This album bears a handwritten inscription by Charles T. Cobb, dated March 1935: “The photographs in this album are of my deceased father and his Wolf Pitt Copper Mines, which he once owned and operated at Virgilina, Virginia, in the early 1900s, during the time we lived in the South. He sold the mine holdings in 1907 to the owners of the Blue Wing Copper Mines Co. for a very large amount.” 

In addition to its photo-documentation of Virginia copper-mining practices of the turn of the century, this album contains rare visual information about Virgilina itself in its “boom days”—a busy little town of mining and moonshining, muddy roads and newly built hotels, houses and storefronts in a rugged landscape stripped of trees. Included are photos of the Jones Distillery, where corn whisky was manufactured (“by U.S. permit,” the handwritten caption assures us), local mining bosses William Battershill and George B. Cobb, and even the Hungarian “Count Carachristy” [sic], an expert in coal distillation. 

Provenance:
Donation, 1997

This collection contains the photographer’s 35mm Ektachrome color slides and digital scans of original prints. The images capture architectural, environmental, commercial, and cultural subjects in Virginia, including private homes, schools, restaurants, hotels, bridges, theaters, barns, churches, cemeteries, courthouses, post offices, fire and railway stations, drug stores, barber shops, banks, and service stations.

Pete Calos, an engineer at Allied Chemical for most of his professional life, made the images between 1977 and 2005 for local and architectural historians. In retirement, Calos began to write and illustrate his own travelogue presentations, with titles such as “Back Roads of Virginia,” “All 100 County Courthouses,” “Virginia Diners,” “Historic Route 1,” “Where Are You in Richmond?,” “Where Are You in Danville?,” and “McDonald’s Symphony.” Though a recreational photographer, Calos proved to have a sharp eye for the transience of the modern, and the foresight and technical ability to capture it, finding beauty in the open girder work of rural bridges and uncanny precision in typical bacon-and-eggs breakfasts. His “Diner Series,” focusing on River City, Tastee 29, Surrey House, and Virginia Diners, and the now-vanished Skull and Bones Restaurant on Virginia Commonwealth University’s medical campus, a haunt of medical students for decades, captures not only the restaurant buildings themselves but the staff, interior décor and fixtures, menus, and food. Similarly, his photographs of Virginia’s monumental Works Progress Administration murals in post offices document not only the artwork but their specific architectural contexts.

 Arrangement and access:
The collection is organized according to Calos’ original scheme in nine series, which derive from his presentations on bridges, churches of Petersburg, historic churches, colonial churches, diners, lighthouses, Route 1 (Jefferson Davis Highway), small-town USA, WPA murals, and a CD-ROM series of mixed subjects.

 Provenance:
Donated, 2006

With the invention of wrapping machines in the 19th century, pieces of plain card were used as protective stiffeners to protect the contents of paper packages. By the late 1870s in the United States, Allen & Ginter were embellishing these inserts with advertisements and illustrations. This quickly became an efficient and creative means of cultivating brand loyalty, and the practice spread rapidly to Great Britain and other foreign manufacturers. By the 1890s, many of the larger British tobacco companies were issuing cards, and they soon progressed to series on particular themes: actresses, soldiers, ships, kings and queens, etc.

The outbreak of war in 1914 inspired many patriotic card issues. Multiple influences were at work: the spontaneous expression of national pride; a desire to help the war effort; an insatiable public craving for news, particularly good news and information; a wish to glorify the heroism of British forces; and a determination to demonstrate the supporting role of civilians on the home front. Three of the seven sets in the British Cigarette Card Collection represent this time period: Army Life (October 1910), Regimental Uniforms (July 1912 and July 1914), and Military Motors (October 1916).

The popularity of cigarette cards grew during the 1920s and 1930s. Many of the sets issued during this time were reissues of earlier series with a timeless appeal. Drum Banners & Cap Badges (September 1924), Military Head-Dress (March 1931), and British Military Uniforms presented by Mornflake Oats are typical series based on historical themes. In the 1930s, as the signs of approaching conflict became more intense, themes with a military flavor took on an increasingly important role. There were those that emphasized knowledge and awareness of wartime matters, such as Uniforms of the Territorial Army, issued by John Player & Sons in October 1939. In 1940 cigarette cards were officially banned by the British wartime government as an unnecessary and wasteful use of raw materials. The issuing of cigarette cards was not widely revived following World War II, perhaps because of the cost.

Arrangement and access:
The cards, mounted in a vintage album, are organized by series: Army Life (October 1910, John Player & Sons), Regimental Uniforms (July 1912 and July 1914, John Player & Sons), Military Motors (October 1916, W. D. & H. O. Wills), Drum Banners & Cap Badges (September 1924, John Player & Sons), Military Head-Dress (March 1931, John Player & Sons), Uniforms of the Territorial Army (October 1939, John Player & Sons), British Military Uniforms (date unknown, presented by Mornflake Oats). 

Provenance:  Purchase, 1960 

Unlike many of our Prints and Photographs Collections holdings, which derive from individual artists, photographers, and agencies, the Carney Christie Collection derives from many sources—family photos, postcards, handwritten correspondence (on hotel stationary), theater programs, newspaper clippings, and other ephemera—which dovetail into a mixed media portrait of an individual man. 

A graduate of Staunton Military Academy, the actor Carney Pitcher Christie (1887–1932) gained early and enduring professional success on Broadway, perfecting the role of Pietro in Edward Locke’s comedy The Climax. Christie was the son of a prominent West Virginia druggist and brother to Mary Christie, a music teacher and sought-after pianist (and presumed assembler of the materials in our collection) with whom he often collaborated on popular “interpretive recitals” of Shakespeare, Sheridan, and Thomas Nelson Page. The family maintained residences in Richmond and Brooklyn, and a summer home in the resort town of Palmer Lake, Colorado, and Christie corresponded with them, especially Mary, during his theatrical tours all over the United States. According to one theater reviewer, he was “the very incarnation of buoyant youth.” About 1928, however, a “nervous collapse” forced Christie to quit touring and instead teach acting at the Leland Powers School in Boston. He later moved to Richmond to live with his sister’s family, where he died of a heart attack in 1932 at age 45. 

The collection includes more than 200 individual photographs of Christie and his family in domestic, travel, and studio settings; newspaper clippings raving about Carney and Mary’s early school performances; sundry reviews of The Climax; odd self-help and inspirational pieces (“The Art of Being Happy,” “The Value of Home to the Soul Life,” “Injurious Effects of Taking Liquor Before Retiring”) clipped from different periodicals; and nine original handwritten and typed poems and some typed philosophical musings, all of uncertain authorship. In the photos Christie is revealed as a dreamy-eyed young man in various personae—a Cambridge boater in a prim straw hat, a kerchiefed gypsy, a playboy in a satin dressing gown. In one candid photo he has leapt like an adult child into the arms of a laughing woman, possibly a  fellow Thespian. 

On a side note, one of the scrapbooks in the collection is an example of Mark Twain’s “blank book” with pre-glued pages, patented by the author in 1873 and put through many iterations. Christie’s is the 1892 version, produced by Daniel Slot and Co., New York. 

Arrangement and access:
An inventory of the collection is available in an accompanying file. 

Provenance:
Purchased, 2002

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 

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

One of the Library’s most important image collections, the Virginia State Chamber of Commerce Photograph Collection is one of the most organized and comprehensive visual resources for twentieth-century Virginia history and culture. Think of it as the official photo album of the commonwealth of Virginia, documenting activity associated with cotton, peanut, textile, tobacco, and fishing industries; farming and harvesting; government; public and higher education; the arts; recreation and entertainment; and countless local festivals for the fifty years between 1922 and 1972. In its subjects the collection resembles (and is indeed the source for) many of the images in our 1939 World’s Fair Photograph Collection (C1:001), also produced by the Chamber of Commerce. Highlights include, but are by no means limited to, photographic coverage of Queen Elizabeth II’s 1957 visit to Jamestown, the restoration/re-creation of Colonial Williamsburg, historical reenactments, and areal photos. Images are generally of high quality and upbeat in mood and tone—not at all photojournalistic, but nevertheless capturing fascinating details of locale, transportation, décor, and clothing. The item numbers by which the collection is arranged also reflect the images’ chronology. 

Arrangement and access:
A significant portion of the collection is available through the Library’s online collections searchable by keyword and date.  The photographs are also searchable by subject using the collection’s original card index.

Provenance:
Donated, 1974

Related resources and collections:
1939 World’s Fair Collection C1: 001

The mild pastels of these lithographic novelty cards belie their content, which is uncharacteristically downbeat for Southern wartime images. They feature Dixie caricatures populating scenes of defeat and despair, such as a man in gray—who appears to be lonesome, cold, and hungry—reminiscing about the “good times” of 1861. Most of these “life scenes” are not historically specific. “A Flank Movement” visually puns military action, showing a hungry soldier armed with a stiletto stalking an oblivious pig. “Heroes Still,” apparently a post-War scene, or one anticipating the fruits of pursuing a lost cause, shows humbled white Southerners tilling their own fields. Other scenes include “In a Bad Place,” “First Winter,” “Homesick,” “In the Trenches,” “The Vidette,” “The Camp Darkey,” “Following Stonewall,” and a sea battle captioned “No. 290.” The cards were originally held together into a dainty, homemade fascicle, fashioned from sackcloth, which includes the handwritten title of the collection along with an almost indecipherable name written in pencil: “Hope Stewart.” 

Provenance:
Donated, 1951

References:
Six of the images were reproduced in Cavalcade (winter, 1951).

Architects William Leigh Carneal Jr. (1881–1958) and James Markam Ambler Johnston (1885–1974) founded their firm about 1908, after a year working independently but sharing office space in Richmond. Carneal & Johnston went on to become one of the most prolific and long-lived architectural practices in the state, by 1950 having shaped the distinctive architectural character of central Virginia, especially Richmond, with the completion of more than 1,300 buildings. The architects worked on a wide range of project types, from the mundane to the monumental, suburban bungalows to a proposed but never realized Ninth Street Victory Arch.

Amassed by the firm for documentary and promotional purposes, the Carneal & Johnston Collection photographically captures interior and exterior views of many commercial and municipal buildings, bridges, factories, apartments, and private residences, and includes a number of concept drawings entered into architectural competitions. Some of the most notable and easily recognizable structures represented in the collection include the First Virginia Regiment Armory (1913), the Richmond Dairy (1914) with its colossal milk bottles, the Colonial Theater (1919–1920), the Virginia State Office Building (1922–1923), and many collegiate gothic structures on the campuses of Richmond College (now the University of Richmond) and the Virginia Military Institute.

Arrangement and access:
The entire collection is available through DigiTool. The firm’s original numbering scheme has been maintained, though its rationale seems neither strictly chronological nor thematic.

Provenance:
Purchased 2009 

Related resources and collections:
Accession 43738, Carneal & Johnston Architectural Drawings and Plans, 1911–1990, Library of Virginia