Sac History Happenings: Collection of Town & Country designer at Public Library

Sac History Happenings

News and developments in Sacramento and California history

August 4, 2011

Collection of Town & Country designer at Public Library

Town and Country.jpg The papers of John W. Davis, a local mid-century architectural designer, are now open for research in the Sacramento Room at the Central Library. Davis worked for many years in partnership with local developer Jere Strizek to design and construct the Town & Country Village shopping center and affordable homes in the Town & Country community. His papers consist of correspondence, plans, photographs and clippings documenting his design work between 1946 and 1954.

Town and Country Village opened in 1946 as one of the first shopping centers in the region. A couple years after its completion, Strizek and Davis began building low-cost family homes in the surrounding area to boost profits. By 1949, there were 5,000 living units in the Town and Country suburb, and the nationally-recognized Town and Country Village with 61 stores welcomed customers from throughout the Sacramento area and beyond. Design plans, nearly 100 photographs, and extensive clippings in the papers of John W. Davis offer invaluable insight into Town and Country's early years.

To view the finding aid for the Davis papers and other small manuscript collections available in the Sacramento Room at the Central Library, visit the Sacramento Public Library page on the Online Archive of California website.

PHOTO CREDIT: Top - Town and Country Village shopping center, ca. 1955. Bottom - Town and Country home design featured in Parents' Magazine (February 1952). Both from the John W. Davis papers, MC 16, Sacramento Room, Sacramento Public Library.

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California and Sacramento have a long, rich, vibrant history. And our region is blessed with an abundance of historical resources maintained by museums, libraries, archives and societies. This blog aims to alert readers to the latest developments in local/state historical education and research.

Send tips concerning upcoming exhibits, tours, lectures and meetings, as well as new books, magazine articles and online collections to the blog's contributors.

The Contributors:

Michael Dolgushkin

Michael Dolgushkin is Manuscript Librarian at the California State Library History Section. He is co-author of San Francisco's California Street Cable Cars and is a frequent contributor to the California State Library Foundation Bulletin. Contact him at mdolgushkin@library.ca.gov.

Amanda Graham is a Certified Archivist working in the Sacramento Room of the Sacramento Public Library. She earned a BS in History from Southern Oregon University and a MS in Information Studies with an emphasis in archives from The University of Texas at Austin. Contact her at agraham@saclibrary.org.

Pete Basofin is Director of Editorial Research at The Sacramento Bee. He previously worked at The St. Petersburg Times and Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune. Contact him at pbasofin@sacbee.com.

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