From Casa Elizalde to Consell de Cent, and from seven repositories to Illa Waldorf

The Eixample Archives has been stored in different places, the first of which was Casa Elizalde, Carrer de València, 202, between 1990 and 1996.

From 1995 to 2011, the Archives' records were kept in seven repositories around the city, with two of them on the second level of the Mercat de la Concepció basement (C/ Aragó, 315) and another on the ground floor of a building at Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, 732. A fourth was on the first floor of a property at Carrer de Padilla, 321, while the other three were in different parts of the Eixample District Municipal Council headquarters, at Carrer d’Aragó, 311.

The Archives finally moved to its new headquarters at C/ Calàbria, 38, on 11 January 2011. They occupy part of the underground floor of the Illa Waldorf complex, sharing it with the Sant Antoni neighbourhood Social Services Centre, where the Waldorf Cinerama used to be.

All the records, until then dispersed, are now kept here in a single repository which has all the latest technical, functional, environmental and security requirements of an archive centre, in a total surface area of 840 m2, with 2,642 metres of shelving.

A cinema archive

The Waldorf Cinerama was news in 1966, following the remodelling of the Mistral, a neighbourhood cinema that had entertained Sant Antoni residents from the pre-war years to 1962.

The Waldorf closed for good in 2003 and Barcelona City Council acquired the premises with the intention of creating new facilities for the Eixample district. A social services centre was installed in the space previously occupied by the projection rooms, along with the Eixample District Municipal Archives, and a small area was landscaped for the block interior.