With locations all over the city and lots of books and other materials devoted to local history, libraries are a perfect springboard for exploring Los Angeles. This is the third in a series of blog posts that digs into local history near a Los Angeles Public Library branch.

Donna Barba Higuera grew up in a tiny desert town in central California surrounded by agricultural and oil fields. Rather than wrangling dust devils, she’d spend recess squirreled away in the janitor’s closet with a good book.

The recent passing of Vin Scully has resulted in innumerable obituaries, most of which will be far more eloquent than what this one will be. For someone who held the same job for 67 straight years, 59 of them in the same city, you tend to have a well-known reputation.

It's a painful truth that Angelenos can much too easily identify architectural structures that have been erased from our city's landscape. Some structures are well-known and widely mourned while others have disappeared from our collective consciousness without much afterthought.