Archivist Michael Holland calls the Los Angeles City Archives, “the City’s Junk Drawer.” The permanent retention of vast amounts of assorted official municipal records and historical ephemera would be intriguing enough, but it’s only part of the story.
The approach to the City Archives is as nondescript as it gets, but the place is filled with decades of City records from every conceivable department and commission.
The Reading Room
Just inside the door is the staff office and public Reading Room, “where assets and people get together.”
The middle of the room contains several rows of tables and chairs for reading, which are flanked on one side by desks with computer access and on the other side with staff cubicles, each one filled with the work of city clerks and interns, getting to the bottom of legal and civic requests for information. Papers and boxes are piled high and stacked just about everywhere.
Commemorative documents hang on the wall next to fading posters and maps of past Los Angeles events and places. A Key to the City sits on a desk next to a bookcase of City Council meeting indexes.
The public is welcome to come in and do research, take photos, or make copies of most items. Lawyers, historians, students, geneaologists, detectives, and the general citizenry make use of the space and its many resources.
INTO THE VAULT WE GO
The City Archives is a “Vault” of 16,000 boxes, including city maps, newspaper clippings, photographs, business licenses and voting records dating back to 1827.
Every Box Contains a Story.
This one begins, “Watts Community Plan — 1966, Recreation Needs and Services”
Scrapbooking Police
The Los Angeles Police Department, while under the helm of William H. Parker (1950 — 1966) kept meticulous scrapbooks of newspaper and press clippings that covered the LAPD itself.
According to this 1953 article from the Los Angeles Daily News, The LAPD believed that a knowledge of the peculiar “Drug Lingo” of youth might help parents detect signs of addiction among their children. Who knew a marijuana user was called a “Hay-Head?”
Never Meant for Public Consumption
Some contents of the Vault were never meant for public consumption. Here is one of the books of photographs from multi-shelf full of 8,000 City of Public Works Construction Photos.
Many of these Public Works photos, taken between 1924–1953, capture not just the Before and After of municipal work needed on the streets and gutters of Los Angeles, but the look and lifestyle of the people in unguarded moments of daily life.
They were scheduled for destruction before being recognized for their value and obtained by the City Archives.
And the Lists Go On!
Show Business — 100 years ago:
Los Angeles Business License Registration books contain the names and address of businesses such as the “Douglas Fairbanks Film Corp” and the “Mack Sennett Film Corp.”
Monkey Business — 100 years ago.
A list of animals and their names, Los Angeles Zoo, 1918. On this page, Work Horses “Maggie,” “Prince,”and “Cahuna” are listed on the same page as the wagons, plows and carts they pull.
Minutes, Los Angeles Fire Commission — 1940s
Most of the documents in the vault look like this. Very organized.
But some look like this —
Minutes, City Council 1911–1940, handwritten on 30,000 double-sided index cards
You want some information from here? It’s going to take more than a “minute” to find it!
Records Management — As Official as it Gets
In addition to the junk drawer, there is the mega-sized Records Management warehouse (https://clerk.lacity.org/city-archives-and-records-center/about-records-management-division) — a 45,000 square foot space that is currently host to over 200,000 boxes.
Records Management has physical (but not legal) custody of official documents generated by the City — which means they are responsible for storing everything the City needs for litigation, and providing it when requested, but they have no idea what’s actually inside each box.
Cross referenced minutes, ordinances, real estate records, legal contracts, city planning, personnel records, invoices, and more. Some files have expiration dates and are destroyed. Others go back and forth between departments for years and even decades.
The staff has to make sure the records are as “complete, accurate, and genuine” as possible.
What about Keeping it All Safe?
In case of fire, Halon Gas, not water, is released into the vault. Staff has under a minute to exit before all oxygen is sucked out of the room.
The work of a City Archivist is endless by nature. Michael Holland made frequent mention of the many assorted plans and projects still in process, and the hard-working interns who were sorting, scanning and digitizing away in dedicated (if not full-time) fashion.
It felt like an honor to get a tour of the place, even though it is already a public building.
Of course the Los Angeles City Archives is so much more than a junk drawer. It is the ongoing official historical record of official historical business. A Time Capsule in which the future is now.
For more information, to schedule an appointment or explore the extensive online resources, visit the Los Angeles City Archives at https://clerk.lacity.org/city-archives-and-records-center
