Torrance’s days of auld lang syne.

Step through the doors of the old library building--now the Torrance Historical Society Museum--and the city’s past awaits you.

Arlington Avenue is shown in a 1923 photograph when it was lined with oil wells, and a series of huge aerial pictures depict city growth over four decades.

There is furniture re-creating period living and dining rooms, complete with a big waffle iron that was heated over a fire. Graduates of Torrance schools can grow misty-eyed over a collection of school memorabilia, including striking red band uniforms.

Several glass cases hold 1,067 dolls that were collected from around the world over a 50-year period by Agnes Brewster, who was in her 90s when she died four years ago.

The museum is more than a collection of artifacts; it is also a resource center with a taped oral history collection and other research materials.

Museum coordinator Grace Elgin, a Torrance resident since 1939, has headed the museum for five years.

“I love my job,” said Elgin, who works 80 hours a month at the museum. “It keeps me busy and I like to meet the people. History is very interesting to me.”

Of all the things in the museum, her favorite captures the city’s agricultural past and is a reminder of how Torrance has changed in this century: a large photograph of a 1927 strawberry field where Del Amo Fashion Center now sits.

There are also photos of the Union Tool Co., which was the first factory opened after Jared Sidney Torrance founded his planned industrial city in 1912.

The largest item is the hose cart used by volunteer firefighters in 1919, which is on loan from the city Fire Department.

The museum attracts about 5,000 people a year, Elgin said. They include schoolchildren, Boy and Girl Scouts, church groups and senior citizens on tours.

The old city library was built in 1936 by the Depression-era Works Project Administration. When a new library was built, the city made the old building available for the museum, which opened there in 1978.

Not everything is just for viewing. Hundreds of photographs may be copied for a fee, and materials--including newspaper clippings and decades-old telephone directories--are available for research.

People also may listen to the oral histories taped by longtime residents. One of the residents is Joe Probert, who has lived in Torrance for nearly 75 years and still runs a pharmacy.

Sometimes there is a history behind the historical items that the museum turns up.

Metal plaques, which had once hung on the exterior of the old City Hall, were found by a couple in their garage, where they had left them for years. When their son was a boy on his paper route, he had found the plaques when the building was being torn down.

More recently, the museum learned of an elderly descendant of the Weston family--whose Walteria ranch once covered much of south Torrance--living in Newport Beach. She was about to throw out a box containing an 1828 family Bible and numerous photographs. One of them showed the 1916 Weston home, which this fall was to be razed by a builder who was going to construct a new house there.

The house was saved when the city agreed to relocate it from 25618 January Drive and preserve the wood-frame structure as a historic residence. The house will be moved just after midnight Tuesday to a temporary site at Wilson Park. No permanent site has been chosen.

What: Torrance Historical Society Museum.

Where: 1345 Post Ave., old downtown Torrance.

When: 1 to 4 p.m. daily, except Saturday.

Admission: Free (donation requested).

Telephone: (213) 328-5392.