Bridging the Past, Present, and Future
ARCHIVES AND RESEARCH LIBRARY
The Hinsdale Historical Society Archives collects and preserves documentary materials relating to the history of Hinsdale. The collection includes photographs, books, ephemera, newspaper clippings, biographies and obituaries, house histories, city directories, maps, blueprints, high school yearbooks, and special collections.
Hours and Fees: The Archives, located at the Roger and Ruth Anderson Architecture Center in the lower level of Immanuel Hall, 302 South Grant Street, is open for walk-in hours from 10:00 am-2:00 pm on Tuesdays.
Use of the archives is FREE for members, students with valid IDs, not-for-proft organizations, and members of the press.
The access fee for non-members is $5.00.
Staff Conducted Research Fees:
For those patrons unable to visit the archives in person, we offer a Research for Fee service. There is a minimum one-hour charge for staff to conduct a thorough search of our archival resources.
The fee is $30 an hour for members and $10 for each subsequent hour.
The fee is $40 an hour for non-members and $20 for each additional hour.
To obtain a Research Request Form or for additional information about services and fees, please email Archives@HinsdaleHistory.org or call the Society at 630-789-2600.
To contact us, please call 630-789-2600 or email us at info@HinsdaleHistory.org
RESEARCH AND EDUCATION
The Hinsdale Historical Society has a local history archive as part of the Roger and Ruth Anderson Architecture Center located at Immanuel Hall. It contains a variety of materials related to the history of Hinsdale and DuPage County, as well as Chicago and Illinois. Some of the resources available are published histories and maps, many of which are available online.
Digitized by various libraries and archives around the country, these resources are accessible through websites like Archive.org, the Illinois Digital Archives, and Google Books. For those conducting historical and genealogical research, these online resources provide quicker and more thorough searches than through traditional methods.
First of all, one can conduct research from the comfort of his/her home (although visiting small historical archive like ours certainly has its own rewards). Secondly, instead of relying on the index – if there even is one – one can enter any search term, and it will be located within the document. Of course, common word names, like Bush or Grove, will get more hits for non-related stories and topics, but one might also find references not included in the index. Most of these websites will also allow for downloads of the whole book or map, as a PDF or other document type.
Here’s a list, by publication date, of some of the local history resources that can be found online. Some can be found on more than one website, although only one link is included here, based on what is considered to have better search capabilities. For those items that can also be found in the Hinsdale Historical Society Archives or at the Hinsdale Public Library, those are marked accordingly.
