The Scripps Medical Institutions Collection is made up of documents, photographs, ephemera, and other archival material. On July 28, 1916, Samuel T. Gillespie opened the La Jolla Sanitarium at Kline House on Prospect Street. In 1918, Ellen Browning Scripps integrated the Sanitarium into her initiative, recognized as Scripps Health, to improve the resources available to the community of La Jolla. She was inspired by the surge of positive responses to expand the hospital, so in 1924 she founded what would later be known as Scripps Memorial Hospital. In the same year, the site of the La Jolla Sanitarium was converted into the Scripps Metabolic Clinic under the management of the Scripps Memorial Hospital. They would remain as one institution until 1946 when they separated, and eventually in 1964 the Scripps Memorial Hospital was relocated to its current location on Genesee Avenue. The Scripps Metabolic Clinic became known as Scripps Research until 1956, when it was renamed as the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation. In 1993 the clinical and research sectors split, founding the Scripps Clinic and the Scripps Research Institute (TSRI). The TSRI would ironically be renamed Scripps Research in July of 2018. Scripps Health and Scripps Research have continued to grow in their individual fields, committing to the improvement and development of the services offered to the people of La Jolla and beyond. This material pertains to the history and heritage of La Jolla, California; its people, places and events. A container list is included on the PDF and HTML versions.

The La Jolla Historical Society inspires and empowers the community to make La Jolla’s diverse past a relevant part of contemporary life. The La Jolla Historical Society’s Collections encompass over 80 years of actively collecting archival material, books, maps, scrapbooks, ephemera, fine art, newspapers, street and land use files, business and personal documents and historic and archaeological artifacts. The Society boasts over 20,000 photographs, over 1000 postcards, 400-plus architectural drawings and approximately 200 oral history recordings. Collecting was initiated by Howard Randolph and volunteers on the historical committee of the Library Association of La Jolla. The Collection began by gathering photographs and documentation in the late 1930s, which later became the nucleus of the La Jolla Historical Society’s Collections. The Society was created in 1963. Through many moves in location the Society continued collecting and expanding. Accumulated Collections took on its current construct in 2010 after the renovation of the La Jolla Historical Society’s campus of structures in central La Jolla, which consists of the 1904 Wisteria Cottage and 1940s Balmer Annex used for exhibits and programming, and a 1909 cottage used for business and research offices. The late Ellen Browning Scripps’ 1916 automobile garage was also renovated and now houses the Collection in a modern collections storage facility. Materials are housed in archival boxes, sleeves, envelopes and other archival-safe materials and are cared for according to standards and best practices of the museum profession. In 2016, the Society initiated new PastPerfect Museum Software to manage and catalog its Collections and in 2018 started using the Online Archive of California to upload searchable information from its Collections to enable improved public access. The Society will continue these processes and look forward to utilizing new opportunities to collect, preserve and share the history of La Jolla.

1.5 linear feet

The La Jolla Historical Society holds the copyright to any unpublished materials

The Collection is open for research