Hist Soc of Wash DC @ Carnegie Library:
- Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.
- Description of Pictures: Tomorrow we will open our galleries again. Nothing is simpler, really. A key turns, a sign shifts into place, a smile is readied.
Welcoming the public is at the core of what the DC History Center does. During “normal” times, students, scholars, volunteers, and community members are all welcome on the second floor of the Carnegie Library—an accessible and inclusive home for reading and learning since it first opened in 1903.
But nothing under the pandemic feels easy.
This is why, between sneeze guards, masks, and hand sanitizer stations, opening THE BIG PICTURE and the Hall of History tomorrow feels like a small but hard-won triumph—a moment to reclaim our place in the community we serve with such commitment and care.
Our hours will be limited. Starting September 11, we will be open only on Friday and Saturdays. We can accommodate up to six visitors per hour, from 12 to 5 pm (last entry at 4 pm). Reservations are required. A full suite of security procedures is in place to protect the health and safety of our visitors, volunteers, and staff.
We did gain some important insights during this time. The Carnegie Library is our home base, but it is the passion for DC history that we share with you, our friends and supporters, that creates a gathering space—a safe place in our hearts and minds to listen, pay attention, and exchange stories.
Wherever you find us in the months ahead, whether that’s Downtown or on Zoom, is where you will join a shared space to celebrate our city and find common ground. In the midst of so much suffering and pain, these precious bonds are worth treasuring.
We have a lot to look forward to in the months ahead, virtually and in person. So come see us. We’ll be thrilled to open our doors for you!
Warmly,
Laura Brower Hagood
Executive Director
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- Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
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- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- HSW_200911_01.JPG: Help Prevent the Spread of Covid-19
During Your Visit
* Face masks are required to be worn for the duration of your visit.
* Practice physical distancing: keep a minimum of 6 feet from other visitors and museum staff.
* Wash and/or sanitize your hands frequently and thoroughly.
* Do not crowd in lines, at common areas, or at points of interest.
* Follow all other signage and staff instructions.
Do not enter if
You feel sick, have a fever, or in the past 14 days have had any symptoms of COVID-19 or exposure to someone with COVID-19.
Thank you for your cooperation.
- HSW_200911_06.JPG: Laura Brower Hagood (executive director), ??? (a volunteer), Karen Harris (Senior Manager, Visitor Services)
- HSW_200911_24.JPG: A very sweaty Bruce Guthrie, their first patron since the reopening, is greeted by Executive Director, Laura Brower Hagood.
- HSW_200911_30.JPG: The second set of guests arrive.
- Description of Subject Matter: About Us - History of the Historical Society
The Columbia Historical Society, as it was called until 1988, was founded in 1894 by a group of 36 men and women, with the following mission: "Its objects shall be the collection, preservation, and diffusion of knowledge respecting the history and topography of the District of Columbia and national history and biography." The organization had as its goal "collecting the scattered and rapidly disappearing records of events and individuals prominent in the history of the city and District."
From the outset, this was a membership organization. Members gathered to listen to each other deliver papers. The Records of the Columbia Historical Society published these papers and other items of interest to members. It was also a collecting organization, amassing library and manuscript collections virtually from the start.
By 1899 the new organization had 108 members, all but 13 men, and all but 7 residents of Northwest Washington. Although African Americans constituted one-third of the city's population, at that time the membership of the Columbia Historical Society was all white in a segregated city.
Membership dues went largely to support the publication of the Records, which remain one of the best collections of information on the history of the city. These hard-bound volumes appeared every year until 1922, and thereafter every two or three years, and are currently available in our Research Library.
The growing collections began to present difficulties almost immediately. For more than 50 years, the Society made do with rented and donated rooms for offices and library. In the late 1940s, a bill to finance reassembly of Francis Scott Key's home and give it to the Society passed Congress, but President Truman vetoed it for budgetary reasons. Through these years, talented volunteers served as librarians and curators. A professional was appointed in 1947, and he promulgated a collecting policy and created the first catalogue. In 1954, the public library, which had been storing the collections, threatened eviction due to its own space problems. The Board appealed to the membership for a home. In 1955, Amelia Keyser Heurich, widow of brewer Christian Heurich, gave the family's four-story mansion to the Society. It took possession the following year when Mrs. Heurich died.
With the house came staff. The first director was hired in 1959, although most of the work was done from the office of the president of the board, Ulysses S. Grant III, who served from 1952 to 1968. For many years the house chairman lived on the third floor and rented offices in the building to other historical and patriotic organizations. Space was available, however, for a library in the mansion, which housed the book, manuscript, photograph and other collections.
Grant died in 1968, ending an era for the Society. In 1975, an innovative real estate transaction produced a significant endowment, which was used to hire the first full-time, professional historian as executive director, Perry Fisher. Fisher used the renewed interest in the nation's past stimulated by the U.S. Bicentennial to increase the Society's services to the general public as well as its membership. In the 1980s, the Society conducted its first major fundraising campaign, raising more than a million dollars to match a $300,000 Challenge Grant from the National Endowment from the Humanities. The aging building underwent restoration and a long-awaited elevator was installed, making all five floors easily accessible.
The programs and reach of the Columbia Historical Society continued to expand, and in 1989, under the leadership of board president Kathryn Schneider Smith and director Jane North, the Society announced its new name: The Historical Society of Washington, D.C. The name change was announced with the first issue of Washington History, a semi-annual magazine that continues the publishing traditions of the Records, but in a more modern and lively format. A second fundraising campaign made it possible to move the library from the cramped second floor to larger quarters on the top two floors of the house and to begin a library endowment. The campaign also funded the creation of two permanent galleries for changing exhibits on Washington history.
Over the past decade, the role of the Historical Society has continued to evolve as an educational institution. The Historical Society has, for several years, sponsored National History Day competitions in the city's schools. Programs offered by the Society include walking tours and presentations on neighborhoods across the city. In addition to providing services to individual researchers, the Society's library conducts workshops introducing the general public to the satisfaction of using primary sources to discover the histories of their homes, businesses and churches.
Under the direction of Barbara Franco, who joined the Historical Society in 1995, the Society began establishing community partnerships. Working with the Humanities Council and former Historical Society board member Kathryn Schneider Smith, the Society helped to bring 80 sites and cultural organizations across the city together to form the Heritage Tourism Coalition now led by Smith.
During this time, the Historical Society's Board made a commitment to pursue a long time dream of city residents to establish a museum devoted to the city's own history.
In 1998, Monica Scott Beckham, Vice President of the Board of Trustees of the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. went before the Chairman and members of the House of Representatives Appropriations Sub-committee to seek federal appropriations for a City Museum of Washington, D.C. Congress appropriated $2,000,000 in 1999 "provided that the District of Columbia shall lease the Carnegie Library at Mount Vernon Square to the Society . . . for 99 years at $1 per year . . ." Mayor Anthony A. Williams announced on July 14, 1999 the creation of the City Museum of Washington, D.C. in the historical landmark Carnegie Library at Mount Vernon Square.
The City Museum opened in May 2003. Although the museum closed at the end of 2004, the Historical Society continues to serve the Washington community through its library, publications, and exhibits.
The above was from http://www.historydc.org/about/HSW_History.asp
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I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
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