History lives in old pieces of paper: newspaper articles, diaries, letters, trial transcripts, government memorandums. These are the building blocks of the stories about our past. And these days, as AI spreads dubious information and people distort history, those old pieces of paper can give us clues and evidence about a foundational question: What actually happened?
Chicago may soon lose one of its most valuable storehouses of such historical documents, the regional branch of the National Archives at 7358 South Pulaski Road, where shelves are filled with 140,000 cubic feet of records from 85 federal agencies, available for anyone to look at. The facility’s website was recently updated with this note: “The National Archives at Chicago will be closing in the next few years.”
The National Archives and Records Administration hasn’t given any public explanation about what’s going on — or responded to my email seeking comment — but its employees received an email June 23 from the agency’s CEO, Jay Trainer, who said the Chicago facility and another one near San Francisco are closing. He called it a cost-cutting measure that will “reduce our real estate portfolio in alignment with the administration’s priorities.”
Now, this doesn’t mean that the documents currently stashed away on the Southwest Side will vanish completely. Trainer’s email said the records will be moved elsewhere in the country, though it didn’t say when or where. Even the archivists who work at the Chicago facility are in the dark about this, one archivist told me, asking for anonymity. They said employees were told that documents could be taken out of Chicago starting as soon as August.
This is a treasure trove of old government papers, photos, and miscellaneous objects from Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. To name just a few of the archive’s numerous items, there are guard reports from Chicago’s Camp Douglas prisoner-of-war camp for Confederate soldiers; an empty bottle of Chianti signed by Manhattan Project scientists; inspection reports for the Edmund Fitzgerald; and court cases about everything from boxer Jack Johnson to the Chicago Seven.
The National Archives has had a storage center in Chicago since the 1950s, operating in this building on Pulaski Road since 1974. In addition to these publicly accessible archives, the complex also houses the even larger Chicago Federal Records Center, a warehouse of more recent court documents and government records, which will also be moved, according to Trainer’s email.
The records now kept in Chicago could be moved to a location like the National Archives facility in Kansas City, Missouri. That’s where some sets of locally stored documents, including bankruptcy files, have been transferred in the past.
Wherever the records end up, they probably won’t be as easy to see. Depending on where you live, the National Archives location in the West Lawn area may not seem that convenient. But for Chicagoans and other folks who live in the surrounding region, it’s a heck of a lot closer than Kansas City. You do need to make an appointment to visit — and take a quick online course about the facility’s rules. (You’re not allowed to bring in down-filled vests, lip balm, clear plastic bags bigger than 11 by 11 inches, Post-it notes, or original historical documents, among other things.)
Once you’re inside, you’ll be assigned a seat at one of several tables, where an archivist will bring boxes containing any documents you ask for. You can spend as much time as you want leafing (carefully!) through pages. Whenever I see anything that looks interesting, I use my iPhone to take a picture of the page. (That’s A-OK under the rules.)
This archive was an essential source for me back in 2010, when I wrote a Chicago magazine story about the 1896 trial of newspaper publisher Joseph R. Dunlop, who was imprisoned for mailing “obscene, lewd, lascivious and indecent” personal ads in the Chicago Dispatch. The federal court file for this case includes actual clippings of those supposedly obscene ads, which I couldn’t find anywhere else.
If I were researching the same story today, it would be easier. The National Archives has been digitizing some documents, and Dunlop’s case file — all 394 pages of it — is now posted on the agency’s website. I can just look at it on my computer at home instead of trekking down Pulaski Road. (You can search for documents at https://catalog.archives.gov/, which has links to scanned files and info about where physical documents can be found.)
But very few of the agency’s documents are digitized — far less than 1 percent, according to my anonymous source. While researching the early history of the Green Mill, I examined about 50 federal court case files, including a dozen involving Green Mill Gardens, as the venue was originally called, as well as cases connected with the nearby Rainbo Gardens and other Prohibition-era hot spots. These cases had not been digitized. In these files, I was thrilled to find legal descriptions of the Green Mill’s old configuration — the venue was in a different part of the building, not where it is today — along with a program indicating that the “Father of Stride,” James P. Johnson, played his classic piano composition “Carolina Shout” at Green Mill Gardens in 1922.
It would be a gargantuan task to scan all 50,155 cubic feet of the U.S. District Court records stored at the Pulaski Road facility. The most famous and most requested files have been scanned (including, of course, the United States of America v. Alphonse Capone). But thousands upon thousands of more obscure cases are packed away in boxes. In many cases, court clerks folded up these pages and tied them up with string. It’s often possible that no one has even looked at the papers for a hundred years or more. Unfolding the papers and scanning them requires delicate handling by human hands. And with the U.S. government in cost-cutting mode, a massive undertaking like that seems unlikely.
If all this stuff is moved somewhere else, how easy will it be to access? I got a preview of that experience when I emailed Kansas City’s National Archives branch in 2023, asking to see the 1934 bankruptcy case for the Riviera Building Corporation, which owned Chicago’s Riviera Theatre. An archivist replied two days later, telling me the file was 900 pages. “Due to staffing limitations, we can only reproduce up to 400 pages,” he said. To see the entire file, I’d have to travel to Kansas City.
Instead, I narrowed down my request, asking to see just certain portions of the file. Those turned out to be 187 pages. To get those scanned, I paid a fee of $149.60 — and questioned my sanity for paying it. Thirteen days after my initial inquiry, I received a PDF. Was it worth the money? That’s debatable. It did not contain any exciting revelations. But I had no way of knowing what was in those pages until I’d already paid — or traveled 500 miles to see them for myself.
That’s a common situation in historical research: You don’t know what will be interesting or important until you actually see it. Thankfully, the way things are set up now at the National Archives in Chicago, it’s pretty easy to see a lot of stuff.
Most of my research has been guided by my fascination with Chicago history. Other people visit the local National Archives facility for more urgent personal reasons, like obtaining proof that they’re U.S. citizens.
“The collection documents the entire history of the Great Lakes region and its people — from records of momentous and historically significant events to routine paperwork that some citizens need to access in order to prove citizenship, obtain Medicare, receive other government benefits, and beyond,” a group called Chicago Area Archivists wrote in an online post, as it urged the government to keep this facility open. The group is asking people to sign a petition and contact officials.
During one of my recent visits, two American Indian researchers sat near me, looking up information about ancestors who were in government boarding schools. They were combing through a large collection of Bureau of Indian Affairs documents. These files are critically important — not just for learning about history but also for current-day issues involving tribes, like land rights and tribal money that’s held in trust by the government.
Out of curiosity, I’ve recently started looking through the Chinese Exclusion Case Files, which are speckled with details about local Chinese immigrants trying to secure the right to stay in the United States in the early 20th century. Much history remains to be unearthed in these 155 boxes — you could spend years going through all of it.
My search for Prohibition lawsuits eventually led to an unexpected discovery about my own family. An archivist who’d helped me out with this research happened to notice an index card for someone named Robert Loerzel. That was my grandfather. As it turned out, the feds sued my grandparents in 1932, along with a man renting the basement of their house in the South Side’s Burnside neighborhood, who was allegedly using the space to make alcohol. A Prohibition agent found a still, plus 60 bags of corn sugar and two 2,000-gallon vats full of mash. How much did my ancestors know about these activities in their basement? There’s no one alive who can answer that question. But these documents at least gave me a glimpse into a chapter of my family history I’d never heard anything about.
I never would have found that file if an archivist hadn’t given me a tip. And that’s not the only time that these archivists have helped me. If Chicago’s National Archives employees lose their jobs, we’ll lose their deep knowledge about the immense collection they oversee.
That file about my grandparents may not seem all that important in the grand scheme of history. It’s just a run-of-the-mill Prohibition case — maybe not significant enough for the U.S. government to digitize. But for me, it brought that history home.
Countless other documents in the National Archives on Pulaski Road contain untold stories about other families. It’ll be a shame if they’re carted off to some distant warehouse where they’ll be harder for anyone to see. We need more access to our history, not less.
Robert Loerzel is a freelancer writer for Chicago magazine.
