Although the Academy Film Archive was not officially established until 1991, the Academy started storing film prints and archival papers soon after the first Oscars ceremony in 1929, when members began donating materials to the organization. In 1948, a committee of Academy members launched a campaign to acquire all past Oscar-winning and nominated–films, along with many others. In 1994, this officially became the rule at the Academy, with all films stored at the Archive. Originally located in the same building as the Margaret Herrick Library, the Archive moved to Vine Street in 2002 when the Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study opened. The building was constructed in 1948 as a radio and television studio and is the oldest surviving studio building in Los Angeles. First called the Don Lee Mutual Broadcasting Building and originally dedicated on August 18, 1948, as studios for the
Mutual-
Don Lee Broadcasting System, it was owned by CBS and then by ABC, and it was used for taping series such as
The Dating Game,
The Newlywed Game, and
Barney Miller, among others. After it was acquired by the Academy in 2000 and remodeled, the building was renamed in 2002 after
Mary Pickford, a founding member of the Academy. The facility’s upgrades included constructing temperature-controlled storage spaces and a state-of-the-art fire suppression system. The renovations also included the addition of the 286-seat Linwood Dunn Theater, named after a visual effects pioneer, to accommodate public programming and screenings of Award-eligible films for Academy members. Additionally, the building houses the offices of several Academy departments, including the
Student Academy Awards, the
Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, and the Academy Gold internship program. == Present ==