About a year ago, Aurora city employees were working to clean out a storeroom in the Development Services Center when LaShon Harden noticed that a tan box had been thrown away.
Her curiosity got the better of her.
Inside were historic photos of past mayors dating back to 1857, the founding of Aurora. Realizing their importance, she put the box back on the shelf, planning to come back for it later.
But it wasn’t until last weekend — when she saw a Beacon-News article about Ald. Mike Saville, 6th Ward, looking for historic photos lost during renovations at City Hall — that she remembered about her find.
“All week I was trying to remember where I saw the box,” Harden said. “So, I went through a couple of the buildings that we had cleaned out, and I found it.”
Saville had originally been looking for a different type of photo — those of past aldermen, which were accidently destroyed before digital scans could be made. He believed the historic photos of past mayors had also been lost.
And they would have been, if not for Harden’s foresight.
Saville met Harden in the aldermen’s office in Aurora on Friday morning to receive the photos she recovered. The two looked through the box together, chatting about stories they’d heard of the men who once had been mayor of Aurora.
“Really precious stuff,” Saville said as he looked over the photos.
Harden, standing next to him, replied, “I thought so.”
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All of Aurora’s mayors from 1857 to 1949 were found in the photos, representing nearly a century of the city’s history. They used to be displayed on a wooden board that hung outside the City Council chambers at City Hall before it was removed during renovations completed in 2024.
Now, a digital version of the board stands in its place. Unlike photos of past aldermen, the historic mayors’ photos were digitally scanned before they were slated to be destroyed.
Still, Saville called the photos he received on Friday an “amazing find.”
Harden “really did us a service,” according to Saville. She could have just passed that box by, but she didn’t, he said, and that is a testament to her as a person.
Saville and staff from the aldermen’s office categorized the photos soon after they were handed off to see what history had been preserved. Photos from all but one of the mayors who served from 1953 forward that were on the original mayors’ board are still missing, they said.
Although current Mayor John Laesch has indicated his support for recreating the aldermen’s board, he previously said there were no plans to make a new physical mayors’ board, since the digital one works well to capture the history. The photos are also available on the city’s website.
Saville has said, in talking about the lost historic photos of mayors and aldermen, that it is important to have a historical perspective about all the people who did their civic duty by running for office over the years.
He has recovered all but one of the past aldermen’s photos, and he plans to keep the physical version of the recreated board in the aldermen’s office once it is rebuilt.