TWENTY-FIFTH ANNUAL REPORT

A large mass of historically valuable records remained where they
had always been, in the vaults, the attics, the basements of county court-
houses and State office buildings. By now, every old (in fact, almost
every non-current) record of the Provincial and State government is
in our custody. The county records are all here too for the mandatory
period prescribed by law, that is, up to the date of the adoption of the
Federal Constitution by Maryland, April 28, 1788, (always, of course,
excepting fugitive pieces which are bound to turn up from time to
time). Thereafter, the county records are here for varying periods
depending on the needs of the county; but in one form or another the
Wills are here through the last completed volume and the Land
Records will soon be here for every county and Baltimore City through
1949, where the Land Office film begins. At this writing no other state
can match this collection of local records.

Very soon the problem of storage space became pressing. The Hall
of Records was designed with six stack levels. When it opened its
doors, one and one-half levels were assigned to the Land Office; and
one other, the sixth, was unfinished and remained so until a general
bond issue of 1939 provided the necessary funds to equip it. Its deep
shelves were designed especially to house the original Acts of Assembly.
There was no further expansion of vault space until September 1958,
when the Land Office moved to the new State Office Building, vacating
the one and one-half stack levels which it occupied, so that finally, after
twenty-three years, the Maryland records were housed in the manner
contemplated by the Tercentenary Commission. The Public Rooms of
the Land Office on the first floor then became an office for the expanded
staff of the Hall of Records. Finally, space for the storage of non-
current records was provided by the opening of a Record Center in the
new State Office Building in Annapolis in September 1958, and a
second center in the new Office Building in Baltimore. The total of
record storage space available when the Hall of Records opened in
1935 was 7,000 square feet; it is now 22,260 square feet, of which
there are 12,000 in the Hall of Records itself, 4,360 in the Annapolis
Record Center and 5,900 in Baltimore.

To cate for these records there is now a staff of twenty-one, just
three times the number of the original staff, and the cost to the tax-
payers of Maryland is around fourteen times the original appropriation
of $10,000. (The maintenance of the buildings, at the beginning a
responsibility of the Hall of Records Commission, has long since