Posts Tagged ‘San Diego Public Library’

Much of what we know about San Diego’s first decade as an American town is found in the files of our first newspaper, the San Diego Herald. Original copies of the Herald are exceedingly rare but a complete file is preserved in Special Collections at the San Diego Public Library. We owe that complete file to the foresight of Ephraim W. Morse, who preserved a whole run and sold it to the library for $100 in 1901. The letter below documents that important transaction. The library’s run of the Herald was microfilmed many years ago and can be viewed at the San Diego Central Library. The newspaper has also been digitized and is available for research at the Internet site of the California Digital Newspaper Collection: https://cdnc.ucr.edu/

A postman wearing protective gauze. National Archives.

In the fall of 1918, San Diego children skipped rope to a popular rhyme:

I had a little bird

Its name was Enza

I opened the window

And in-flew-enza

In the last weeks of World War I and in the months that followed, an influenza outbreak swept the world, infecting a billion people and killing as many as 50 million. It was one of the deadliest pandemics in history. In San Diego the scourge reached epidemic proportions . . .

Read the story of The Spanish Flu.

The Board of Education has just had their attention directed to a most deplorable state of morals existing in our schools, and the evil has been traced to some degraded persons . . . poisoning the minds of boys and girls.  —Reverend Samuel J. Shaw, United Presbyterian Church, San Diego.

In 1903 San Diego, the 14th-century novel The Decameron, was the target of the book censors.  Read about the Deplorable State of Morals.

Reverend Samuel Shaw. From Smythe, History of San Diego.

Last summer the collections of the San Diego Central Library moved to a new building at 330 Park Blvd. For the past several months the staff of Special Collections has been busily unpacking and arranging boxes of materials once relegated to the basement of our old building. Among reams of material, we make discoveries. Below is a forgotten architectural rendering of the proposed Carnegie Library. The completed structure, designed by the New York firm of Ackerman and Ross, was dedicated in April 1902.

Ackerman & Ross, Architects

In honor of National Library Week (April 23-29) here’s a little San Diego library trivia:

One of the smaller branches of the San Diego Public Library was the Marston Store branch.  As “a convenience to tourists and shoppers,” the room opened in 1917 on the 5th floor of the famed department store at 5th and C Streets.  The branch closed in 1921 and its collection was moved to the new Mission Hills branch.

Alonzo Horton, ca. 1868.

Mr. A. E. Horton yesterday donated to the San Diego Free Reading Room Association his fine library. It will be remembered by old residents that this library was bought as the nucleus for a public institution some time ago, Mr. Horton having paid a large sum of money for it.  –San Diego Union, May 21, 1873.

San Diego’s first public library struggled to open its doors. A large book donation by city father Alonzo Horton was a start. But there were strings attached. . .

The story of San Diego’s First Library.

He has been called the greatest benefactor in San Ysidro history–a mining engineer turned rancher who donated land for churches and schools, and funded the community’s first public library. Dimly remembered today as the namesake of streets and schools, Frank B. Beyer is less known as the “gambler from the owner’s side of the table,”a man with a colorful career below the border, who spent his last years giving back his wealth to his adopted community.

The story Frank “Booze” Beyer and Tijuana.

The big move to the new Central Library is underway. Here’s some footage of the action and some brief interviews.

Reading Room of the Wangenheim Collection.

In my day job at the San Diego Public Library, I supervise the Wangenheim Rare Book on the third floor at the Central Library. (Here’s the library web pages that describe this great collection: http://www.sandiego.gov/public-library/locations/wangenheim.shtml) We try to keep this special place open daily in the afternoons. But we rely on docents to make this happen and right now we need some new volunteers.

Docents are vital to Wangenheim Room operations. Docents welcome visitors, conduct tours, and answer questions about exhibits in the Room. To be a docent, you must interact well with people, be able to remember text of tour script, present in friendly manner and feel comfortable working in a quiet setting. An appreciation and understanding of historical artifacts is desirable. You also must commit to working 1 day a week for 3 hours a day for at least 6 months. For more information, contact me, Rick Crawford, at (619) 236-5852.

The public library will be open to the public evenings and Sundays, even if it requires the use of an axe, a la Carrie Nation style. –City Councilmen Percy Benbough, Jan. 20, 1917.

In 1917, San Diego librarians and the public waged war with the City Council over the library hours. Who would back down? The Library Mutiny.

San Diego's Carnegie Library at 8th and E Streets.