Monica Pleasure Pier and its surroundings from 1917. Images were pulled from a rare ‘Prospectus Book’, created by its then owner, Mr. Looff (who built the first carousel) hoping to sell shares in his Santa Monica “Pleasure Pier.”
It is with great pleasure that we share and celebrate this book and exhibit with you as this 1917 Collection of images serves as a reminder of our own continuity, specifically as it relates to time and place.
-Michael Murphy
LookBack Art is proud to celebrate the Golden Age of Los Angeles history in postcards from the 1930s & 1940s.
We would like to thank the Tichnor Brothers for their postcards and their silent photographic partners who shot these pictures that enabled us to create these look backs almost a century later.
