The Griffith Park Summer Lecture Series kicks off June 9 with The Hollywood Sign

Get out your calendar and mark these dates. You’re invited to a series of free Thursday evening lectures focusing on Griffith Park’s fascinating human and natural history sponsored by Friends of Griffith Park. The Los Feliz Branch Library provides the ideal setting for presentations by authors, academics and experts on the people, events and ecologies that have shaped the Park. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Program starts at 6:45 p.m. Make plans now to be there!

Leo Braudy, author of The Hollywood Sign: Fantasy and Reality of An American Icon, will explain how this enduring emblem of Los Angeles evolved from a real estate billboard into an international symbol of glamour that vies with the Observatory as Griffith Park’s most famous landmark. A University Professor at USC, Braudy has written more than 11 books and 150 articles, and is considered one of America’s leading cultural historians and film critics. Book sale and signing will follow his talk.

During the 1930s, Griffith Park came to the aid of the unemployed as New Deal sculptors, Civilian Conservation Corps craftsmen and municipal relief workers helped shape its built environment. It also became a resort of last resort as the City’s activist Recreation Department dreamed up low-cost high-participation activities for children and adults with few entertainment options. Mike Eberts, author of Griffith Park: A Centennial History, will talk about these human stories and their tangible legacies that can be seen at Fern Dell and the Observatory, and on roads and trails throughout the Park.

Griffith Park is home to the City’s greatest concentration of native fauna within urbanized Los Angeles. Ecologist Dan Cooper, Scientific Director of the Griffith Park Natural History Survey, focuses on the habits of Griffith Park’s predator species: bobcats, coyotes, grey fox, raccoons, and even mountain lion, discussing the natural habitat and prey animals that nourish and sustain them and how humans can help in their continued existence. See FULL-COLOR FLYER.

All programs take place at

Los Feliz Branch Library of the Los Angeles Public Library
1874 Hillhurst Avenue (at the corner of Franklin Avenue)
Los Feliz, CA 90027
(323) 913-4710