TITLE
Recommendation to respectfully request City Manager to assist the Long Beach Heritage Museum in finding storage for their collections in service to past, present and future residents of Long Beach; and request City Manager to also work with Long Beach Heritage Museum to find space where pieces of their collection could be put on display for the public.
DISCUSSION
The Long Beach Heritage Museum started in 1961 when Ken Larkey put on a photo display of the 1933 earthquake at the Long Beach Recreation Department hobby show. The exhibit was so popular, Ken decided to find a “permanent” home where people could see his collection of Long Beach memorabilia.
In February of 1971, Long Beach’s first History Museum was open at the northwest corner of First Street and Linden Avenue, then called the Queen of the Beaches Museum. After a few years, the museum moved to Third and Elm, just east of the main post office downtown. It was then renamed the Long Beach Heritage Museum. Among the many activities at the Museum was the presentation of historical movies, slide shows and exhibits of historical documents and other memorabilia found in the collection. In 1994, the Museum’s 1917 building on Third Street was declared as substandard by the city building safety department and was demolished. The Museum was forced to move its collections into storage, denying residents of and visitors to Long Beach an opportunity to learn firsthand from this page of our history.
Among its collections, the Long Beach Heritage Museum has the only roller coaster car left from the famous Pike Cyclone Racer, the last drug store soda fountain from the Harriman Jones drug store on Broadway and Cherry, an eleven-foot long, solid redwood surfboard used by Long Beach lifeguards in the 1930’s, chandeliers from the Pacific Coast Club, church pews, City Hall files, an old wooden public telephone booth, household furniture & kitchen appliances, silverware from the famous Hotel Virginia di...
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