National Archives at College Park

The National Archives at College Park, informally known as Archives II, is the partner archive of the main Archives in Washington, D.C. Archives II was built to alleviate severe storage problems at the DC Archives. Although officially the headquarters of the National Archives and Records Administration remains in DC, many important offices shifted to Archives II due to its modern and vast facilities. The archives span 1.8 million square feet, 6 floors, and contains records including, textual records from civilian agencies, Army unit records dating from WW1, Navy unit records dating from WW2, Still pictures, Electronic records, Cartographic and architectural holdings, Motion picture, sound, and video records, JFK Assassination Records, and Berlin Documents Center microfilm. The archives have 7 research rooms: Textual, Electronic, Cartographic and architectural, Library, Motion picture, sound, and video, Microfilm, and Still picture. First-time researchers will have to register, obtain a researchers card, and receive an orientation presentation.

Since the National Archives were established in 1934, space has always been an issue for NARA. The building on Pennslyvania Avenue began construction before the establishment of NARA, and the staff was not given input on how the building should be built, resulting in severe space shortages. The inner courtyard was almost immediately converted to storage space, expanding storage space from 375,000 square feet to 750,000 square feet. However, by 1950, space again ran out. To combat this, NARA established branch locations across the country to store inactive federal records in regional branches. Today there are 15 Federal Records Centers across the country. A more permanent solution was sought, and NARA planned to expand across Pennslyvania Avenue, but, the plan failed, and instead, the site became the site of the US Navy Memorial.

Searches in 1983 to look for a larger downtown DC lot also failed, but a consulting firm was hired to look for suburban locations, eventually proposing the current location at College Park. The building was approved by Congress in 1988 with 250 million dollars in appropriations, and ground was broken on October 17, 1989. Construction finished by 1993, and the Archives were officially opened on May 12, 1994. The building was the largest archives in the world in terms of space at the time of completion.

Today, the archives are host to 600 employees, receiving almost 50,000 researchers a year.

Information for Researchers, National Archives. Accessed January 2nd 2021. https://www.archives.gov/college-park/researcher-info.

The History of the National Archives at College Park, National Archives. July 27th 2018. Accessed January 2nd 2021. https://www.archives.gov/about/history/college-park.