Tulip Festival Scrapbook Collection, 2016

Summary

Extent:

1 Linear feet

Language:

English

Preferred citation:

Permission to Publish and Citations: Written permission to publish material in these archives must be requested of the Director of the Library. Citations should include the following information and acknowledgements: [Identification of items]; [volume dates]; Tulip Festival Scrapbook Collection, [carton number]; RA 1.3.1; Northwestern College Archives and Special Collections

Background

Biographical / historical:

Historical Notes (adapted from Orange City, by Doug Anderson et al.) Orange City was founded by Dutch American colonists from Pella, Iowa in 1870. It was not until the 1930s, however, that the town began what became the Orange City Tulip Festival (OCTF).

Local clubs sponsored an annual tulip show starting in 1933. The newly organized Orange City Chamber of Commerce in 1935 supported expanded tulip plantings in town, and in 1936 they led in creating the Spring or May Festival. Over a single day (May 14), the festival featured (besides tulips) a parade, a costume contest, window displays, and an evening concert by the Sioux City Symphony Orchestra. Some 3,500 visitors reportedly came for the day.

With hearty public support, the festival was staged again in 1937 with the addition of not only more tulips but also a festival queen. In 1938, the OCTF became a two-day event, with a locally produced musical program presented in the evening. World War II demands cut the 1942 festival back to one day, and the event was put on hold between1943 and 1946. When the OCTF resumed in 1947, the celebrations soon grew to three days on the third weekend in May. Regular events include parades, street inspection and scrubbing, Dutch folk dancing, ceremonies with the festival queen and court, and an evening musical.

Orange City is not the only Dutch American town to offer such a festival. The two Dutch colonies of 1847 each launched a tulip festival before Orange City: Holland, Michigan, in 1929, and Pella, Iowa, in 1935. Orange City's festival has become a way for the town's citizens to celebrate a Dutch identity that is intended to be inclusive and unifying.

Custodial history:

Leona Vander Stoep created these scrapbooks. She donated them to the Northwestern College Archives and Special Collections in January, 1993.

Dimensions:

1.98 m

Rules or conventions:

Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Related

Related material:

There are other OCTF materials under the RA 1.3 numbering, such as the William Kalsbeek Research Collection (see finding aid).

For online photographs and documents representative of the holdings of the Northwestern College and Special Collections, see the Orange City Tulip Festival digital collection on NWCommons: http://nwcommons.nwciowa.edu/tulipfestivalcollection/.

For studies of Orange City, the OCTF, and other Dutch American festivals, see these items:

- Anderson, Doug, Tim Schlak, Greta Grond, and Sarah Kaltenbach. Orange City. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2014.

- Kalsbeek, William D. Celebrating our Dutch Heritage: The Story of the Orange City Tulip Festival. [Orange City, IA:] Friends of the Festival Foundation, 2015.

- Schoone-Jongen, Terence G. The Dutch American Identity: Staging Memory and Ethnicity in Community Celebrations. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2008.

- Vander Stoep, Arie. History of the Orange City Tulip Festival. [Orange City: typescript by author, 1973?].

Other descriptive data:

The Tulip Festival Scrapbook Collection documents the Orange City Tulip Festival. The scrapbooks consist largely of newspaper clippings, but also include various brochures, programs, photographs, notes, and other documents. Collectively, these scrapbooks provide evidence for the origins and development of the Orange City Tulip Festival (OCTF) from the mid- to late twentieth century. Indirectly, the scrapbooks suggest how a Midwestern town adapted its ethnic origins for twentieth-century uses for local identity and economic vitality.

Terms of access:

Copying: Due to the fragility of much of the material, no copying or photography without permission from the Director of the Library.

Preferred citation:

Permission to Publish and Citations: Written permission to publish material in these archives must be requested of the Director of the Library. Citations should include the following information and acknowledgements: [Identification of items]; [volume dates]; Tulip Festival Scrapbook Collection, [carton number]; RA 1.3.1; Northwestern College Archives and Special Collections

Location of this collection:

Lyrasis Special Collections

Lyrasis Library

3390 Park Avenue

New York

NY

10024

USA

Contact:

collections@lyrasis.org