Earl Gregg Swem Photograph Collection

Earl Gregg Swem Photograph Collection

Swem, E.G. (Earl Gregg), 1870-1965

Historic buildings - Virginia - Williamsburg

Architectural photographs - 1920-1930

This collection of sixty-two black and white photographs primarily documents buildings in pre-restoration era Williamsburg at the beginning of the 1920s. It is not known whether Swem took the photographs in this collection himself or gathered them from various local sources as part of his ongoing research on Virginia history topics. Williamsburg structures represented include the Benjamin Waller House, the Chiswell-Bucktrout House, Moody House, Bracken Tenement, Lightfoot House, Nicholas-Tyler Office, Benjamin Powell House, Mayo House, Wetherburn's Tavern, Palmer House, Dr. Barraud House, Taliaferro-Cole House, Travis House, Alexander Craig House, Public Records Office, Prentis Store, Charlton House, Dudley Digges House (now known as the Bray School), Coke-Garrett House, Peyton Randolph House,Grissell-Hay Tenement, St. George Tucker House, Timson House, St. John House, Roscow Cole House, Ewing House, and the Tayloe House. A few historic sites outside of Williamsburg are also included and encompass Bacon's Castle, Smith's Fort Plantation, and unidentified houses in Smithfield and at Kingsmill Farm. The Confederate stone obelisk on Palace Green, the commemorative obelisk on the site of the Governor's Palace, and mulberry trees on Francis Street are some miscellaneous features of early 1920s Williamsburg that are visually documented in the collection. Several business enterprises once located along Duke of Gloucester Street are recorded in Swem's photographs, including the Williamsburg Hotel on Market Square.

Dr. Earl Gregg Swem served as a librarian at the College of William and Mary from 1920-1944. A graduate of Lafayette College, he began building his library career through several positions in the Chicago area in the late 19th-century. In 1903, he accepted an appointment to a position in the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress. He then held the position of Assistant State Librarian of Virginia from 1907-1919. In 1920, he arrived in Williamsburg to head the College of William & Mary's Library, where he worked diligently to expand its historical collections into what would one day be the nucleus of the library's Special Collections Research Center. During his tenure at the College of William & Mary, Swem also managed the William & Mary Quarterly and published the Virginia Historical Index in 1936. After his death in 1965, the College named its new main library the Earl Gregg Swem Library in his honor.

Swem, Earl Gregg

Early 1920s

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Special Collections, John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation