Happy National Nurses’ Day! Here’s a selection of a few of our favorite images of nurses from the UCSF Historic Photograph Collection. For more images, check out our Digital Collections.
Category Archives: ucsf
UCSF on Historypin
Historypin is a website that allows users to view and post historical photos that have been digitally “pinned” to a map– thereby highlighting the location which may be unrecognizable in the photo. It allows photographs to be searched by place, time, or channel– channels are accounts that have been set up by various people and organizations.
We created our channel on Historypin– UCSF Archives & Special Collections— in part to begin celebrating the 150th anniversary of UCSF! Toland Medical College began in 1864 in the heart of San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, moved to the wide-open countryside of the Parnassus/Inner Sunset area, and has continued to change and grow.
We will continue to add images and information throughout the coming year. Check back often for new and interesting images of the ever-evolving UCSF campus. We encourage you to add comments or information to our pinned images!
One of the niftiest features of Historypin is the ability to pin an image directly onto street view. If the photograph was taken from the street (or similar angle and location), it can be placed on the map over the Google street view image of the image’s location– just like the image of Market Street Earthquake Damage, 1906 shown below. You can toggle the fade slide bar to play with photograph’s opaqueness.
For more detailed information on the history of UCSF, please see A History of UCSF.
UCSF Cornerstone, 1897
This somewhat rusty, old, copper box is a significant piece of UCSF history. It’s the cornerstone of the first medical school building on the UCSF Parnassus campus.
The “Old Medical School Building,” see photographs here and here, was completed in 1898 and torn down in the spring of 1967. The building was originally erected to both provide more room for and consolidate the dispersed campus of the Affiliated Colleges onto Parnassus Avenue. (Briefly, the Affiliated Colleges were part of the University of California and refer to the Schools of Pharmacy, Medicine, and Dentistry– later known as UCSF.) This new site, overlooking Golden Gate Park where the Parnassus campus of UCSF still is today, was donated by the mayor of San Francisco, Alfred Sutro, in 1895.
The cornerstone of the medical school, laid on March 27, 1897, was comprised of a copper box which functioned as a time capsule. The box was unearthed and cut open in March of 1967 when the building was torn down. Inside the box were well preserved San Francisco newspapers, a copy of the site deed donated by Adolph Sutro, photos of the Affiliated College Buildings, and University announcements of the establishment of the schools of medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, and law.
We’re on Zazzle!
We wanted to announce to all of you that a selection of our beloved treasures, here in the Archives & Special Collections, is featured in the UCSF Zazzle store. The online store allows you to purchase customizable note cards, tote bags, mugs, iPhone cases, water bottles and t-shirts that feature one-of-a-kind images from our collection.
Recently, we’ve added items that showcase pieces in the “Pharmacy and Pharmacists” exhibition of Japanese Woodblock Prints– currently on display in the UCSF Library.
The online store also includes items with images from past exhibitions of the Japanese Woodblock Prints Collection. These represent a cross-section of the collection, featuring colorful ukiyo-e scenes on topics such as women’s health, diet and nutrition, spirituality, views of foreigners, and traditional Chinese healing methods.
Items with historical UCSF photographs from the Photograph Collection are also available. Check out the fascinating views of campus from the turn of the twentieth century.
Update & Alumna Spotlight: Medical Sciences Library Photograph
We were thrilled to find out that a UCSF alumna spotted herself in one of the photographs of the old Medical Sciences library!
Sally Alpers Arney is shown sitting at the table, third from the left, looking, I think we can all agree, extremely studious. At the time the photograph was taken, 1958, Sally was in her first year of the UCSF nursing program. She left the nursing school after that year and later graduated from the UCSF physical therapy program in 1961.
Sally was kind enough to share a few memories about UCSF, student life pre-women’s movement, and what she’s been up to for the last 50 years or so. Read on..
“My favorite memories were of having dinner with my classmates and the medical students in the cafeteria. Most, if not all, of the medical students were guys, all of the nursing classmates were “girls”. It was the olden days in the Fifties.
Photographs of old Medical Sciences Library
The images that appear in Brought to Light’s header hail from the UCSF Archives & Special Collections’ Photograph Collection. Choosing the images to welcome you to our blog– if you refresh the page a few times you’ll notice that it cycles through a small variety– was quite enjoyable. We hope you like them and will bring you more information on the photographs periodically.
Three different headers feature these two photographs of UCSF’s old library, sure to induce fits of nostalgia for the days of card catalogs.
The lovely library in the photographs was located in the Medical Sciences building, 513 Parnassus Ave, on the UCSF Parnassus campus. The building was designed by Blanchard and Maher and built in the early 1950’s alongside the Teaching Hospital, what is now known as the Medical Center and Children’s Hospital.
The library space within Medical Sciences was forfeited and repurposed when the Kalmanovitz Library, 530 Parnassus Avenue, opened in 1990– gaining space and inarguably better scenic views! The former location of the main entrance to the library is unrecognizable today– otherwise known as Room S-256. Room S-256 sits inconspicuously on the left at the top large, open staircase across from Cole Hall.
UCSF now boasts two libraries, the Parnassus Library as well as the Mission Bay FAMRI Library. Stop by and say hi!
Welcome!
Welcome to the UCSF Archives and Special Collections blog! It will feature new acquisitions, highlight existing collections and unique items, provide updates on processing and digitization projects, services, exhibits and special events.
The posts are written by archives staff: Polina Ilieva, UCSF Archivist and Margaret Hughes, UCSF Assistant Archivist. We are also looking forward to working with invited bloggers and guests. Please let us know if you would like to hear more about a specific topic or item from our holdings and use the comment section to share your thoughts.