Thanks for visiting the Library of Virginia on Flickr!

 

Following the lead of our friends at other cultural heritage institutions, we’re excited to share our content with the Flickr community and to engage users in order to learn more about our collections.

 

We’re starting out with 200 to 300 images from the Adolph B. Rice Photograph Collection, which documents life in Richmond during the 1950s. We’ll be adding more images over the next couple of months, so check back often for updates.

 

We have several goals for this project. Primarily, we’re interested in hearing back from the community about this collection. Many images lack detailed descriptions. We hope that Richmond residents, past and present, will be able to enhance our understanding of these wonderful views of mid-twentieth century life in Virginia’s capital.

 

In addition, we’re eager to experiment with social Web technologies that allow us to converse with our users. Many of our colleagues at other institutions have had great success with their Flickr projects, and we hope to get as much feedback from the community as they have. At the same time, this is also a test of our ability to manage ongoing conversations with the community and contribute back in a meaningful way.

 

We present here just a small sample from the more than 16,000 images in the collection. These accompany Richmond by Rice, a physical exhibition at the Library that runs from Monday, October 6, 2008, through Saturday, January 3, 2009. If you’re in town during that time, please stop by the Library Monday through Saturday between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. to enjoy the exhibition and see even more of Rice’s photographs.

 

More about us

 

The Library of Virginia was created by the General Assembly in 1823 to organize, care for, and manage the state's growing collection of books and official records, many of which date back to the early colonial period. We serve as the Commonwealth's archival agency, the reference library at the seat of government, and as one of the nation's premier research institutions for Virginia history, politics, and culture.

 

Located at 800 East Broad Street in downtown Richmond, Virginia, the Library houses the most comprehensive collection of materials on Virginia's government, history, and culture available anywhere. Our rich collections of printed, manuscript, map, and photographic collections attract researchers from across the country and around the world to our reading rooms, as well as to our digital resources available on the Web.

 

More about the Adolph B. Rice Collection

 

Born in 1909, Adolph Bransford Rice grew up in the Oregon Hill neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia. The son of an elevator inspector, he originally worked as a mechanic for Otis Elevator. In the 1940s Rice briefly owned and operated a small family business known as the Rice Elevator and Engineering Company. He changed careers and became a professional photographer at the age of forty and established the Adolph B. Rice Studio at 14 N. Auburn Avenue. A respected businessman and an active member of the Virginia Professional Photographers Association and the Virginia Press Photographers Association, Rice often published images in the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the Richmond News Leader.

 

Founded in 1949, the Adolph B. Rice Studio addressed a wide variety of photographic needs in Richmond, Virginia. It specialized in aerial and commercial photography and worked for nearly every major business and organization in the city during the 1950s. Clients included department stores, real estate developers, food service companies, television and radio broadcast companies, car dealerships, construction firms, and state and city governments. The resulting images document much of the growth and commercial development of the region in the mid-twentieth century. The Adolph B. Rice Studio closed in 1961.

 

To learn more...

 

Explore the Library's Web site.

 

Check out our collections.

 

Hey, look, we’re on YouTube, too.