“It would be as if the greatest works of English literature had never happened.” – Paul Collins[1] Stratford-Upon-Avon: The Home of William Shakespeare, pictorially illustrated. Walbrook:Rock Brothers, &Payne: 1864. Last month William Shakespeare (April 26, 1564 – April 23, 1616), the great and immortal bard, would have turned 458 years old. His enduring legacy was…
Party like it’s 1950: Celebrating the Release of the Latest Census!
The 1950s seem to be making a comeback, from biopics on Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in Being the Ricardos to another film coming out this year on Elvis Presley. The latest comeback to join the party is none other than the 1950 United States Census! Collage of magazine covers from April 1950 providing a…
E.M North-Whitcomb’s Scrap Books
Around 1921, Elizabeth “Bessie” McDonald1 gifted to Sutro Library—which opened to the public only four years earlier—several books and papers that had been in the possession of her late mother, E.M. North-Whitcomb (ca. 1843-1920). News notes of California libraries, the California State Library’s official journal, reported in October of the same year that “the late Mrs.…
The Lincoln Assassination & Its Aftermath
In many parts of the United States, the public’s reaction to the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865 by stage actor John Wilkes Booth, was a mixture of grief, vengefulness, fear, and horror. Lincoln was shot on April 14, 1865, at Ford's Theater in Washington D.C. He died the following day, making him the…
Finding the Aztecs: Primary sources from the Sutro Library
Aztec calendar with birds of the day, lords of the night and day signs - Códice Tudela facsimile. This month, we focus our attention on the rich primary resources we have on the Aztecs. Sutro Library has several works reflecting their advanced culture and achievements : the Tudela Codex which will be discussed later on,…
Critical Family History at Sutro Library
As 2021 comes to a close so too does our fifth year of family and local history talks. Over the course of six talks, we explored how power relationships—be they social, cultural and/or political—can shape one’s family’s success and destinies. This way of looking at genealogy is called critical family history, a term coined by…
Esperantujo
In 1887, Polish ophthalmologist L.L. Zamenhof published Dr. Esperanto’s International Language.1 The book described a language that the author claimed could be quickly learned and used by anyone,2 no matter their homeland or mother tongue, as a shared second (or third, fourth, or n-th) language; this, in turn, would encourage communication around the world and foster a more harmonious, peaceful human existence. Dr. Esperanto’s “international language” soon became known as Esperanto, which is how you say “one who hopes”…
Hold the Phone Fiche: New Telephone Directory Database at Sutro Library
Since 2019, Sutro staff and volunteers have been working on making the Sutro Library’s telephone directories on microfiche (aka phone fiche) more accessible remotely and have created a new database fulfilling that goal! But before I give you a tour of this new database and how you might search it, I wanted to go over…
Gardens: A history.
WARNING: This blog post has a lot of cool images! Rösel von Rosenhof, August Johann et al. Historia naturalis ranarum nostratium: in qua omnes earum proprietates, praesertim quae ad generationem ipsarum pertinent, fusius ennarrantur. Nürnberg: gedrucht bey Johann Joseph Fleischmann, 1758. Print. – Frontispiece. “Humans have long turned to gardens—both real and imaginary—for sanctuary from…
A Tale of Two Readers
The philosopher and theologian John Duns Scotus was a great influence on the Franciscan intellectual tradition, and it shows in the copies of his works that were once property of the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco. The school was founded in 1533 by Franciscans to prepare the children of indigenous elites for priesthood. Though…
Sutro Library 