of them include Ulysses S. Grant, President Taft, Sen. Jones and his wife, Roy Jones and Harry Gorham, the Santa Monica Bath House, old buildings, churches, schools, streets, parks, first homes, the long wharf, early golf outings and the Women’s Friday Morning Club hosted by Susan B. Anthony. There also are materials and photographs related to Santa Monica co-founder Colonel Robert S. Baker and his wife, Arcadia Bandini de Baker.
The collection was rediscovered by John Farquhar, Sen. Jones’ grandson, who has donated it to the Santa Monica Historical Society. But it needs to be indexed, properly preserved, and the photographs need to be identified through the help of Farquhar and Ricardo Johnson, the great, great nephew of Arcadia Bandini de Baker. Johnson also is a Santa Monica historian.
A separate collection — about 15,500 pieces stored in 102 boxes — is on loan and housed at the Huntington Library. It eventually will be donated to the Santa Monica Historical Society. Those pieces also need to be sorted out and indexed, Gabriel said.
She estimates that it will take $45,000 to preserve the items and another $30,000 in salaries for the staff.
“What a wonderful collection since it comes from the co-founder’s personal materials and it’s hoped that the city and the historical society will enjoy this donation and the participation of two descendants of both founding families,” Gabriel told the council. “By doing this there is good exposure and other families might also wish to come forward with their collections.”
But Gabriel may have difficulty getting any money from City Hall, which is facing a $4 million budget shortfall this year.
City Council members, who recognize the historical significance of the collection, said they can’t give away money they don’t have.
Gabriel made the request during the council’s mid-term budget session, which included countless community members also asking for money for their own causes. The City Council is expected to approve the budget in July.
“We don’t have extra money,” Mayor Richard Bloom said at the meeting. “We are cutting, not adding.”
Bloom suggested that the historical society turn to other revenue streams, like state and federal grants, as well as public outreach.
“When you have something that we acknowledge as important then there must be someone in the public — not the local government that is experiencing a hemorrhage,” he said. “The city should be the last place they should turn to.”
Gabriel said the historical society is about to embark on a community campaign to raise $5 million for the facility and its programs. She added that a minimum of $1 million is needed just for the building’s shell and another $1.5 million is required for displays.
“The city doesn’t give us one penny to sustain it,” Gabriel said, adding City Hall gave the historical society a one-time $10,000 grant to catalog old newspaper photographs — and that didn’t cover staff time. “We are the lowest on the totem pole.”
The historical society has one-and-a-half paid employees and about 20 volunteers. But many more will be needed to sort through the Jones collection.
Bloom said he’ll consider the request once all other resources have been exhausted.
“I hope they are going to show that they have exhausted all other resources because we are faced with a crisis,” he said. “This is a collection that the public is interested in so there should be significant public outreach... they need to modernize their fundraising approach.
“I’ll help them.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 23, 2004. Read the original PDF.