A Beverly Hills historian was perusing old newspapers when an article caught his eye. It was a story about city officials burrowing a time capsule inside the walls of the Beverly Hills post office in 1933.
The news was timely. The old post office is going to be a part of of the new Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, and construction crews are in the process of preserving it.
The city decided to retrieve the time capsule, said Amy Phillips, a spokeswoman for the Wallis Annenberg Center.
Hidden in a cubbyhole behind the cornerstone of the an ornate Italian Renaissance building they found a narrow copper box. Inside of that, they found a curious collection of objects.
Among them: Four newspapers (none of which was the Los Angeles Times), an assortment of business cards (including one for a real estate agent to the stars) and paperwork having to do with the National Recovery Act, the Depression-era legislation credited by many with lifting the United States out of economic trouble.
It seems then, as now, that the economy was forefront in many people’s minds.
Beverly Hills Mayor Nancy Krasne and other city officials will gather outside the old post office at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday to show the 76-year-old contents of the time capsule to the public for the first time.
— Kate Linthicum