Deposit of photographs from the Birmingham City Council Planning and Architecture...

The following record series comprises 68 boxes of photographs deposited by the City Council's Planning and Architecture Department. The majority were taken by Council departments involved in urban planning, housing and street works (most notably the Photographic Sections of the Public Works and City Engineer and Surveyor's Department) as well as commissioned work undertaken by external photographers and organisations.

Boxes BCC/1/AO/D/3/8/1/1/1 to BCC/1/AO/D/3/8/1/20/59 are arranged alphabetically by street name. Boxes BCC/1/AO/D/3/8/1/20/60 to BCC/1/AO/D/3/8/1/22/68 contain groups of photographs of specific areas of the city, individual buildings, redevelopment projects and various subject headings. The photographs span the period 1930 to 1990 although the majority date from the 1950s to the 1970s. Most of the photographs are in black and white, and the sequence includes a large number of duplicate images. Many of the photographs are marked up with proposed alterations to buildings or sites and are often annotated to cross-reference them to the relevant application or report to their respective committee.

The sequence also contains index cards which list those photographs of a particular place, and the dates they were taken. Presumably used by the Planning Department to divide up photos of one place from the next in the sequence, many of them are missing. Conversely, the index card may exist, and give some indication of how many photographs of a particular place were taken, but the images themselves may not have survived. In a few cases only the marker card giving the street name is in the box, so for any entries in the description listing just a street name but without the number of index cards or photographs it should be assumed there is nothing, at least for the main accession.

When ordering photographs from this sequence please provide the following information:

1. Reference number, e.g. BCC/1/AO/D/3/8/1/1/1
2. Box number, e.g. Photographic box 1/1
3. Street name, e.g. Aberdeen Street

Further photographs from this sequence are held in the former Local Studies and History photographic collections. Please ask staff for further details.