Nestled between the men and women’s restrooms at Polliwog Park is a small storage space filled with a century of Manhattan Beach history.
On three bookshelves, each four rows tall, stand bound archives of old newspapers documenting Manhattan Beach since the city was founded in 1912.
“Rain storm of week un-paralleled in beach history,” read the top headline, in capital letters, of Manhattan Beach News on March 1, 1913. “Popular girl will soon be married,” another day’s front page headline read.
With plans for the new Manhattan Beach library in full swing, the Manhattan Beach Historical Society and local historians hope the collection of newspapers would find a new home. On Wednesday, local historians met with Los Angeles County library representatives to discuss the feasibility of bringing the collection to the new library.
About two years ago, the collection was moved from the historical society cottage museum to the bathroom storage space. Members worried that in the case of a fire in the cottage museum, the history would be lost forever.
“(The archives) have been sadly inaccessible for some time,” said Gary McAulay, historical society board member. The historical society museum is open to the public for six hours each week, leaving little time for the public to access the collection. “We have a history in this town,” McAulay said. “When you put it out there, people say, ‘Hey, that’s pretty cool,’ and become more interested.”
Collecting $20 each year from 150 historical society members is not a sufficient budget to fund digitization of the collection, McAulay said.
While California State University, Dominguez Hills has expressed interest in obtaining the archives for its regional history collection, local historians are reluctant to give them up. “I’m concerned that once it goes away from town, the only people who would ever go out there are the most dedicated of historians,” McAulay said.
Linda Demmers, library consultant for Manhattan Beach, suggested a glass case for the collection, perhaps near the staircase inside the new Manhattan Beach library. Library-goers would need assistance to view the collection, and accessible documents would likely be photocopies.
The library doesn’t have a wealth of space for local history, said Margaret Todd, county librarian. Todd said she’d ask her staff to research grant opportunities for digitization. “I’d rather digitize them and have them available that way,” she said, later adding, “If anything happens, they’re gone. Newspaper is fragile, once it’s gone, it’s gone.”
In the storage space, McAulay sifted through bound books of archives, chuckling at and reminiscing about old news articles. “What I’d actually rather be doing is looking through these old papers,” he said. “Instead I’m spending my time trying to save this stuff.”
