Historical Archives Continue To Thrive In Local Establishment
Photo courtesy of Ankur Singh
By Ankur Singh
A version of this story was also published by the Wednesday Journal.
Using a microfilm reader near the reference desk at the Cicero Public Library, Assistant Director Patricia Conroy projects an image of the front page of the old news publication, shedding light on how people lived in the 1930s.
There is a cabinet that stores Cicero’s history documented in newspapers since the 1930s. The library’s microfilm collection is part of a broader collection of historical artifacts that the library has collected for more than two decades that preserve Cicero's storied history.
Cicero’s history includes significant civil rights marches, changing demographics due to immigration and more. Several locations within Cicero, and also in Berwyn, aim to reserve history items to educate people about the town’s past, including languages and artifacts.
According to Brian Dillon, president of the Berwyn Historical Society, preserving local history is important so that “people have a sense of where we came from and how we got here…if you read through the old newspapers many of the issues back then are the same issues we’re dealing with now: money, taxes, people wanting better city services.”
Many Cicero and Berwyn community members, and organizations, have stepped up to preserve and archive the area’s history and share these stories with their neighbors. Several very active Facebook groups have also been created by community members to share memories, old photographs, stories and newspaper headlines.
Local school secures Czech Republic culture
In addition to the Cicero Public Library, the Berwyn Historical Society and T. G. Masaryk Czech School also holds historical archives of the area. Morton College once had a museum dedicated to Hawthorne Works, but currently the museum is closed and the items are in storage.
Photo courtesy of Ankur Singh
At the T. G. Masaryk Czech School, located on the corner of W 22nd Place and S 57th Ave, the school itself is a place where history meets the present. The school, which was built over 100 years ago when Cicero’s population was around 70 percent Czech, teaches the language, culture and history to adults and children and has served as a center of the Czech community since its founding.
The school currently has more than 100 students enrolled, but enrollment ebbs and flows depending on patterns of Czech immigration to the United States. The school was run entirely by volunteers, until 2010, when the Czech government began funding a full-time teacher to teach and live at the school.
Klára Moldová, who is now the vice president of the school, was the first person hired through the program and lived and worked at the school for ten years. According to her, the school was built with an apartment attached to it where the maintenance lived, similar to how schools were built in the Czech Republic in the past.
“I loved living at the school,” Moldová said. “The building was in a bad shape. The same year they were going to sell it to the Town of Cicero and make a parking lot out of it.”
For many years, the second floor of the school was home to the Czech Genealogy Society and Moldová was curious.
“I just made the effort one day to climb up the stairs…and I couldn't believe what they found,” she said.
Moldová discovered that her great-grandmother actually lived in Cicero and Berwyn and worked at the Western Electric Company, where she spent many years manufacturing telephones and cables before returning to her home country
Today, a large room on the second floor is rented out to the Czech Heritage Museum, housing boxes full of items stored as the museum works to develop a new space for them.
Berwyn museum
For those looking for a more public way to learn local history, one of the best places to go is the museum run by the Berwyn Historical Society on 1401 Grove Avenue where admission is free.
Their website states that they are, “dedicated to collecting, preserving, and disseminating historical information about the City of Berwyn including its architecture, its people, communities, businesses, economics, cultures and ethnicities past and present, and its overall societal footprint as a near-west Chicago suburb.”
Brian Dillon, the president of the Berwyn Historical Society, said the organization is committed to sharing local history through different methods.
They achieve this by inviting guest speakers, making presentations at local schools, sharing old photos on social media and responding to requests from community members who are seeking information about their homes or old relatives. He said helping people understand local history helps them understand the present.
“You’ve got South Berwyn and you’ve got North Berwyn,” Dillon said. “It doesn't make sense these days, but if you knew there was a railroad and South Berwyn grew around that. There was a big swampy prairie in between South and North Berwyn, and that’s why they were physically separated. And they kind of look different. The Victorian houses in the depot district, you don't see them north of Cermak.”
The Berwyn Historical Society purchased the building in 2010 and spent time renovating it before opening the museum to the public. Today, the group continues to have historical items in storage in the basement of a church.
Local Public library preserves history of the town
The Cicero Historical Society, a historical organization that stores archives, existed. However, the group stopped meeting about 20 years ago and decided to donate all their items to the Cicero Public Library. The library now houses these archives in a dedicated history room.
Photo courtesy of Ankur Singh
In the room are old newspapers, posters, little knick-knacks from local businesses over decades, videotapes, maps of factories, Town of Cicero budgets and zoning maps, yearbooks, phonebooks and so much more.
In addition to materials from the Cicero Historical Society, local community members sometimes donate items that they find in their homes and basements. Cicero Independiente has similarly donated print editions of our work to be added to the archives.
“I do think that the library is a natural spot for such a collection to land,” said Patricia Conroy, the assistant director of the Cicero Public Library.
According to Conroy, the majority of people who request access to the history archives are doing research on their family genealogy or for professional reasons.
Conroy recalls one woman from Argentina who came to the library to look up some of her ancestors who had settled in Cicero and the library was able to help her find information to connect with distant cousins who are still living in the Chicago land area.
In addition, many historians, journalists or students doing research for a book, documentary or paper often request access to the archives such as an individual who was writing a book on healthcare and Latinos.
Conroy said the room is often underutilized due to a lack of staff with experience on the technical process of historical archiving.
“I would like to be able to dedicate more staff and dedicate more time to it,” Conroy said. “Unfortunately, we're a very busy public desk. So it's just hard for me to have librarians in here for the amount of time that it really needs.”
With such a rich and vibrant past, the efforts of Cicero and Berwyn community members and organizations to preserve this history helps maintain the strong fabric of both neighborhoods.
“We don't exist in a vacuum,” Conroy said. “Really everything that comes before us shapes the place that we're in and could hopefully point us forward too.”
Ankur Singh is a freelance journalist and a co-founder of Cicero Independiente.
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