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Nadel (Leonard) Photographs and other material relating to
housing and urban redevelopment in Los Angeles
2002.M.42
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Title: Leonard Nadel photographs and other material relating to housing and urban
redevelopment in Los Angeles
Date (inclusive): 1947-1998 (bulk
1947-1957)
Number: 2002.M.42
Creator/Collector:
Nadel, Leonard
Physical Description:
8.75 Linear Feet
(14 boxes)
Repository:
The Getty Research Institute
Special Collections
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles 90049-1688
reference@getty.edu
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10020/askref
(310) 440-7390
Abstract: Consisting primarily of photographic
materials created by Leonard Nadel from 1947 to 1957, the archive records early efforts by
the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) to create public housing for the
city's growing population, and also documents several areas of the city that the Community
Redevelopment Agency (CRA) had targeted for commercial revitalization. Nadel's
black-and-white negatives, contact prints, and two unpublished photographic books form the
bulk of the material, supplemented by handwritten notes and related documents.
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Language: Collection material is in
English.
The American photojournalist, Leonard Nadel, was born in Harlem, New York in 1916 to
Austrian-Hungarian parents and grew up in the Bronx tenements. His parents worked in the
garment district. After graduating from City College of New York, Nadel trained at the Army
Signal Corps Photographic Center (SPCP) in Astoria, New York, and then served as a lab
technician and combat photographer during World War II in Australia, New Guinea, and the
Philippine Islands. After leaving the army, he returned to New York and earned a master's
degree in education from Teachers College, Columbia University. He taught briefly before
moving to Los Angeles to study photography at the Art Center College of Design. During this
time he began photographing public housing sites.
In 1947 and 1948, Nadel photographed the Pueblo del Rio housing development in South
Central Los Angeles, which was originally built between 1941 and 1942 for Black defense
industry workers. Nadel showed his material to Frank Wilkinson, the assistant diretor of the
Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA), who suggested that he also document
Aliso Village, another of the agency's housing projects. Nadel assembled two books from his
documentation of Pueblo del Rio and Aliso Village, but they were never published.
In 1949, Wilkinson hired Nadel as a photographer for HACLA to make a photographic record of
living conditions both in Los Angeles's slums and in the new housing projects that were
built in Los Angeles during and immediately after World War II. Several of these projects
were championed by or carried out under the auspices of the Community Redevelopment Agency
(CRA). Nadel was employed by HACLA until 1953, when Frank Wilkinson was blacklisted by the
Committee on Un-American Activities and forced to resign from the agency. Consequently,
Nadel to leave HACLA in protest.
From 1953 through the 1980s, Nadel worked as a freelance photographer, producing
documentary work for various agencies and magazines such as
National
Geographic
,
Look,
Forbes,
Life, and
Paris
Match
. For over two decades he was the primary west coast photographer for
Business Week. Of particular note is his 1956 documentation of the
Bracero program for the Ford Foundation's Fund for the Republic.
Nadel married Brazilian-born Evelyn De Wolfe, a staff writer for the
Los Angeles Times, in 1961. Over the next eighteen years they collaborated on
numerous freelance projects for domestic and international publications, ranging from
documenting the life of a Japanese geisha to living with a tribal group in New Guinea. Nadel
also continued to document the city of Los Angeles, particularly focusing on street mural
art during the 1960s and 1970s.
Leonard Nadel died in 1990.
Sources consulted:
_____ "Pueblo del Rio."
http://historicplacesla.org/reports/3b706ba6-ffad-47d3-9dc9-f782a4b2ba6b
_____ "Pueblo del Rio Housing Project, Los Angeles, CA." Paul Revere Williams, American
Architect: A Man and His Works.
https://www.paulrwilliamsproject.org/gallery/1940s-multifamily-housing/
Jones, Stephen. "The Bunker Hill Story: Welfare, Redevelopment, and Housing Crisis in
Postwar Los Angeles."
CUNY Academic Works (2017).
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2344
McCarthy, Maggie. "Introduction to Public Housing."
Congressional
Research Service
7-5700 (2014). www.crs.gov R41654
Marks, Mara A. "Shifting Ground: The Rise and Fall of the Los Angeles Community
Redevelopment Agency."
Southern California Quarterly 86, no.
3 (2004) doi:10.2307/41172224.
Normark, Don.
Chávez Ravine, 1949: A Los Angeles Story. San
Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1999. Peleg, Oren. "Photos: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of
Bunker Hill, "
LAist, Apr 26, 2017.
https://laist.com/news/bunker-hill-gallery
Open for use by qualified researchers.
Contact
Library Reproductions
and Permissions
.
Leonard Nadel photographs and other material relating to housing and urban redevelopment in
Los Angeles, 1947-1998, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no.
2002.M.42.
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa2002m42
Acquired in 2002.
The collection processing was begun by Soohyun Yang in the spring of 2011. Yang wrote a
preliminary finding aid. Beth Ann Guynn and Linda Kleiger continued processing the
collection and writing the finding aid in the fall and winter of 2011. Guynn revised the
finding aid in 2021.
The collection was digitized from 2011 to 2013 with support from the National Historical
Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) and the images are available online:
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/2002m42.
The videocassette
And Ten Thousand More has been digitized.
Access is available only to on-site readers and Getty staff:
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/2002m42av.
The collection was digitized from 2011 to 2013 with support from the National Historical
Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) and the images are available online:
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/2002m42.
The videocassette
And Ten Thousand More is digitized and
access is available only to on-site readers and Getty staff:
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/2002m42av.
The collections of the Los Angeles Public Library and the Southern California Library for
Social Studies and Research each contain photographic images made by Leonard Nadel during
the time he worked for HACLA. The
Photo Collection of the Los
Angeles Public Library contains approximately 290 copy negatives and corresponding
black-and-white copy prints made from original materials held by HACLA.
The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles Photograph
Collection
, held at the Southern California Library for Social Studies and
Research, contains 225 black-and-white photographs produced by HACLA, forty-two of which
were taken by Nadel. The National Museum of American History holds a collection of Nadel's
Bracero photographs.
Scope and Content of Collection
Consisting primarily of photographic material produced by Leonard Nadel between 1947 and
1957, the archive records early efforts by the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles
(HACLA) to to create public housing for the city's growing population, and also documents
several areas of the city that the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) targeted for
commercial revitalization. Nadel's black-and-white negatives and contact prints form the
bulk of the material, supplemented by handwritten notes and related documents. Also included
are two unpublished books produced by Nadel.
Series I comprises Nadel's documentation of HACLA and CRA projects in the 1940s and 1950s.
His work as a documentary photographer for HACLA records living conditions in the slum areas
of Los Angeles and, to some extent, the new housing projects that replaced them, including
Avalon Gardens, Rose Hill Courts, Ramona Gardens, and the unrealized Elysian Park Heights
project. From aerial and panoramic views to close-range shots, Nadel documented not only the
physical environment and buildings, but also their inhabitants. A good portion of the
material focuses on individual families or tenants, affording a very personal portrait of
both slum and project life in post-war Los Angeles. Also included are photographs of the
planning meetings of city officials and architects including Richard Neutra, Robert
Alexander, and Lloyd Wright.
Nadel also documented several areas of the city that the Community Redevelopment Agency
(CRA) targeted for commercial revitalization in the 1940s and 1950s. He made meticulous
photographic surveys, sometimes block by block, of the slums and historic areas targeted for
demolition and redevelopment, including Bunker Hill, the Temple Street area, Ann Street, and
the Alameda Street area. Documentation of the Bunker Hill Renewal Project is particularly
extensive.
Series II contains Nadel's unpublished books and related material on Pueblo del Rio and
Aliso Village, the two HACLA projects that Nadel documented most extensively. Through
photographs and text, two large leather-bound volumes tell in detail the stories of the two
housing projects, focusing not just on the architecture and layout of the complexes, but
also recording the family life and project-supported social networks of their tenants.
Arranged in two series:
Series I. Projects related to housing and urban
redevelopment, 1947-1998, undated;
Series II. Unpublished books,
1947-1994, undated.
Wilkinson, Frank,
1914-2006
Wright, Lloyd,
1890-1978
Neutra, Richard Joseph, 1892-1970
Alexander, Robert Evans, 1907-1992
Steichen, Edward, 1879-1973
Stryker, Roy Emerson, 1893-1975
Housing Authority of the City
of Los Angeles, California
Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles
Public housing -- California -- Los Angeles -- 20th century
Urban renewal -- California -- Los Angeles -- 20th century
Los Angeles Region (Calif.) -- Social conditions -- 20th
century
Ramona Gardens (Los Angeles, Calif.) -- Description and
travel
Boyle Heights (Los Angeles, Calif.) -- Description and
travel
Bunker Hill (Los Angeles, Calif.) -- Description and
travel
Los Angeles (Calif.) -- Description and travel
Aliso Village (Los Angeles, Calif.) -- Description and
travel
Slums -- New York (State) -- New York
Slums -- California -- Los Angeles
Los Angeles (Calif.) -- Buildings, structures, etc.
Chávez Ravine (Los Angeles, Calif.) -- -Description and
travel
Videocassettes -- California -- Los Angeles -- 20th
century
Gelatin silver prints -- California -- Los Angeles -- 20th
century
Photographs, Original
Panoramas -- California -- Los Angeles -- 20th century
Black-and-white negatives -- California -- Los Angeles -- 20th
century
Aerial photographs -- California -- Los Angeles -- 20th
century
Nadel, Leonard