VERDUGO VIEWS:Edward Weston photographed Glendale

In 1906, a young man named Edward Weston left Chicago for an extended visit with his sister, May Seaman, who lived in Tropico, then a small community just south of Glendale.

Just 20 years old at the time, Weston purchased a camera and set out walking the streets, offering to photograph children and family groups.

To support himself, he also took class photos for many elementary school children in Glendale. After several years of this, he got a job in a studio and married Flora Chandler, a friend of his sister.

Weston opened his own studio in 1911 in a small wood-frame building surrounded by shrubs and flowers on Brand Boulevard.

In 1914, he helped produce a pamphlet, “Tropico, the City Beautiful,” written by G.C. Henderson and Robert A. Oliver to promote the small town.

Weston took the photographs and in turn was featured in a large ad that invited patrons to his studio at 113 N. Brand Blvd., near Tropico Avenue (now Los Feliz Road). For $5, customers could get a dozen photos.

By then, according to a 1986 Los Angeles Times Magazine article written by Jerry Lazar, Weston’s career was beginning to rise.

“Weston excelled at his early portraiture,” wrote Lazar. “He began sending his pictures to tony ‘salons’ throughout the country, where they were displayed to much acclaim and frequently won awards.” In 1914, the same year he was promoting Tropico, he had five pictures shown at the prestigious London Salon, where they were cited as the best works on display.

Eventually, his work changed in its focus. Weston, enjoying his new fame, began socializing with a group of artists, dancers and musicians. Meanwhile, his wife was teaching school in Glendale and bringing in a steady income to support their four children. When Weston departed for Carmel with his girlfriend and his son, Brett, Flora Weston remained behind.

Weston eventually settled in Carmel and went on to become an internationally acclaimed artist. But he never forgot his early beginnings in Tropico and Glendale. In 1953, Legory O’Loughlin, part of a combined group of Odd Fellows and Glendale Historical Society members who had joined forces to place historical markers at significant places, wrote a letter to Weston, seeking information on the artist’s time in Glendale.

Weston, writing from his Wildcat Hill residence in Carmel, replied that he had taken many photos of Tropico and Glendale buildings, such as the Tropico post office, the grammar school, Methodist Episcopal Church and the Glendale Sanitarium, but that they had disappeared over the years.

He also mentioned a photograph he took, from a hill behind Forest Lawn, of the newly paved Los Feliz Road and the Pacific Ocean beyond. Weston added that he couldn’t find that photograph at the moment, but he offered to send it to O’Loughlin if he was interested.

He told O’Loughlin that he did have a photograph of his old studio, with Shasta daisies in front.

“I think the studio still stands, moved back and white washed,” Weston added.

Weston’s early years in Glendale will be discussed at an event co-sponsored by the Glendale Historical Society and the Friends of the Glendale Public Library on Sept. 27 at the Glendale Public Library, 222 E. Harvard St.