2011

Virginia Historical Inventory

Photograph Collection

C1: 160
1938
approx. 19,300 reports, approx. 6,200 photographs, 103 maps 

C1:160 Virginia Historical Inventory. Unidentified house, Greensville County, VA

The Virginia Historical Inventory is a massive and rambling collection of photographs, annotated maps, and written reports on the architectural, cultural, and family histories of thousands of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century buildings, mostly private homes, in rural communities throughout the commonwealth. Commissioned by the Works Progress Administration, the inventory has been part of the Library’s permanent collection since its completion in 1938. The original field reporters were mostly women, non-experts recruited locally and given crash-course training in identifying and describing the architectural motifs of the so-called vernacular (homey) architectures the inventory sought to document, as opposed to the ornate, “high style” houses of major cities—the usual fare of the better known Historic American Buildings Survey. During on-site investigations and interviews with residents and locals, inventory reporters captured a wealth of technical and narrative information, giving family sagas, local folklore, and ghost stories equal time with descriptions of chimneys, catalogs of books and antiques, the locations of wells, and transcriptions of epitaphs, diaries, letters, deeds, and wills. Many of the houses surveyed have not survived to the present day. 

Arrangement and access:
The entire collection is searchable by location or keyword through the Library’s online photo collections.

  • C1:160 Virginia Historical Inventory. Unidentified house, Greensville County, VA
    C1:160 Virginia Historical Inventory. Unidentified house, Greensville County, VA
  • C1:160 Virginia Historical Inventory. Unidentified house, Greensville County, VA
    C1:160 Virginia Historical Inventory. Unidentified house, Greensville County, VA
  • C1:160 Virginia Historical Inventory. Unidentified house, Greensville County, VA
    C1:160 Virginia
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Adolph B. Rice Studio Collection

Photograph Collection

C1: 112
ca.1950–1960
approx. 16,400 photographic negatives, 5,000 prints, 12 vintage 16 x 20″ exhibition prints, and a mix of 8 x 10″ negatives, transparencies, and additional vintage prints 

C1:112 Adolph B. Rice Studio Collection. Street lights, Jefferson Avenue at night (LVA rice2734b)

Adolph Bransford Rice (1909–1960) was a prolific photographer, addressing a range of commercial needs in Richmond throughout the 1950s. A well-liked businessman, Rice was active in Richmond’s Catholic community, as evidenced by his frequent photographic coverage of church activities, as well as a member of several photographic associations, and regularly contributed images to the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the News Leader. After Rice’s death at age 51, the studio went to his son, Adolph Rice Jr., who went on to serve as a staff photographer for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Library of Virginia, eventually donating his father’s entire photographic inventory to the latter. 

Browsing the collection is an exercise in discovery as one stumbles upon subjects as eclectic as funerals and Noel Coward plays, broken sidewalks and local celebrities, austere priests and laughing nuns, retail displays and Tobacco Festival parades, highway construction and traffic accidents, groundbreaking ceremonies and retail showrooms, office parties and stag parties, school field trips and Civil War reenactments, elevator operators and Easter bunnies. Unlike many commercial photographers of the period, Rice seems to have had a personal ease with his subjects, who never come … Read the rest

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H. D. Milhollen Virginia Courthouse Etching and Photograph Collection

Photograph Collection, Print Collection

C1: 068
1940–1941
178 photographs, 158 film negatives, 13 etchings

C1:068 H. D. Milhollen Virginia Courthouse Etching and Photograph Collection (LVA 09_0869_019)

Courthouses were essential in establishing a sense of permanence and rule in early Virginia communities, being not only centers of legal and civic activity but venues for business and barter, playing host likewise to a spectrum of community-building social activities such as picnics and games. In the winter of 1940–1941, the Virginia-based Hirst Dillon Milhollen (1906–1970), an etcher by trade and chairman of the exhibits committee for the Washington Society of Etchers, photographed courthouses throughout the commonwealth, the only criterion for inclusion being that the courthouse had to predate 1871 in its construction. The following year, Milhollen privately printed Old Virginia Court Houses, a 100-edition loose-leaf portfolio whose etchings drew upon Milhollen’s own gathering of original photos.

Arrangement and access:
Alphabetical by county. 

Provenance:
Etchings purchased 1973, photos and negatives purchased 1992 

References:
Hirst D. Milhollen, Old Virginia Court Houses (1942)—original limited edition portfolio held in LVA Special Collections 

  • C1:068 H. D. Milhollen Virginia Courthouse Etching and Photograph Collection
    C1:068 H. D. Milhollen Virginia Courthouse Etching and Photograph Collection
  • C1:068 H. D. Milhollen Virginia Courthouse Etching and Photograph Collection
    C1:068 H. D. Milhollen Virginia Courthouse Etching and Photograph Collection
  • C1:068 H. D. Milhollen Virginia Courthouse Etching and Photograph Collection
    C1:068 H. D. Milhollen Virginia Courthouse Etching and Photograph Collection
  • C1:068 H. D. Milhollen Virginia Courthouse Etching and Photograph Collection (LVA 09_0869_019)
    C1:068 H. D. Milhollen Virginia Courthouse Etching and Photograph Collection (LVA 09_0869_019)

Related resources and collections:
Carl Lounsbury, The Courthouses of Early Virginia: An Architectural History (2005)

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Harry C. Mann Panoramic Photograph Collection

Photograph Collection

C1: 159
ca.1910–1917
58 panoramas

C1: 159 Harry C. Mann Panoramic Photograph Collection

A companion to our larger Harry C. Mann Photograph Collection, this digitized set of 58 panoramic images of Norfolk and Virginia Beach provide a sense of scale (often epic) for collective human activities in environments specific to those activities. Included are early-twentieth-century panoramic views of Virginia Beach First Baptist Church, the Chautauqua Building, O’Keefe’s Casino, Norfolk’s Miller & Rhoads department store on Plum Street, McKendree Methodist Church, Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Norfolk Harbor, Willoughby Spit, Elizabeth City, and Glenwood Park.

C1: 159 Harry C. Mann Panoramic Photograph Collection

Arrangement and access:
The original negatives are part of the collection at Norfolk Public Library.

References:
Norfolk Public Library Newsletter, vol. 2, no. 3 (Spring 2008)

Related resources and collections:
Harry C. Mann Photograph Collection, C1: 008

C1: 159 Harry C. Mann Panoramic Photograph Collection

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Hampton Institute Photograph Album

Photograph Collection

C1: 134
ca. 1880–1890
1 album, 32 cyanotypes

C1:134 Hampton Institute Photograph Album

In Hampton Roads, Virginia, 1868, the Union general and educator Samuel Armstrong (1839–1893) opened Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute on the grounds of a former slave-holding plantation, with the stated purpose of “train[ing] selected Negro youth who should go out and teach and lead their people first by example… to replace stupid drudgery with skilled hands, and in this way to build up an industrial system for the sake not only of self-support and intelligent labor, but also for the sake of character.” The institute (today Hampton University) received its first Native American students, refugees from the Red River War, in 1878.  Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, the date of these cyanotype images, the institute saw a dramatic increase in enrollment and course offerings, emphasizing not classical studies but practical experience in trades and industry, such as carpentry, clock making, printing, tailoring, bricklaying, and, of course, farming, as well as rigorous classes in mathematics and the sciences. 

The cyanotypes suggest an artistic sensibility at work on the campus. All images appear to have been taken by the same photographer, probably a member of a student photography club, among which cyanotypes were popular because they were inexpensive and relatively easy to process. Imposing exterior shots of college buildings, most notably Memorial Church and Virginia-Cleveland Hall, contrast with more delicate images of dogwood blossoms, sailboats … Read the rest

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