FEATURED COLLECTION · 7 ITEMS
Washington Park Cemetery Card Index
Each card records the deceased's name, last residence in St. Louis, and date of death. A genealogical and demographic record of Black St. Louis between the World Wars and through the Civil Rights era.
4 records in the wireframe
Curator's picks this season
What the curatorial team is showing off this quarter — across all three buildings.
14 records in the wireframe
Recently digitized
The newest additions to the public collections API.
7 records in the wireframe
Photographs
Studio portraits, press photography, commercial shoots, and civic-event documentation from the photographic collections.
11 records in the wireframe
Manuscripts & correspondence
Letters, ledgers, and legal documents — the documentary substance of antebellum and Civil War-era St. Louis.
7 records in the wireframe
From the Papers of a City thread
Records cited in the Library & Research Center's standing editorial thread of manuscript surfacing.
FEDERATION SLOT · WIREFRAME PROMISE
From the Mill Creek thread
248 photographs, oral histories, and Sanborn maps make up the documentary record of the demolished neighborhood. Federation against the MHS public API will surface the full Sievers and Polk-Stuart subsets here.
In the wireframe
1 record harvested; below the minimum we render as a populated rail.
In production · federation surfaces
~250 known images + oral histories
subject:"Mill Creek Valley" OR collection:"Sievers Studio Collection"
FEDERATION SLOT · WIREFRAME PROMISE
From the Coming Home thread
Photographs and correspondence from St. Louis soldiers returning from war.
In the wireframe
1 record harvested; below the minimum we render as a populated rail.
In production · federation surfaces
WWI welcome parades, Vietnam-era family correspondence
subject:"Returning veterans" OR collection:"William Peters Collection"
FEDERATION SLOT · WIREFRAME PROMISE
Audio & oral history
Federation will surface the full African American History Initiative and We Are St. Louis oral-history corpora here.
In the wireframe
Zero records on hand. We deliberately don't fabricate to fill this rail.
In production · federation surfaces
AAHI + We Are St. Louis corpora
type:"oral_history"
FEDERATION SLOT · WIREFRAME PROMISE
Maps & cartography
Plat maps, Sanborn fire-insurance atlases, transit maps, and hand-drawn neighborhood maps — 1764 to present.
In the wireframe
Zero records on hand. We deliberately don't fabricate to fill this rail.
In production · federation surfaces
1,200+ catalogued maps
type:"map" OR collection:"Cartography"
CURATED SETS · 12 ACTIVE
Editor-built groupings.
Sets are curator-defined groupings within the archive — a way for the people who work with the collection every day to surface what's most worth looking at right now.
7 items
Washington Park Cemetery Card Index
Name-index cards from the historically Black cemetery in Berkeley, MO, operated 1920–1989.
2 items
Sievers Studio Collection
Commercial photography by Sievers Studio — banquets, conferences, conventions, retirement luncheons, and civic events in mid-century St. Louis.
1 items
Loyal Legion Portrait Albums
Studio portraits of Civil War veterans who became members of the Loyal Legion in the decades after the war.
1 items
Clark Family Collection, 1766–1991
Manuscripts from the William Clark family — correspondence, business records, and frontier-era documents spanning more than two centuries.
1 items
Dexter P. Tiffany Collection, 1808–1902
Antebellum St. Louis legal and personal manuscripts, including Free Negro bonds, deeds, and family correspondence.
1 items
Hamilton Rowan Gamble Papers, 1787–1876
The political and personal papers of Missouri's Civil War-era provisional governor Hamilton Rowan Gamble.
1 items
Saint Louis Gay and Lesbian Community Collection
Press releases, periodicals, photographs, and organizational records of LGBTQ+ St. Louis, 1980–2019 (bulk 1989–1998).
1 items
William Peters Collection
Photographs of St. Louis civic events from the early 20th century, including the 1919 welcome parades for soldiers returning from World War I.
1 items
James Carrington Collection
Press photography of mid-century St. Louis civic life — spelling bees, school events, public gatherings.
1 items
Edward H. Goldberger Collection
Mid-century commercial photography for St. Louis business clients.
1 items
Marlin Perkins Collection
Photographs from the personal papers of Marlin Perkins, longtime director of the Saint Louis Zoo and host of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.
1 items
The Pioneer
Bound volumes of The Pioneer, a Southwest High School (St. Louis) student periodical published mid-century.
BROWSE THE ARCHIVE
Pick a way in.
Four entry points for visitors who arrive without a specific search in mind.
By subject
By source collection
- Clark Family Collection, 1766-1991
- Dexter P. Tiffany Collection, 1808-1902
- Edward H. Goldberger Collection
- Hamilton Rowan Gamble Papers, 1787-1876
- James Carrington Collection
- Loyal Legion Portrait Albums Collection: Civil War Veterans
- Marlin Perkins Collection
- Saint Louis Gay and Lesbian Community Collection, 1980-2019
- Sievers Studio Collection
- The Pioneer
- Uncatalogued accession
- Washington Park Cemetery Card Index, 1920-1989
- William Peters Collection