May 2011

Byllesby Dam Photograph Collection

C1: 129
ca. 1911–1912
2 albums, 7 x 11 and 9 x 11 inches, 200 photographs, along with 66 modern copy photographs from albums belonging to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources

C1:129 Byllesby Dam Photograph Collection (LVA 11_1148_019)

In the early twentieth century, the Appalachian Power Company built a series of hydroelectric dams on the New River in Carroll County, Virginia. Completed in 1912, the Byllesby Dam took its name from H. M. Byllesby and Company, a Chicago investment firm that helped start Appalachian Power, and it created the serene 335-acre Byllesby Reservoir still popular with local fishermen and recreational boaters.

C1:129 Byllesby Dam Photograph Collection (LVA 11_1148_024)

The photographs in this collection document the phases of the dam’s construction and the building methods of the period, with interior shots of the transformer house and its giant turbines and wide-angle exterior views of the dam and cement-mixing plant with its and volute casing and draft tube forms, like abstract sculptures in the wilderness, awaiting cement. As significantly, the photographs capture the daily lives of the workers who made their home in the camp, with images of black-papered dormitories for engineers and office staff, tidy vegetable gardens growing beneath power lines, a pair of well-dressed women on horseback (on the same horse), candid shots of “natives” (locals), and various shots of workers at rest and play and gathered around a campfire at night. The collection … Read the rest

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Fan District Association Poster and Ephemera Collection

C1: 128
ca. 1960-2003
36 posters, 5 house-finding guides, and related ephemera. Posters range in size from 11 x 17 to 22 x 27 inches.

C1:128 Fan District Association Poster and Ephemera Collection (LVA 10_0647_030)

Known for its architecturally eclectic early-twentieth-century townhomes and picturesque shady streets, Richmond’s Fan District is an 85-block residential neighborhood immediately west of the downtown commercial area. The Fan District Association Poster and Ephemera Collection includes many of the creative and memorable marketing campaigns for the Holiday House Tour and a variety of similar community events. Included among the posters are designs by Perrine, Kennedy & Green Advertising; Reed Advertising & Marketing; the King Agency; and the Martin Agency. Also included in the collection are house-finding guides and ticket stubs from the Holiday House Tour. 

 

Arrangement and access:   Chronological  

Provenance:   Gift of Fan District Association, 2009

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Virginia State Penitentiary Photograph Collection

C1: 151
1991
approx. 270 Kodak prints with negatives

Receiving its first prisoners in 1800, the Virginia State Penitentiary in Richmond had by the 1980s, through a series of radical redesigns, grown from architect Benjamin Latrobe’s elegant horseshoe-shaped loggia on the banks of the James to an enormous modern complex of cellblocks and administrative buildings, mostly constructed with inmate labor, and partly from the brick and stone of Latrobe’s original horseshoe, itself fallen into disuse and razed in 1928.

C1:151 Virginia State Penitentiary Photograph Collection

In 1991, with the inmate population decentralized and relocated to various facilities throughout the state, and the penitentiary buildings themselves doomed to obsolescence, the Virginia Film Office sent photographers to survey the complex as a potential movie location. While ultimately no movies were filmed in “the Pen,” the photographers did gather the most comprehensive and intimate visual account of the penitentiary made near the end of its long life cycle, a year before its demolition by the state. The exterior and interior photos are rich in detail and include views of the dining hall, the chapel, and the infirmary with its distinctive green-and-white checkered floor, as well as glimpses along the inner lengths of the tiered cellblocks, various furniture, lamps, and other unexpected details of life behind bars, such as houseplants and an umbrella casually hung by its handle on an open door. One long panorama, composed of five separate … Read the rest

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Allen & Ginter’s Cigarette Card Album of Quadrupeds

C1: 042
ca. 1880s
1 volume, 10 pages

C1:042 Allen & Ginter’s Cigarette Card Album of Quadrupeds (LVA 11_0696_011)

The collectible cigarette card, as a cultural phenomenon, originated in Richmond in 1875, created as a marketing tool by the Richmond-based tobacco manufacturer Allen & Ginter. Cigarette cards were among the first items of ephemera produced specifically for collecting and trading, to be used as proof of purchase for promotional giveaways and, in the long term, to cultivate brand loyalty. Premium albums of this type are much rarer than the individual tobacco cards and were available from the tobacco company issuing the cards in exchange for a complete set of the individual cards or in exchange for coupons issued with the cigarettes. While the tobacco cards were free in packs of cigarettes or tobacco, these albums had to be purchased (or stamps had to be sent in for postage charges).  By late in the nineteenth century, the production of cigarette cards had become an industry in itself, practically independent of its tobacco-based origins.

C1:042 Allen & Ginter’s Cigarette Card Album of Quadrupeds (LVA 11_0696_011)

The album, featuring lithography by Lindner, Eddy & Clauss and published by Allen & Ginter, seems to have educational aspirations, though it has a sometimes whimsical sense of geography, suggesting that kangaroos can be found in India, and it mischaracterizes primates as quadrupeds. The album is also, to a modern sensibility, startlingly violent. … Read the rest

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John Shaw 35mm Slide Collection

C1: 147
late 1950s-1960s
1,288 slides 

John Shaw (1942–2010) was a prolific wildlife photographer and painter strongly associated with Virginia, where he was born and made his home. Quitting his day job as a military satellite tracker in 1982, Shaw, largely self-taught, committed himself to his art, which appeared in countless incarnations—as paintings in private homes, in wildlife magazines and illustrated calendars, on postage stamps and birdseed packages.

C1:147 Cardinal (LVA 11_0696_019)

The 35mm images in our collection demonstrate a technical sophistication and commitment to realism and detail for which Shaw’s later work was so widely admired. Striking shots of songbirds taking wing, casting shadows on what are apparently artificial backdrops, intermingle with more casual photos of Copper and Butch, the family spaniels, and colorful domestic interiors featuring a reserved older couple, probably Shaw’s parents. Other images include opossum and deer, skunks and flying squirrels, a dozen species of songbird, as many national and state parks, and locales such as California wine country and the covered bridges of Pennsylvania. Of special interest to Virginians may be Shaw’s photos of Monticello, Shenandoah National Park in autumn, and the Blue Ridge Parkway—with images of Mabry Mill and the Puckett Cabin, home of “Aunt” Orelena, the famous midwife. While most of the slides themselves are undated, images of the Seattle World’s Fair place their creation in the early 1960s.

[nggallery id=7]Arrangement and access:
The 1,288 Kodachrome slides are … Read the rest

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