Classic Pics Soon a Click Away

The donation by the Pacific Palisades Historical Society to the Santa Monica Public Library of 3,000 photographs, now fully catalogued for online access, heralds a new digital era in the town’s history.

When it comes to questions about local history, Betty Lou Young and Randy Young, the mother-and-son team who co-authored the definitive book on the subject, ‘Pacific Palisades: From the Mountains to the Sea,’ are the go-to people. That’s all about to change, much to the delight of the Youngs, who spearheaded the project to go global with the Pacific Palisades Historical Society’s bounty of historic photographs. At an official ceremony on Monday, the historical society donated thousands of photographs and other ephemera to the Santa Monica Library, where state-of-the-art everything is in place at the new main facility on 5th Street that had its grand reopening in January ‘It’s just in the nick of time,’ Randy Young notes. ‘A lot of images were starting to deteriorate.’ Ten years in the making, the transfer of the collections from a storeroom in the Palisades Methodist Church to the library’s image archive is a significant leap. Both institutions benefit from the new arrangement: the historical society finally has a safe, accessible, local site for its collections, and the library gains a comprehensive record of the history of Pacific Palisades and Santa Monica Canyon. The photographs, tucked in archival sleeves, now live in a temperature- and humidity-controlled room, reachable to the public through a librarian’s assistance. But the biggest coup is the new corresponding digital catalog, one that by year’s end can be viewed by anyone in the world via the Santa Monica Library’s Web site. The historical society owes much to photo archivist Kathrine Currey, who, in tandem with Randy Young, meticulously researched and indexed the collection for online consumption. Betty Lou Young had the task of final edit. Currey, previously a resident of Santa Monica, moved to New York just as the project was getting under way. She kept with it, receiving photo scans and captions from Randy Young by e-mail and traveling back and forth several times. Her work for the historical society is one of many collections Currey handles; she’s also the photo archivist for celebrity photographer Timothy White. The new digital catalog is thoroughly cross-referenced, allowing searches by hundreds of categories, from individuals, schools and streets to beaches, businesses and beyond. ‘Many people love the charm of this area,’ Currey says. ‘But they don’t really see how it began. What was so interesting to me about the collection was everything it shows that isn’t here any more.’ ‘People are always saying California has no history,’ she continues. ‘Well, my goodness, there’s plenty of history. It just needs to be accessible.’ The images span the 1880s through the early 1970s, with the bulk coming from 1920s and ’30s, when Methodists founded Pacific Palisades. Newcomers to the area might be startled to see vast swaths of unsettled land. The photographs are a treasure trove of information. Betty Lou Young, who just completed a book about the Chautauqua movement, studied them for her chapter on the Palisades. But beyond their invaluable use as a research tool, the images resonate in other ways. ‘Everyone has his or her own take on photographs,’ Young says. ‘It also has to do with countless feelings.’ As co-curator of the collection, Young sorted through thousands of photographs before arriving at the 3,000 selected for the online catalog. Major moments in the community’s history are all chronicled, events such as opening of Canyon Elementary School in 1894, the floods of 1938 and the dedication of Will Rogers Beach in 1942. But smaller moments, too, often catch Young’s eye. One such photograph, dating from the 1940s, offers a glimpse into a couple’s home life as they gather in front of the fireplace listening to the radio. ‘These are real time capsules,’ Young says. ‘It’s a slice in time.’ Young is especially eager to use the newly digitized photographs in area schools to get kids fired up about their own community’s past. ‘The slide show possibilities are endless,’ he says. ‘I can take a picture of the kids that day and feature it as the final image to convey ‘You are part of the history.”