Among the best places to look for old photographs are the Norfolk Public Library’s digital photo archives and the Virginia Beach Public Library’s Edgar T. Brown postcard collection. Another is the Library of Congress, especially for Civil War photos and, curiously, child labor conditions.
A tremendous resource for nautical pictures is the Mariners’ Museum, and for old Navy ships and planes, the Naval Historical Center in Washington is the place to look.
Now there’s a new source: Two years ago, the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority decided to drag dusty boxes of photographs, negatives and slides out of storage vaults and digitize them. It was a huge job, sometimes requiring the images to be restored first. But when it was over, more than 14,000 photos had been scanned and made available online. Furthermore, the images are in high-resolution format, and they’re searchable.
In other words, you can search for all photos of, say, Atlantic City, Ghent, downtown or, more generally, slums. These last pictures, before Norfolk’s massive slum clearance projects, are extensive and heartbreaking. There are lots of shots of the old waterfront, including this one of the Oyster Dock, once the center for ship stores and imported goods, taken in 1875:
Norfolk's population surged from 137,500 in 1939 to 305,121 in 1943 as a result of World War II. Here, in the fall of 1945 is a war-ending victory celebration on Granby Street:
Norfolk’s slum housing conditions, prior to massive urban renewal efforts in the 1950s,
were described as the worst in the nation. This undated photo shows a girl emerging from a house on Smith Street in Young Park.
Photos courtesy of Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority.
