HISTORY ROOM KEEPS PAST ALIVE
Book bash set for Sunday with talks, demos and a photo exhibit
NORWALK — Within the Norwalk Public Library History Room, there are several artifacts historian Ralph Bloom prizes above others.
One was placed on a shelf, face down in a picture frame, across a table from him in the room on the bottom floor of the library.
“That’s a proclamation by Gov. Thomas Fitch,” Bloom said, pointing to the Thanksgiving Proclamation marked 1763. “That’s a period piece that came from one of the Fitch descendants. That’s the kind of thing that was meant to be pasted outside on a fence post or whatever. They were not supposed to survive.”
The proclamation is one of many thousands of photographs, books, maps and general documents housed in the library’s History Room, which on Sunday from 2 to 4 p.m. will celebrate its fifth anniversary with talks from writers and researchers of Norwalk history, a demonstration of the room’s digital archives and a photo exhibit of the city’s past.
Bloom is a volunteer with the library, and
former curator of the collection while it was kept at the former Norwalk Museum, until 2012. It was at that point the collection at the museum was merged with library’s existing Local History Collection and transported — along with the large shelves, that move on a track, on which it was kept — to 1 Belden Ave. The amount of files was so immense, it took Bloom and a group of librarians more than three weeks of full days to pack up the documents and move them from South Norwalk to the library.
“There's a tremendous amount of history. It’s really amazing what we do have in this room. We were really lucky that the library took in all of this information,” said Lynn Hildenbrand, an archivist, reference librarian and one of three part- time staff members who maintain the library.
The work includes organizing and sorting documents, digitizing and completing research projects for visitors, who can use the room by appointment.
“As people come in to use the services, we log them in. As you start going through the pages, it’s amazing, some of these people have done a lot of traveling to get here,” Bloom said.
Hildenbrand remembered a descendant of the Hoyt family — one of Norwalk’s oldest — who had traveled from Germany to view old city records. Visitors are often surprised, Bloom said, at how long their ancestors had been in Norwalk. He said the goal of the room is to make the information accessible to as many members of the public as possible.
“We are all inclusive,” Bloom said. “We have people from all walks of life. You name the race, you name the religion —doesn’t matter. There is something here for everybody.”
Records of Norwalk’s no-longer-functioning airport (where All Saints School now sits) the amusement park at Roton Point and the Hat Corporation of America, which once had a location in the city, are all stored in the room’s shelves. Hildenbrand, Bloom and other History Room staff have digitized archives of the South Norwalk Sentinel and Norwalk Gazette, which were both active in the 19th century. The pages of the Norwalk have been digitized through 1911, and a large, multiyear project to digitize the remaining years is under way.
It’s a labor-intensive, expensive endeavor, but it’s an effort to preserve parts of Norwalk’s past, and it’s unfolding present, that Bloom and Hildenbrand are passionate about.
“This is always ongoing. Remember, the history room never ends. We are history right now,” Bloom said.