Name/Title
Looking at BalboaEntry/Object ID
2016.24.01Description
Caption by Bob Lambert: "Looking at the Balboa Island Bridge from Promontory Point. Little Balboa Island and the Grand Canal can be seen to the left. The dirt road today is a part of Jamboree Road. The autos appear to be circa 1930's."
Quotation from Art Mortimer describing his collection:
"The house is at 302 Coral. It is still the same house today, but much enlarged. It started out as a small 2-bedroom house (see photos) and later a 2-car garage with workshop and a 2-bedroom apt. over the garage was added in the back. My family was living in Pasadena. Sometime in the 1920s my father, Godfrey Mortimer, and a friend of his named Tommy Teviotdale bought the lot on Coral and built the house. I believe it was when the Depression hit in 1929 that his father, my grandfather, gave up his private school in Pasadena and moved with his wife, my grandmother, to the house on Coral, buying out my father's friend. My grandmother died before I was born. My grandfather's name was George Arthur Mortimer (identified as GAM in the names of the photo files). He ran a small tutoring school in the apartment over the garage, with a chemistry lab in the downstairs workshop, and rented out the apartment in the summer. He was also a musician and church organist and played organ professionally for large churches.
The earliest photos of the house show it without a garage and apartment in the back. There is one photo showing the garage and apartment in the back. There are several photos of people around the fireplace. Two of them are of my mother (left) and in one my father (tall and smiling) is to the right of her and her cousin on the far right. In the other, the cousin's husband has replaced my father. My father said he and his friend gathered chips from marble slabs from a nearby marble quarry to build the fireplace. You can still see this fireplace alongside the house today, but it has been modernized on the inside of the house and extended to reach above the added 2nd story.
There is a photo of my grandfather in the street with his car and what looks like a small trailer. I suspect this may have been when he was moving in. From the old cars in some of the photos, I estimate they were taken in the early '30s.
There are a couple of photos of the interior, taken from the living area looking toward the back of the house to the dining area and a bedroom behind that. There is a photo of my mother holding me on her lap on the front porch. And a photo of my father, mother, grandfather, me, and my dad's dog, Bing, posing along the side of the house in the vacant lot next door. I remember this photo being taken!"Collection
Art Mortimer PhotographsLexicon
Nomenclature 4.0
Nomenclature Primary Object Term
PhotographNomenclature Sub-Class
Graphic DocumentsNomenclature Class
Documentary ObjectsNomenclature Category
Category 08: Communication ObjectsSearch Terms
Balboa Island Bridge, Promontory Point, Grand Canal, Jamboree Road, Driving, Roads, Road, CarsCreate Date
June 10, 2016Update Date
August 12, 2022