Forest Preserve District of Cook County Records: FPDCC photographs and other images

Online

Cook County Forest Preserve Photographs

Or Forest Preserve District of Cook County records (beta site for digital access)

About 20% of the images from the collection are online.

Not-online

You can find the originals for the digitized photographs, and almost all of the non-digitized photographs, in series 0 [zero] for the FPDCC finding aid. A small number of photographs can be found in folders in most of the other series in addition to series 0 [zero].

The non-digitized photographs can be seen in the Special Collections and University Archives reading room in the Richard J. Daley Library (please note our special hours).

Spreadsheets

For selected prints and negatives in the FPDCC records, we have excel spreadsheets that give more descriptive information than is found in the finding aid. Please Ask a Librarian to get copies:

• Skokie Lagoons Project, FPDCC, series 0, subseries 3
• Images classified by "code" or subject, first grouping: FPDCC series 0, subseries 5
• Images classified by "code" or subject, second grouping: FPDCC series 0, subseries 6

The images most likely to be found online are some of the earliest from the FPDCC's history. These include all the photographs from subseries 1 and subseries 2. Those are largely from the early 1900s, from before the founding of the FPDCC, through the 1930s. A large sample of photographs from subseries 4 is also online. These are from a scrapbook that documents the "Skokie Lagoons" project by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. Finally, a small sampling of images from the "coded" images in subseries 5 and subseries 6 can be found online. Most of those date later than the 1930s.

When we processed the collection, we tried to keep the photographs in the order in which the FPDCC organized them. In some cases, however, it made more sense to organize by format. For example, we kept all the fragile glass lantern slides or glass negatives together in order to better protect them.

Subseries with digitized photographs

The following subseries have at least a portion of their photographs digitized and available at the Cook County Forest Preserve Photographs (or the Forest Preserve District of Cook County records beta site for digital access).

All images digitized and available

• Subseries 1: Glass lantern slides, ca. 1900-1948. These are the oldest photographs. The first 200 or so date back to the years before the FPDCC was founded and may have been used by landscape architect Dwight Heald Perkins to help promote his idea for a forest preserve district.
• Subseries 2: Glass negatives, 1903-1929. These also represent the earlier years of the FPDCC.

Only a sample digitized and available

• Subseries 4: Skokie Lagoons project, part 2. These are images from a scrapbook that documented the Civilian Conservation Corps's project to build the Skokie Lagoons site during the New Deal.
• Subseries 5: Encoded Negatives and Prints, first grouping, 1920s-1970s. These are photographs that the FPDCC organized by assigning a set of subject codes.
• Subseries 6: Encoded Negatives and Prints, second grouping, 1920s-1970s. These are another group photographs that the FPDCC organized by assigning a set of subject codes different from those of the first grouping.
• Subseries 9: Sub-series 9: Oversized Items, 1900-1990s. Only a sample of these images have been digitized.

Not digitized, but can be seen in the Special Collections and University Archives reading room

• Subseries 3: Skokie Lagoons project, part 1. These are images from the Civilian Conservation Corps's project to build the Skokie Lagoons site during the New Deal.
• Subseries 7: Illinois and Michigan Canal Scrapbook, 1933-1935. This is a small set of images that chronicle the building of the Illinois and Michigan Canal.
• Subseries 8: Miscellaneous Photographs, Slides, and Negatives, ca. 1920 - ca. 2005. Many of these are unidentified.
• Subseries 10: Slides [non glass], 1990s-2004, and mostly undated.