About

The DC Archives Foundation was founded in 2024 by a group of DC’s archives users and humanities leaders who had been advocates for a new state-of-the-art DC State Archive building, now set to begin construction in Fall 2024. The Foundation supports funding priorities identified with the DC’s Office of Public Records & Archives (OPR).

OPR holds the largest and deepest collection of DC’s history in existence, and is currently located in a converted stable on Naylor Court, in Shaw. The agency was established by the Mayor in 1986 to collect and preserve the history of the District government, and is managed under the Office of the Secretary. OPR’s repositories are vast, holding millions of documents - administrative, architectural, engineering, fiscal, genealogical, historical, and legal records - that span over 200 years of DC’s history and encompass information about all of the city’s residents, throughout all 8 wards.