Play Ball!

Most everyone knows about baseball cards and bubble gum, but did you know that the popularity of baseball card collecting began when tobacco manufacturers started to include cards in cigarette packages?  Driven by the rising popularity of baseball, some form of collectible cards, such as cabinet cards and carte de visites, had been issued by teams for purchase as early as the mid-1800s.  However, early photographic methods were time consuming and expensive, and it wasn’t until the introduction of better printing methods, such as chromolithography that cards began to be more widely available. Read more

/Laura Carr

Show Us Your Tats!

Famous for cataloging all things River City, the History Center is venturing into a different kind of historical archiving – tattoos.  In 2010, the Today Show ranked Richmond the third most tattooed city in the nation.  Because of this revelation, the History Center is expanding our horizons and archives to include Richmond tattoos.  Terry Brown from Terry Brown Photography has partnered with the History Center to help us capture Richmond’s best ink.  The best photos will become part of our collection and many will be featured in a photo exhibition that is scheduled to open in October of this year. Read more

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Doing Good

Which Richmond non-profit was located for many years across from the future site of the Science Museum of Virginia? Read more

/Meg Hughes

#RVA Tourism Videos – Submit your own!

Last Wednesday, we discussed the differences between past tourism videos and the way we can tell our personal stories of the Richmond we love or aspire to see created. On April 25, we’ll be showing your videos – up to three minutes, as raw or produced as you want – that showcase your love or vision for #RVA. All you need to do is create your video, post it to your favorite video hosting service, and send the link to josh@floricane.com by Thursday, April 19. Read more

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Pierre Balmain

Fashion designer, Pierre Balmain was born in France in 1914. He studied architecture in Paris, but turned to dress design, working for Edward Molyneux and Lucien Lelong. Read more

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New Donations

In 2011, Geline Bowman Williams (who served as mayor of Richmond from 1988 to 1990) gave this framed collage related to the 25th anniversary of the Expert Letter Writing Company, owned by her mother John-Geline MacDonald Bowman (1890-1946). Bowman purchased the company in 1923, expanded it, and by 1941, made it the third largest direct mail advertising company in the south. She operated Expert Letter Writing until she died in 1946. Read more

/Meg Hughes