Metro Library’s photo collection logs one million hits on Flickr

Found on the Metro Flickr photostream: The 50th anniversary of Disneyland in 2005 was also the 50th anniversary of Metro bus service to Disneyland. Metropolitan Coach Lines' “Snow White” bus went into service on Nov. 22, 1955. When the inaugural bus pulled onto Main Street in front of Disney's City Hall, it was greeted by Walt Disney himself, the Mouseketeers and a 16-piece band.

Found on the Metro Flickr photostream: The 50th anniversary of Disneyland in 2005 was also the 50th anniversary of Metro bus service to Disneyland. Metropolitan Coach Lines' “Snow White” bus went into service on Nov. 22, 1955. When the inaugural bus pulled onto Main Street in front of Disney's City Hall, it was greeted by Walt Disney himself, the Mouseketeers and a 16-piece band.

One million hits can’t be wrong. The Dorothy Peyton Gray Transportation Library’s Flickr photostream can take you anywhere you want to go visually in the transportation history of the Los Angeles region.

With no bells and whistles, the one-millionth hit on the photostream crept past the counter this morning at 1:40 a.m., too immersed in history to even notice, we presume.

It was only a little more than two years ago that the transportation library began uploading some 7,000 scanned images from its historic archive of more than 20,000 photographs.  The library wanted to share its resources more broadly with its users, but had no idea how popular these images would be, said Kenn Bicknell, Metro’s digital resources librarian.

The Flickr photo collection was an instant hit, receiving enthusiastic feedback from a wide variety of users, including the USC School of Architecture, History Channel, PBS, the Los Angeles Times, Arcadia Publishing and the engineering firm Parsons Brinckerhoff.

Looking for a photo of a northbound streetcar on Broadway in front of the former headquarters of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner Building in, say, 1963? Search a keyword and you’ll come up with this beauty, shot by photographer Alan Weeks.

From the Metro Flickr photostream: Check out the slideshow for more.

From the Metro Flickr photostream: Check out the slideshow for more.

The library has simplified both browsing and searching for photos by organizing them in broader collections as well as topic-oriented sets. Read all about it here.

For the entire range of online resources offered by the Dorothy Peyton Gray Transportation Library, check it out on the home page.

3 replies

  1. I didn’t even know there was a Metro Library until I happened upon this wonderful post. Thanks for the nostalgia and thanks so much for this valuable info!

  2. Although I am a big fan of the metro Flickr photo stream, yes the irony is not lost on those at the Taj when their top photo to point out one success (flickr) shows the failure of another (cutting of line 460).

    Nice way to rub it in that LA has had a transit system that once focused on it’s customers.