HISTORICAL SOCIETY — Unlocking a critical time in Santa Monica’s history will cost at least $75,000, local historians say.
Louise Gabriel, president of the Santa Monica Historical Society, asked the City Council last month for a $75,000 grant to preserve close to 65,000 historical pieces that include photographs, letters, architectural drawings, paintings, records and boxes full of correspondence dating back to the 1870s.
The collection, which comes from the estate of Sen. John P. Jones, co-founder of Santa Monica, was recently discovered in a storage unit that had been kept for the past 40 years, Gabriel said. It’s considered one of the most significant collections of Santa Monica’s early days because it explains the 30-to 40-year history of the founding of the town.
Of the more notable pieces are approximately 15,000 original letters ranging from the 1880s to the 1930s, when Sen. Jones and his family occupied what is now the Fairmont Miramar Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard and Ocean Avenue. There were hundreds of letters from Mark Twain, Ulysses S. Grant, John Fremont, Jesse Fremont and Robert Ingersoll, to name a few.
The correspondence to Sen. Jones around his time as senator, from 1870 to 1902, includes diaries of everyday life in Santa Monica from 1880 to 1905, as well as several invitations to luncheons, dinners and galas from presidents during Jones’ tenure.
There are close to 25,000 photographs, ranging from the 1870s to the 1960s relating to Santa Monica’s history and family photographs spanning several generations. Some
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 23, 2004. Read the original PDF.