Collection context
Summary
- Title:
- Guide to the Dennis Cusick Photograph Collection
- Dates:
- 2000-2003
- Abstract:
- 34 color photographic prints taken by Dennis Cusick in May 2000 and 2003 of two downtown Sacramento sites undergoing transformation (the block south and west of J and Ninth streets prior to the construction of the J Street Lofts and the removal of the Firehouse/Annex behind the Old City Hall).
- Extent:
- .1 Cubic Feet
- Language:
- English
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of item], Dennis Cusick Photograph Collection, MC 136, Sacramento Room, Sacramento Public Library, Sacramento, California
Background
- Scope and content:
-
Collection is comprised of a single folder with donation letter from Dennis Cusick, and two envelopes, one containing 15 images of J Street and Ninth street subterranean passageways taken in May 2000, and the other containing 19 images of the destruction of the old Fire House on the west side of the old City Hall in 2003 taken from Dennis's fourth-floor office windows in the Downtown Post Office building across Ninth Street from City Hall.
- Biographical / historical:
-
Prior to the founding of Sacramento, the Nisenan village of Sa'cum sat on the highest ground within the flood plain south of the American River, surrounded by other, larger villages situated outside of the flood plain to the north, east, and south. Spanish missionaries and Hudson's Bay fur trappers entering the Sacramento Valley negatively impacted the Native inhabitants, bringing disease and disrupting the Nisenan culture to such an extent that little is known of the Native peoples prior to 1840.
Sa'cum survived alongside the growing settlement of Sacramento until at least 1852, when it was depicted as a cluster of teepees in a historic drawing (Sarony, Napoleon, Henry Bainbridge, and George W Casilear. View of Sacramento City as it appeared during the great inundation in January/ drawn from nature by Geo. W. Casilear and Henry Bainbridge ; lith. of Sarony, New York. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress. The village was bounded by I, J, Ninth and Tenth streets, but even after the Native population moved elsewhere, the land remained free of buildings, eventually becoming Caesar Chavez Park. The two sites photographed by Denis Cusick are adjacent to this historic location, and record the ever-transforming cityscape of Sacramento.
J and Ninth streets.
To the southwest of what is now the park, J Street developed into a bustling thoroughfare during the 1850s; despite flooding in 1850 and a devastating fire in 1852. It was the repeated flooding of Sacramento that led to the decision to raise the city to a new height, several feet above the flood line. J and K streets from Front to Tenth were raised by 1869, as were Ninth and Tenth streets, however Eighth Street was not raised until 1870. This process began with the construction of brick bulkhead walls running parallel to the streets, several feet in front of the buildings. Between the bulkheads, fill was added to raise the street to the new level. Building owners had the choice of lifting their buildings to the new height or turning the original first floor into a basement and adding new stories on top. Sidewalks were then created to bridge the gap between the newly raised streets and the buildings. This method created a subterranean walkway of brick bulkheads on one side, former building fronts on the other, and barrel vaults and metal support beams above. The progress of construction was covered by the Sacramento Daily Union, with numerous mentions of the block bordered by J, K, Eighth and Ninth streets (hereafter referred to as JK89) (Nelson, Wendy J. Archeological investigations for the J and 9th Streets "Plaza lofts" project: and data recovery excavations for the Philadelphia House Hotel (CA-SAC 692H), Sacramento, California: final. Tremaine and Associates, Inc., 2005.).
Over the next 100 years, many of the structures on block JK89 were redeveloped or removed. By the 1990s, the block was recognized as one of the most blighted areas of downtown Sacramento, with numerous abandoned properties and collapsed structural supports providing access to the subterranean pathways (Bernstein, Dan. "Struggling to Revive a Near-Dead City Block" Sacramento Bee, 27 Feb. 1992, p. A1.). Only the Coolot/Comstock building, originally constructed by Leland Stanford at 812 J street, and the buildings at 1007, 1011, and 1015 Eighth street were extant. Much of the JK89 block's original ground level, as well as the road buttresses, first floor fronts (later basement walls) of many of the original structures, and sidewalk bridgeworks were exposed to natural and human interference.
By 2000, preparations were underway to finally redevelop the northern half of block JK89. The photos taken by Dennis Cusick from his vantage point to the south west of the corner of J and Ninth show the subterranean sidewalk structures the length of Ninth Street from J Street to Jazz Alley as well as much of J Street from Eighth to Ninth streets. The back of the Coolot/Comstock building and the remaining structures on Eighth Street are also partially visible. Not long after these photos were taken, the Eighth Street buildings were deemed not architecturally significant and were removed. After a fire in 2003 seriously damaged the Coolot building, and it too was demolished (Bush, Mike. "Fire-racked Comstock Building will be razed" Sacramento Bee, 4 Jul. 2003, p. B2.).
The old City Hall and Firehouse.
North of the Nisenan village of Sa'cum, the block bordered by H and I, Ninth and Tenth streets (hereafter called HI910) was already divided into 8 lots by 1854. These lots changed hands numerous times and saw a multitude of construction and redevelopment over the years. The Sacramento City Hall was built on lots 6 and 7, facing I Street in 1909. The annex which included the city's Fire Department, was added to Lot 8, facing Ninth Street, around 1915. (Tremaine, Kim J. Investigations of a deeply buried early and middle holocene site (CA-SAC-38) for the City Hall Expansion Project, Sacramento, California: final report. Tremaine and Associates, Inc., 2008.).
By the early twenty-first century, the needs of the city outgrew the ageing structure in which they were housed. The historic buildings also required seismic retrofitting, exterior refurbishment, and interior remodeling. It was therefore decided to remove the original annex, refurbish the historic City Hall, and construct a new office building with an underground parking garage for visitors and staff on the north half of the HI910 block.
The photographs by Dennis Cusick, taken in 2003 from his office in the U.S. Post Office, Courthouse and Federal Building on I Street show not only the removal of the old Fire Department/Annex, but also part of the archaeological excavation undertaken on the north half of block HI910 in preparation for the construction of the new City Hall office building. It was during this process that the archaeologists uncovered not only artifacts and features dating from the historical period of Sacramento, but also habitation zones with artifacts dating from 11,400 years ago to as recent as 660 BCE, including several human burials. This prehistoric cultural deposit is only the second such site found in the Sacramento Valley, the other having been discovered in the 1950s in Arcade Creek that was neither excavated nor well documented.
Dennis Cusick is a native born Sacramentan. He left Sacramento for college, but returned in 1985 to work as a copy editor for The Sacramento Bee. He traded his press pass for an attorney's license – interning with the Office of the Federal Defender in 1998, which at that time had its offices on the tenth and eighteenth floors of the Renaissance Tower. After passing the California Bar, he went back to the Capital Habeas Unit of the Office of the Federal Defender as a research and writing attorney. Wanting to capture some of Sacramento's storied history, he took the photographs of J and Ninth street from the Renaissance Tower garage and over and through the fences protecting the construction site along the alleyway south of the JK89 block. In 2003, he moved with the Federal Defender Office to the U.S. Post Office, Courthouse and Federal Building at 801 I Street. From his fourth-floor office he had an excellent view of the City Hall expansion project. He took the second series of photographs of the Old City Hall Annex/Old Firehouse deconstruction over several months in 2003. He left the Federal Defender Office in 2007 and went into private practice. From 2018 to 2022, he was also editor of the Curtis Park neighborhood newspaper, Viewpoint, in his spare time. He donated a collection of Viewpoints from 1979 to 2022 to the Sacramento Room in 2022. As of 2024, he continues to represent clients even as he winds down his private practice. He donated these photographs to the Sacramento Room in July 2024.
- Physical facet:
- Single folder
- Rules or conventions:
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
About this collection guide
- Date Encoded:
- This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2024-08-23 19:47:58 -0500 .
Access and use
- Terms of access:
-
All requests to publish or quote from private collections held by the Sacramento Public Library must be submitted in writing to sacroom@saclibrary.org. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Sacramento Public Library as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the patron. No permission is necessary to publish or quote from public records.
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of item], Dennis Cusick Photograph Collection, MC 136, Sacramento Room, Sacramento Public Library, Sacramento, California
- Location of this collection:
-
828 I StreetSacramento, CA 95814, US
- Contact:
- (916) 264-2976