Gardner News archives move to their permanent location: Find out where and what else is there

The Gardner News archives have found their forever home.

Over the weekend of May 18, Rep. Jonathan Zlotnik, D-Gardner, oversaw the transfer of over 300 massive bound volumes of past issues of the newspaper dating back over a century from the former Prospect School to the former Waterford St. School, the future home of a community center that will include the official City of Gardner Archives.

Several students from Monty Tech, including many from the school’s JROTC program, the Student Council, and the Leo Club, volunteered to help load and unload the heavy volumes from a rented U-Haul truck on Saturday, Zlotnik said.

“There were about a dozen kids that helped us; it actually took almost no time, maybe 45 minutes to load them, and then I think we had them all out and sorted in the new location in about a half-hour,” he said.

The volumes, which represent a day-by-day history of Greater Gardner dating back to the newspaper’s founding as a weekly edition in 1869, join an archives collection that will eventually include historical artifacts and documents that are currently being stored at City Hall, according to Zlotnik. He said that former City Clerk Alan Agnelli had been recruited to oversee the establishment of the city’s new archive space.

“Alan has been looking into doing a project that would preserve the older documents and some of the other artifacts in the city clerk’s possession because there is only a finite amount of space in their vault,” Zlotnik said.

In addition to the city archives, the new community center will also be home to the Gardner Senior Center, the Gardner Community Action Committee, GAAMHA, Inc. and Growing Places.

Gardner News volumes have been on the move a lot lately

The volumes, which were stored for decades on the third floor of the paper’s original 309 Central St. headquarters, were first moved to a storage space in Clinton after the building was sold to a developer. From there, they were transferred to the former offices of the Greater Gardner Chamber of Commerce on Parker St., and then moved again last year to the former school building on East Broadway.

“This is the third move that I’ve been a part of, and it’s important because these archives are something you can’t get back,” Zlotnik said. “I believe the Heywood Memorial Library has a nearly complete volume on microfilm but think there’s something unique and special about having actual copies of the original print run of just about every single thing The Gardner News has printed for the last 100 years. That’s something that cannot be recreated.”

Developer Tony Molina, who purchased the property last year with plans to convert it into upscale housing, allowed the volumes to be stored in a former classroom until a permanent location could be found. Some of the tables the heavy volumes were stored on had actually buckled due to the weight, Zlotnik said.

“As long as nothing drastic happens, this will probably the last time we’ll have to move these,” he said.

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