Collection History

City Office Supply opened its doors on 5th street in 1938. By 1943, as personal photography became increasingly popular and affordable in post war America, they began partnering with companies like Fox Photo and Eastman Kodak to process film and create prints for its customers.

For nearly two decades individuals from Corsicana, Navarro County and surrounding areas brought their film to City Office Supply who in turn would send their film to the appropriate photo lab for processing. Those same individuals returned later to pay for their film and prints and pick their order. Inevitably some customers failed to retrieve their items and in those cases City Office Supply carefully placed the unclaimed envelopes of film and prints into file cabinets to be stored until someone came for them. Over the next twenty years the number of cabinets grew from one, to two, to thereto four each overflowing with envelopes containing negatives, slides and prints.

DUST Archive

A recently discovered cache of photographs dating from 1948 - 1966. Each photograph tells an individual story, taken together they are a rich chronicle of Corsicana, Navarro County, and Texas.

In 1974 City Office Supply and the contents of the building we sold to Save On who moved the business and the file cabinets of unclaimed film and photographs to a new location on 6th Street. The following year in 1975 Save On and its contents were sold and the name changed to Copy Center & Office Supplies. In 1980 when the business moved to Beaton Street. the files of unclaimed film and prints were packed up and moved again and placed in a dark corner on an upper floor, buried beneath a mound of boxes and miscellaneous materials for the next thirty nine years.

In 2018 the Copy Center and Office Supplies and the contents of the building was sold once again. In the spring of 2019, as the second floor was being cleared of debris for a historic renovation, the long forgotten files of photographs and film were re-discovered.

The collection of over four hundred envelopes of film and photographs, which date from 1943 - 1966, are an accidental time capsule of Corsicana, Navarro County and Texas during that period. They offer a rare glimpse at day-to-day life, holidays, parades, baptisms, high school dances, road trips, weddings, and baby’s first steps. The photographs in the collection have been described as humorous, powerful, poignant and thought provoking. They invite viewer to reflect on post-war America and consider our own place in history.