Best Source for ?1923 Phone Directories

The city’s oldest bookseller is Dawson’s, an antiquarian bookshop where buyers can find Californiana ranging from Sierra Club bulletins from the early 1900s to a rare book of engravings by the woodblock printmaker Paul Landacre.

Ernest Dawson opened the business in 1905, setting up shop on South Broadway more than a decade before the market for rare and out-of-print books really came into its own in Los Angeles. Dawson fostered a culture of books that flourished here in the ’20s, paving the way for Jake Zeitlin — a writer and thinker who opened his own bookshop on Hope Street in 1927 — and catering to collectors like Estelle Doheny, wife of the oil magnate.

By 1968, Dawson’s had moved three times, landing on Larchmont Boulevard after decades in downtown Los Angeles. A century after it opened, the bookstore and photography gallery is now run by a third generation, grandson Michael Dawson, who keeps the store well stocked with publications on California and the West, as well as the region’s art and photography.

Dawson’s Book Shop ?535 N. Larchmont Blvd., L.A., ?(323) 469-2186

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