Recently browsing through UCD Special Collections “mini
collections” I came onto several file folders labeled “Yolo Co. (Photos)” that
contained dozens of interesting and unidentified decades-old photographic images.
Twelve Color Snapshots
These image are in large part an assortment of well-known
black and white scenes taken well before World War II.
But a small subset caught my attention. Deep in one of these
files, there were twelve small color snapshots of Davis street scenes.
Laying them out on a Special Collectiions reading room table
I could see that at least eight of the twelve were not random views of
Davis streets.
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1. Thumbnails of 12 '50s-'70 Color Snapshots |
Instead, it was immediately obvious that the eight taken on
downtown streets formed pairs of views of four locations taken several
years apart!
l. The “first pair” shows the G street 200s block in ‘60 or
so and then again in about ‘65.
This is shown in the thumbnail reproductions given in
graphic 1. The “pairs” are organized into two columns of side-by-side contrasts.
The first pair is “1” and “2” at the top of the left-hand column, the second
pair is “3 “ and “4,” and so on.
2. The second pair captures the Second Street 600s block in
the early ’60s and again in the later ‘60s.
3. The third pair moves one block west and shows the
northwestern corner of the Second Street 500s in 1966 and 1971 (information in
the pictures provides this dating).
4. The fourth pair shows the northeast corner of the Third
Street 600s block before the Union Bank of California building was constructed
and afterwards.
I could not, initally, see how the last four formed pairs. But
with enhancement and enlargement and viewing candidate scenes "on the ground," the two additional
locations became evident--or I can at least make a plausible case for them.
5. The hardest to identify pair is taken looking east on
Russell just west of its intersection with South Campus Way.
6. The last pair features the site of the soon-to-be built
Russell Street Mall and the auto service station there after the Mall’s construction.
There is also a handwritten number on the back of each
snapshot. The smallest number is 5 and the series proceeds unbroken up to 14,
which encompasses five of the six pairs. The sixth pair is numbered 20 and 21.
(The incomplete series and breaks suggest there may be other pairs “out there”
that we have yet to discover.)
Most surprising, at least to me: the photos are numbered in
the order I first laid them out in trying to make sense of them. That is, I only
turned the snapshots over and saw the numbers after I had laid them out in an
order that made sense to me in the logic of how I understood Davis to have
developed.
Like one of those wonderful stage magic tricks, whoever made
and numbered these photos used a logic that was identical to the one that came
to mind when I looked at them more than 40 years after April, 1972.
Spooky or what?
Who Took These Snapshots and
Why?
One obvious and more serious next question, to me,
is: where did all those larger number of photos in the folders labeled
“Yolo Co. (Photos)” come from--including these twelve in color?
I asked Special Collections what records on
the photos it might have. There are none.
We are thus left with a mystery about which I can
speculate.
My speculation is that all the photos, including
the color ones, came from the illustrious and amiable John Weber Brinely.*
I guess Brinley based on what I learned from him
directly in the late 1990s (he died in
2002) and what I know from the public record.
Mr. Brinley was quite interested in Davis history,
was a realtor, and was an amateur photographer.
The pictures express all three of these interests
and involvements. Many of the twelve contain images of properties he owned or
in which he had a financial interest.
So What?: Documenting ‘50s-'70s Transforming Davis
So what’s the big deal about these perhaps pathetic twelve
little color snapshots?
While this find is not a “big deal” it is of great interest
to students of Davis history for several reasons.
The first reason is that these are color photographs, which, in cultural terms, is an obviously superior
form of historical documentation. Up until now, we have had only black and
white shots of the locations shown. As I will seek to show in the twelve posts
that follow, we have increased our information. At least, my own sense of just
how shabby Davis once was has increased.
Second, the
locations themselves are among the small number of iconic areas of Davis. (As a life-long Davisite and grandson of one
of the first residents of Davis, a realtor, and a history-minded person, John
Weber Brinley knew what he was looking at.)
Third, the period
in which they were taken--the ‘50s-70s--is among the most important in Davis
history. In the three decades of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s the population of
Davis increased ten-fold and its physical
area increased seven-fold (as shown in
the accompanying chart).
It was an astonishing ride and Brinely’s twelve snapshots
capture important transformational moments in those three decades of massive
change.
This Series
Over the next period, I will publish a post on each of the
twelve snapshots and present them in this order.
lst of 12 Transforming Davis Color Photos:
G Street 200s Circa ’60 (156)
2nd of 12 Transforming Davis Color Photos:
G
Street 200s Circa ‘70 (157)
3rd of 12 Transforming Davis Color Photos:
2nd Street 600s Circa ’63 (158)
4th of 12 Transforming Davis Color Photos:
2nd Street 600s Circa ‘70 (159)
5th of 12 Transforming Davis Color Photos:
2nd Street 500s Circa ’66 (160)
6th of 12 Transforming Davis Color Photos:
2nd
Street 500s Circa ‘71 (161)
7th of 12 Transforming Davis Color Photos:
3rd Street 600s Circa ’60 (162)
8th of 12 Transforming Davis Color Photos:
3rd
Street Circa ‘70 (163)
9th of 12 Transforming Davis Color Photos:
Russell Looking East Near S. Campus Way C. ’60
Russell Looking East Near S. Campus Way C. ’60
10th of 12 Transforming Davis Color Photos:
Russell
Looking East Near S. Campus Way C. ’65
11th of 12 Transforming Davis Color
Photos:
Russell
Blvd. Mall Site Circa ’60 (166)
12th of 12 Transforming Davis Color
Photos;
Russell
Blvd. Mall Circa ‘65 (167)
________
* Profiles of the life of John Weber Brinley can be read
here:
http://boards.ancestry.com/localities.northam.usa.states.california.counties.yolo/1971/mb.ashx
http://boards.ancestry.com/localities.northam.usa.states.california.counties.yolo/1971/mb.ashx