April 2020

The Nichols Collection of Virginia Courthouses

Photograph Collection

C1:179
1965-1970
643 35mm slides, 45 postcards, 98 prints, assorted booklets/pamphlets/travel brochures/maps, 1 travel notebook

Southampton County Courthouse

27 March 1968

Charlotte Shaver Nichols (1911-1999) of Arlington and her assistant Pansy Wiltshire (1905-1998) set out to photograph all 96 Virginia courthouses between 1966 and 1970 in anticipation of publishing a book. According to a write up in the Byron Weston Record, Vol. 45, No. 3, the original collection contained 360 slides of courthouses.

Charlotte, or Lottie as she was known to her family, was born in Prince William in 1911 and lived in Fauquier as a child. She graduated from Oakton High in Fairfax and then lived in Alexandria as a young woman. She married a physician, Harold Nichols, and they lived in an apartment building in south Arlington overlooking Four Mile Run, just north of the City of Alexandria.

Pansy Wiltshire was a friend of Charlotte’s who lived in Arlington and worked for the federal government at the Federal Communications Commission. She accompanied Charlotte on many of the courthouse trips and can be seen in a few candid shots, along with Ms. Nichols, in the courthouse series.

After Lottie died in 1999, one of her sisters, Dorothy Shaver Harrington Yancey, received her courthouse project collection, as well as her slides. Dorothy willed the collection to the Virginia Bar Association where they declined the gift and returned part of the collection to the estate, which … Read the rest

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World War I German Postcards

Ephemera Collection, Print Collection

C1:186
547 unique postcards

Wattweiler Strassenansicht [Wattweiler street view], Nr. 2563

The Library of Virginia’s Visual Studies Collection has a collection of German postcards depicting non-combat scenes from World War I’s Western Front. Printed by Schaar & Dathe of Trier, the postcards show the effects of war through images of ruins, life in the camps, and the cleanup efforts of soldiers and civilians.

Guiscard, Nr. 2552

One of the biggest German postcard printers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Schaar & Dathe used letterpress, lithograph, and collotype processes. During WWI, the company had 15 presses and employed 150 workers. The majority of the cards have a four-digit number on the back, a unique identification system set up by Schaar & Dathe. Creating postcards during the war was an easy, affordable way to spread the news visually about the areas most affected by combat.

The collection can be viewed in the Special Collections Reading Room.  A selection is available on Historypin

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World War I Poster Collection

Ephemera Collection, Print Collection

C1:183
1914–1919
44 posters

Do your duty join the U.S. Marines : help them defend America on land and sea.

When the United States entered World War I in 1917, a means of communication was needed to encourage the public to support the war. The federal government’s Division of Pictorial Publicity enlisted some of the era’s finest artists, including Charles Dana Gibson, Howard Chandler Christy, James Montgomery Flagg, Haskell Coffin, and Joseph Christian Leyendecker, to design bold graphic posters to help spread the word. The goal of propaganda posters during World War I was to convince the public that the United States needed to enter a foreign war. The Library of Virginia’s Prints and Photographs Collection includes among its holdings a collection of 44 original World War I posters. Similar to the Library’s World War II Poster Collection, these items use the graphic arts to portray a message. Topics illustrated in the collection include enlistment in the armed forces, Liberty Loans and Liberty Bonds, and industrial mobilization.

The World War I posters are largely lithographic prints, ranging in size from 13.78″ x 20.9″ to 57″ x 43.3″. The Library’s holdings are comparable in number to other historic institutions in the Richmond area.

The posters have been cataloged and digitized and can be viewed through the Library’s catalog.

  • For every fighter a woman worker care for her through the YWCA
    For every fighter a woman worker care for her through the YWCA
  • Remember Belgium buy bonds, Fourth Liberty Loan
    Remember Belgium buy bonds, Fourth Liberty
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World War II Poster Collection

Ephemera Collection, Print Collection

C1:184
1939–1945
403 unique posters, 568 total

Bits of careless talk are pieced together by the enemy. Stevan Dohanos. 1943

During World War II, the United States government, through the Office of War Information and the U.S. Treasury, mobilized the best advertising men available to create posters that would speak to the nation. The images portrayed played on deep levels of fear, pride, duty, and patriotism in illustrating subjects such as recruitment and enlistment; fund-raising through liberty loans; communications; and the medical, social, economic, and industrial aspects of the war. Some posters also addressed the civilian war effort. Citizens were told through posters that they needed to work hard and sacrifice at home in order to beat the enemy. To that end, the ad men succeeded. People felt as though their efforts at home were truly helping “the boys” overseas. The Library of Virginia’s World War II Poster Collection consists of 403 unique posters, with 568 total posters in the collection.

As with the World War I Poster Collection, this collection uses the graphic arts to portray a message. In contrast to the WWI posters, which are reminiscent of fine art drawings (most notably by Howard Chandler Christy and James Montgomery Flagg), the design of the WWII posters follows the commercial illustration style of the time, popularized by artists such as John Atherton, Adolph Treidler, and J. Walter Wilkinson and his son, Walter G. Wilkinson. … Read the rest

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