Did you know that the BAHA has a number of committees (made up of Board members) that focus on specific topics?  One is the Archives Committee.  Archives make up the backbone of BAHA.  If you recall, our mission is:  “To promote, through education, an understanding and appreciation for Berkeley’s history, and to encourage the preservation of its historic buildings.”  That can’t be easily done without having access to archival materials that can be used to educate and get the message out about preserving our built environment.

The Archives Committee is involved in several different projects.  The primary focus has been to continue the work on digitizing the Donogh Files.  This has been about a 20-year project, primarily because the Donogh Files consist of about 75,000 index cards (about 1500 index cards spread over 50 large boxes), and sometimes these cards have much more information in envelopes attached to the cards.  The Donogh Files are named after Ormsby Donogh, a real estate agent who collected information about almost every house in Berkeley (and sometimes the surrounding area).  This one-of-a-kind archive is rich in information about the owners of the houses throughout the time Donogh collected his information (from the 1940s through 1970s), how much they were sold for, and any news that Donogh felt was important to attach to the card.  He also attached photos for many of the houses.  As you can imagine, it takes time to digitize each part of the index card (both front and back for many of them).  BAHA can also access the index cards themselves if they haven’t been digitized yet.  A guess is that we have completed about 60-70% of the archive—and the work continues!  And for those who live in Oakland, Donogh also created files on houses there.

And sometimes, if you are lucky you get photos of some pretty neat cars as well.

Another project we are about to start is to preserve the many maps we have.  BAHA received a Groundwork grant last year and part of the grant was to purchase archival storage materials.  We now have large archival boxes, sleeves, and acid-free paper.  The work will soon begin to catalog and store these very important documents.

If you are interested in helping with any of the archival projects, please contact Kevin Kaatz (President of BAHA) at [email protected]