Local Landmarks - Battery Farley

"Battery Farley-Study"
pencil on paper, 2012
11" x 8.5" (27.94cm x 21.59cm)
NFS

This drawing is from a series on local historical military landmarks. I don't have to go far since they are here in San Pedro.

Even though my notation says WWII (oops!), Battery Farley was actually built between 1916-1919, during WWI. This I did not know when the drawing was made as I found out later through research.

It is here in my hometown of San Pedro California and is part of the Fort MacArthur Museum. This is half of what is called Battery Farley-Osgood since there are two of these gun placements at the location.

In fact this whole coastal area of Los Angeles had been fortified over the years, all of which is now obsolete of course. Various gun placements from WWI and WWII to Nike Missile sites from the 60's.
This map (from the book "Rings of Supersonic Steel") on the above museum site shows the entire City of Los Angeles was encircled by Nike Missile sites, like the old video game Missile Command.

After concentrating hard on the battery study I found myself getting mentally lazy so I did not take the drawing of the USS Iowa seriously enough. Such is the nature of pages of drawings, not everything on the page is good. I will have to tackle the ship again later.

I have a recent watercolor of another battery here in San Pedro that was built for WWII and I will be posting that in the future.219