Peter van der Pas: Incredible Library Built on Love of Books and Learning

by Steve Fjeldsted, South Pasadena City Librarian

(Special Thanks to the South Pasadena Review)

Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin offers the wonderful notion that libraries contain our out-of-body genes because ideas are passed on like genetic traits. In this way, according to an official at The New York Public Library represented in the book, libraries are a place where immortality is available because they contain the collective memory of humanity. The book goes on to report that Isaac Asimov's obituary contained his remark that death was not absolutely final for him because his thoughts would live on in his books, giving him a kind of immortality. Grandin herself postulates that immortality might be the effect one's thoughts and actions have on other people.

One former South Pasadenan who left a treasure of thoughts and actions for future generations around the world is Peter van der Pas, who passed away on December 9, 2003. Mr. van der Pas was born in 1915 in Helmond, The Netherlands. From 1940 to 1945 he served as Lieutenant in the Dutch and British armies. Eventually, van der Pas moved to the United States. Despite losing an eye in World War II, Peter enjoyed a long career as a chemical engineer.

While Peter and his wife Molly lived in South Pasadena, they raised three children. Peter worked for Shell and other oil companies and often visited Dawson’s Book Store where he spent almost every lunch hour. The legendary shop is a leading source in Los Angeles for rare and out-of-print books, especially volumes about art and history. He steadily built an absolutely unique and incredibly valuable book collection with strong focuses on the history of science and mathematics, the Western United States, and the religions of the Far East. Many of his books on Eastern religions were hand-colored.

But van der Pas wasn’t just buying and collecting rare books. He was also reading and studying them. Many of the titles were in Dutch, French, and German, languages that the scholar could read and write. Peter also procured many Japanese and Chinese botanical and art books and, although he never learned those languages, he used reference books to interpret the characters.

The family resided in a lovely three-story South Pasadena home featuring its own atrium, ballroom, and, of course, a library. When Peter and Molly retired in 1977 and moved to Grass Valley in the heart of California Gold Rush country, an entire moving van was needed to transport thousands of boxes of books to the Nevada County Sierra foothill community. There the accomplished scientist, historian, and scholar founded and operated the Pacific Library of History, Science and Technology, comprised of the lifetime assemblage of books he began amassing at age 12.

Initially, the collection was placed in St. Joseph’s Cultural Center, located next door to Mount St. Mary’s Convent and Orphan Asylum, built in 1863 and the only extant original orphan asylum in California. There he opened his extensive collection of books, journals, and artifacts to locals and visitors alsike every weekday afternoon for a quarter of a century. The collection continued to grow and within a few years, Peter purchased a grocery store building to house his extraordinary collection of rare and hard-to-find materials. Molly became ill with cancer and her life gradually came to an end in 1980. Peter remarried in 1984 and he and his wife Priscilla shared their love of books, writing, and historical research until December 2003 when Peter died.

While working as the Nevada County Librarian, I first saw the collection shortly after Len Berardi of Mountain House books in Nevada City called me to announce that it would be dispersed by the van der Pas estate. The Nevada County Library consisted of six locations: a main library in Nevada City, branches in Grass Valley and Truckee, stations in Bear River and Penn Valley, and an all-history facility in the original, historic Carnegie Library in Nevada City.

Upon first gazing upon the collection, I thought I must be dreaming or that I’d died and landed in library heaven. More than 18,000 books of various sizes were neatly organized on the long rows of shelves. Clearly, the majority were in English, although thousands more were obviously written in other languages. After brief discussions with the family I was able to share the wonderful news that Nevada County Library would receive 44 boxes containing an impressive assortment of books on the Oregon Trail, the Comstock Lode, Mountain Men, and the California Gold Rush. The Nevada County Historical Society, for whom Peter served as the editor of the newsletter for 20 years, received the lion’s share of the histories of The West, over 1,400 books in all for its collection housed at the Searls Library, also in downtown Nevada City. The scientific books were bequeathed to Utah State University. Many of the Dutch language materials were shipped to the Van Raalte Institute and the Joint Archives of Holland, while about 3,000 others went to Hope College in Holland, Michigan.

Three framed maps from the van der Pas collection were translated and mounted in the Van Wylen Library at Hope College. The only dated map is of The Hague as it was in 1776. The other two -- both of Brabant, near van der Pas's hometown of Breda in the southern region of the Netherlands -- are believed to stem from the mid-1600s. Hope College has been entering its van der Pas items on an international electronic “card catalog” database. They have been in the process of inspecting and evaluating the contents of the 272 boxes the collection was shipped in, many of which were not immediately opened because of their impending move to a separate research center. However, several cartons that were opened contained books that never have been entered on an international database of the books in libraries around the world. This is a strong preliminary indication that many of the titles are extremely scarce, to put mildly. While researchers worldwide probably will request use of van der Pas materials through inter-library loans, it’s unlikely that the rarer materials, some of which are hundreds of years old, will ever be loaned out by any of the owning institutions.

Before I first observed the van der Pas collection, I used to fantasize while driving to garage and yard sales in Nevada County, that around the next corner was an unmatchable personal library that would be available to me for a song. But now I realize that my fantasy has been fulfilled. I’ve already experienced the mother lode of private book collections and I feel uniquely fortunate to be able to tell of the amazing collection to readers and history buffs in and around South Pasadena.

Without a doubt, Peter van der Pas built a magnificent personal library over the course of his lifetime. His collection not only displayed an exceptional scholarly focus and discipline, the knowledge he gathered will now live on in many others. Present-day students and researchers –and subsequent generations-- will be greatly enriched by the love of books and learning that he disseminated around the world. In that sense Peter and so many of his thoughts and those of other brilliant individuals have achieved immortality.