Houston Metropolitan Research Center (HMRC) includes archival, Texan and local history, and special collections departments with the primary objectives of locating, preserving, and making available to researchers the documentary evidence of Houston's history.
In its archival component, HMRC collects non-current records of area businesses, community and civic organizations, religious institutions, and other public or private groups which have influenced Houston's development.
The manuscript component consists of the private papers and records of persons who helped shape the city's history. On deposit are the collections of civic leaders, businessmen, educators, politicians, and professional people.
In addition to traditional manuscript and archival records, the collection includes non-textual materials documenting the area such as maps, photographs, films and tapes, and architectural drawings.
Documents Houston's substantial black community in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and adds vital insight into the city's history. African-American collections emphasize prominent individuals, long-established families, churches, black newspapers, cultural groups, community institutions, and business/labor activities.
Documents the explosive growth of Houston's Mexican-American community after 1910 and the preservation of a distinct cultural heritage and adaptation to life in the United States, through the records of community organizations, individuals and families, business and political activities, and social/cultural events.
The architectural component helps to document Houston's built environment, providing information about architects who practiced in Houston, and about extant and non-extant Houston buildings. Architectural drawings, which number approximately 125,000, comprise the largest segment of the component. Landscape, interior, and engineering plans, as well as architectural photographs, are also included. Major collections include the papers of Alfred Finn, Harvin Moore, Howard Barnstone and Maurice Sullivan. The materials in this component are available by appointment.
One of the most important components is historical photographs. Consisting of more than 3.5 million images of Houston from its nineteenth-century beginning to the present, the collection visually records all aspects of Houston's growth. HMRC builds this component through donations as small as one photograph and as large as the entire negative collections of longtime Houston commercial photographers.
The Library History page features some of these historical photographs.
A segment of the component is catalogued and available for research through the Texas and Local History Department. The remainder may be used by appointment. HMRC operates a photo preservation lab with copying facilities. Information about reproduction fees is available on request.
An active oral history program complements the archival and manuscript collections by providing information not available through written sources. The collection consists of reminiscences and analyses of events from persons who have a firsthand knowledge of significant political, cultural, and economic events in the growth of metropolitan Houston. Use of some of the tapes is restricted by the interviewee. Access to the oral history collection is by appointment.
The Texas Jazz Archive component consists of oral history interviews and photographs from jazz musicians native to Houston or elsewhere in Texas. The jazz component is open by appointment. Donors have placed user restrictions on some of the collections.