Storage Furniture for the Dallas Municipal Archives

FAIN: PG-52045-13

Dallas, City of (Dallas, TX 75201-6318)
John Slate (Project Director: May 2012 to September 2014)

The purchase of shelving to enable the city's dispersed archival records to be consolidated in a single climate-controlled facility. The collection, comprising 1,500 cubic feet, includes correspondence, photographs, construction records, maps, and reports dating to the early industrialization and expansion of Dallas in the 1860s. These materials extensively document many aspects of the city's social, cultural, and environmental history such as public health and mortality in the late 1800s and beyond, the establishment of the city's park system and historic architecture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, various New Deal-era Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps projects, and 20th-century criminal investigations, including an extensive series of records from the Dallas Police Department pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The grant would support a portion of the cost to purchase metal shelving to expand the shelving capacity of the Dallas Municipal Archives. By installing new shelving, collections will achieve the goal of enhanced stabilization and support of boxes, and especially for oversized items and rolled plans and drawings. Expanding the shelving capacity will allow the entire archives to be housed within one climate-controlled space instead of three storage areas scattered around Dallas City Hall. The specific activity of the grant is to purchase preservation quality metal shelving, which would be assembled and installed by qualified City of Dallas staff.