College Park has a century old rich history that we can all be proud of, yet when it comes to searching those precious gems, there aren’t too many resources we can find. The City does not have a place where it has archived various books and pictures that have been lying around here and there. The council member Stephanie Stullich did an excellent job in collecting some of those pictures in a book a few years back, however there are more than a few pictures that we need to preserve.
One of these precious gems include a fairly old book by T. Raymond Burch. Titled “History and Development of the City of College Park, Berwyn Heights, Greenbelt and Adjacent Areas”, the book was first published in 1965 and is now out of print. Only a few may have a copy of this precious treasure.
Recently, College Park resident Jane Kushner Hopkins found a copy of this book in the rare collections of her dad Alvin Kushner, who served as the Mayor of College Park for two terms from 1985 to 1989. The Gazette had an artcle on Mr. Kushner’s Mayoral race in this week’s edition.
Jane took the pain of scanning the book in PDF format, which I’ve uploaded here. Jane said she has a few more such treasures which she has found in her dad’s collection. “..too bad the city doesn’t have an office or files or something set aside for history.“- wrote Jane in an email to me.