Using The Lafayette Square Searchable Archives

A benefit to living in Lafayette Square is our searchable archives, full of neighborhood information and history, down to the house and street and year, and who’s who and why, is available to you anytime, free of charge. Give it a whirl!

On the new website at lafayettesquare.org, the header menu looks like this.

Clicking “History” brings up a selection for “Searchable Archives.” An archives is a place to go for collected primary source documents. This one relates only to things of interest to Lafayette Square.

Click on “Searchable Archives” and a new window opens.  See “Archive Search” in the upper left corner? 

If you click on it, detailed directions (should you need them) are there. 

But briefly, you can enter an address, a year, a person, a theme, a source, document type or whatever strikes you into the box. Exact matches are provided first, and partial matches after those.  

Everything is entered as a pdf, and I can provide you a file copy if needed, by contacting me at: archives@lafayettesquare.org, or brational@gmail.com

There are currently over 1,700 documents and photographs in the archives. It’s free and available 24/7. 

Some searchable things that might be of immediate interest (to get you started) include:

• “elephant”
• “fire”, or try “great cyclone”
• “Marquis April 1978”
• “home purchase history”
• “Ruth”
• “grotto bridge”
• “halloween”
• “1974 spring house tour”
• “dumpster artists”
• “January 2020 minutes”
• “Popes Bar”

Or try your Lafayette Square address, a year, someone’s name – it’s all pretty well cross-linked.

Let me know what you think, or what you looked for and how you found it. This is a tool that is almost infinitely expandable. We can add something you might care to donate as well. 

Mike Jones – Lafayette Square Archives – lafayettesquarearchives.com