Mergers & Acquisitions

California Historical Society to dissolve and transfer collections to Stanford

The California Historical Society, facing longstanding financial challenges exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, has decided to dissolve and transfer its collections to Stanford University.

The society, a private nonprofit organization established in 1871 and designated the state’s official historical society in 1979, is one of California’s oldest historical organizations. But unusually among state historical societies, its leadership said, it received no regular state funding, which left if vulnerable to the vagaries of private donations.

Tony Gonzalez, the organization’s board chair, said the decision to dissolve the organization, which is headquartered in San Francisco, was “bittersweet.” But he emphasized that the arrangement with Stanford ensured that the society’s collections, which include more than 600,000 items stretching back a century before the Gold Rush, would remain intact and accessible to the public.

“We think of it as a rebirth,” Gonzalez said. The collection will be better cared for by Stanford than with us. The society also holds the archives of many organizations, like the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and the California Flower Market, Inc., founded by Japanese American flower merchants in 1912.

It is also the official repository for records relating to the People’s Temple, whose members, led by Jim Jones, drank poison in Guyana in 1978, leading to the death of more than 900 people, a third of them children.

Anh Ly, Stanford’s assistant university librarian for external relations, called the historical society’s collection a “huge addition” to its own holdings of more than 15 million items, which would help fill in some gaps, particularly relating to California’s early history.

The board’s decision to dissolve the society and transfer its collection follows a decade of failed attempts at a turnaround.

In 2016, it was tapped by the city of San Francisco as its lead partner for a potential restoration of the Old United States Mint in downtown San Francisco, one of the few structures to survive the 1906 earthquake and fire. The restoration of the building was too expensive and it had been largely unoccupied for decades. In early 2020 the group announced that they would sell their 20,000-square foot building near Union Square to fund traveling shows and partnerships around the state. But that effort was thwarted by the pandemic and downturn in San Francisco’s real estate market, as well as the unexpected death in 2022 of Alicia L. Goehring, the executive director and chief executive who helped formulate the plan.

Gonzalez, a Sacramento lawyer who joined the board in 2012, said that private philanthropic support had become unreliable over the past two decades, as many foundations and donors pivoted away from the humanities toward efforts more directly aimed at solving social problems. The request was denied. The legislature said the same thing we heard from other philanthropic groups: this sounds like something that a university should do,” Gonzalez said. Four years after it was first listed, its building — a former hardware store painted the same shade of red as the Golden Gate Bridge — was sold for nearly $6.7 million, according to The San Francisco Chronicle.

Under terms of dissolution, which had to be approved by the state attorney general, Stanford will also receive the society’s endowment of roughly $3.2 million. While most of the staff of roughly two dozen have been let go over the past several years, Whitley said, three people will move to Stanford with the collection.

Gonzalez said it was “painful” to see history lose a footprint in San Francisco, at a moment when many of the city’s history and preservation groups are struggling to stay afloat. He said that Stanford’s stewardship would allow for the discovery of new stories from the past. Juana Briones was a businesswoman, healer, and entrepreneur born in Santa Cruz in 1802. She lived in Local preservationists saved a section of adobe from her Palo Alto home in 2011, which was used as the centerpiece of a bilingual exhibit at the historical society. “But there are all these unsung heros.”

Story originally seen here

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