Quote:
Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire
 LAPL http://jpg1.lapl.org/00078/00078926.jpg
A shot of the library's outdoor reading room. Not sure what possessed the photographer to take
the picture of what is quintessentially a Southern California idea on what appears to be a rainy day....
I have Homer Laughlin on my mind today--I bought some dinner plates at Fishs Eddy here in NY last week, and only just today noticed that they were produced by the Homer Laughlin China Company. (Fiesta Ware is among its product lines.) I didn't know it was still in existence, and I mistakenly thought that it was always a Los Angeles company. Turns out that it never was an L.A. company--Homer sold his interest in the Ohio business in 1897 and only then moved to L.A. and began investing in real estate.
|
That's a great, if chilly-looking, pic of the south-facing roof garden. Too bad the building's mechanical systems have been moved here over the years. It will cost the earth to move them somewhere else now.
Laughlin seems to have been a pretty nice guy. According to the company website in 1880 he took 300 employees and their families in a chartered train to Pittsburgh to see an exposition in the afternoon and an opera in the evening. In 1877 a skilled Laughlin pottery worker earned $2.33 per day, an unskilled male $1.29. Boys earned 82¢ per day, and both women and girls earned 75¢. Not too shabby by the standards of the day.