Lawrence Public Library

Lawrence, Mass. Engineering Department plans and associated papers, 1852-2011

eng

Lawrence, Mass. Engineering Department plans and associated papers

1145411598

Large quantities of plans from the City Engineer's Office came into the Lawrence Public Library in the summer of 2009. At the time The IT Department for the City took on the task of scanning and organizing the plans. Nine tiers of map cases (20 drawers each) were purchased and the plans and other materials were placed in the drawers. In 2010, the city administration changed and the entire staff of the IT department was fired. Consequently the staff that took over never had access to all the digital files and the Library and the Engineering Office were left with plans and other documents that were not usable. In the summer of 2012, with the help of a student volunteer at Central Catholic High School, we began the task of creating an excel file of the plans in the map cases. By the beginning of the school year, about 80% of the drawers were incorporated. The information included on the spreadsheet was title, date, and a number that regularly appears on many of the plans. It seemed to refer to an earlier access number. There were some early plans for streets and sewers that were bound into large volumes. They came in earlier and were processed separately (LH 2009.9.2.13 streets and LH 2009.9.2.14 sewers). Bellevue Cemetery plans and records were removed (LH 2009.9.7). Besides the plans housed in the map cases (A-I, 1-20), smaller plans were housed in newspaper box (box 1), letter size material (boxes 2 and 3), legal size material (box 4), contracts and specs magazine box (box 5), and mostly WPA work sheets (large flat box box 6). Other hand drawn maps have been kept with the rest of the plans. The plans are stored in relation to size. Very large ones are rolled in or on the oustide of tubes and stored in bins above the mapcases. Map cases hold all the other plans. These records came to the Library in large quantities of materials with no clear view of where they were created. The first five (legal size Hollinger) boxes contain contracts made between the city of Lawrence and various vendors from 1900-1946