Images From the Archives includes only a small portion of the Breast Form Fund collection. To see images not currently included here, please speak with a librarian.

Images From the Archives includes only a small portion of the Broadsides in the Forbes Library Special Collections. To see images not currently included here, please speak with a librarian.

Notification Day, July 27, 1920
June 8-12, 1920 the Republican National Convention was held in Chicago and nominated Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding for President and Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge for Vice-President. The convention format at the time only included the 940 delegates and the candidates were not there to campaign, give speeches or accept the nomination at the convention. A committee of delegates would then do a hometown notification to the candidates. On July 27, 1920, a delegation led by Governor Edwin Morrow of Kentucky arrived at 21 Massasoit Street and notified Calvin Coolidge he was the Republican nominee for Vice President. The notification day event committee led by Smith College President Emeritus L. Clark Seylee organized band concerts, luncheons for the official delegates, a parade through downtown Northampton to the Coolidge home and then to Smith College’s Allen Field for formal ceremonies where Morrow delivered the speech on nomination and Coolidge delivered his speech of acceptance. The 1920 census population for Northampton was 21,951 and local newspapers estimated there were 15,000 people in town and due to the heat about 7000 spectators stayed in the open field for the ceremony. Harding and Coolidge were elected on November 2, 1920 and inaugurated on March 4, 1921.

Special thank you to Smith College Praxis Summer Internship Funding for a remote internship and Smith College archives for research assistance.

Exhibit created by Forbes Library Archivist Julie Bartlett Nelson and Eavan McNeil, Smith College class of 2022

Images From the Archives includes only a portion of the Civil War collection. To see items not currently included here, please speak with a librarian.

The Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library & Museum contains materials documenting the private life of Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933), beginning with his birth and formative years in Vermont, his student days at Amherst College, and his years as a young lawyer in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Elbridge Kingsley (1842-1918, Hadley, Mass.) was an artist particularly known for his fine wood engravings. The Elbridge Kingsley Collection contains engravings, paintings, photographic prints and negatives, and other art both by Kingsley and from his personal collection.

Elbridge Kingsley
Though a native of a small town near Cincinnati, Ohio, internationaly known wood engraver and nature painter, Elbridge Kingsley (1842-1918), rightfully can be claimed as one of the Pioneer Valley's own. His parents, Moses W. Kingsley and Rachel W. Curtis, moved back to Hatfield when Elbridge was only six months old. He lived with them there until the age of 13 when he "ventured across the river to enter Hopkins Academy in Hadley" and, a few years later, became an apprentice in printing at the Hampshire Gazette in Northampton. Further studies took him to Cooper Union in New York, where he experimented with wood engraving, a life-long involvement. 

Continuing to move between New York and Hadley, Kingsley studied sketching from nature and drawing with James Wells Champney, the first art teacher at Smith College. At that time, he began to fulfill his "longing to sketch out of doors," using the "Sketching Cart," a horse-drawn cart set on large wagon wheels made for him, in 1879, by his blacksmith brother-in-law. With his jaunty hat and sun umbrella, he would sit at his easel outside the cart of his mobil studio in various locations around the Hadley-Hatfield environs, doing sketches for wood blocks and paintings. Much of his work appeared in Scribner's Magazine, later known as The Century. He also went to France, on assignment for the magazine, to do wood engravings of the landscape of the Barbizon School, earning a gold medal for his work at the Paris Exposition of 1889. Many other honors followed. 

Kingsley's paintings, engravings from nature and from reproductions of the works of prominent painters, and Japan proof engravings were exhibited in London, Berlin, Paris, and Japan, as well as in Springfield and Deerfield. Ever-cognizant of his local connections, he personally gave three large oil paintings to Forbes Library, as well as numerous papers, photos, and his autobiographical manuscript. 

In 1951, the Kingsley collection was enhanced considerably by the gift of Mrs. G. Cochrane Smith, of Old Deerfield, who gave the Library thirty-five of the artist's original water colors and twenty-nine etchings and engravings. 

Three large paintings, gifted by the artist Elbridge Kingsley, are prominently displayed in the Library. The hazy, almost, dreamy colors reflect the artist's view of local scenes, visited in his famous "Sketching Cart."

Images From the Archives includes only a small portion of the Elbridge Kingsley collection. To see images not currently included here, please speak with a librarian.

An overview of the collection can be found at http://www.forbeslibrary.org/special/Kingsley_Collection_Overview.pdf

The Forbes Library holds a substantial collection of paintings, engravings, photographs, and other works by local, regional and nationally-known artists of the 18th to the 21st centuries.

The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) was an organization of Union veterans of the American Civil War.

The Gregory Wilson Northampton Area Vintage Postcards/Trade Cards Collection was donated to Forbes Library in 2017 by the Gutterman-Pohlman family. Gregory Wilson, known locally as “the Button Man”, designed and manufactured political, advertising, and social-issue pin-back buttons for decades in the area, as well as collecting local memorabilia. Over decades of collecting, he amassed a unique and comprehensive collection of postcards and trade cards depicting local scenes and advertising local businesses.

Many are color lithographs showing streetscapes and well-known buildings, some of which are no longer standing. Churches, schools, hospitals, and Smith College are represented. Some cards have been mailed with personal messages about the sender’s visit to Northampton. Others are cut in novelty shapes emphasizing the wares being advertised.

The first known printed picture postcards appeared in Europe in 1870 and the first American postcard was developed in 1873 by the Morgan Envelope Factory of Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1907, the golden age of postcards began when Congress allowed the divided back, providing a space for an image on the front and an address and message on the back. For the fiscal year ending June 30, 1908, 677 million postcards were mailed. The U.S. population was less than 89 million at that point.

The collection comprises about 1,500 Northampton area vintage postcards and trade cards. Forbes Library is in the midst of a multi-year process of digitizing the entire collection for public viewing.

For now, you can view a small selection of the postcards on this site. We will be adding many more.

The Library holds over 30,000 film negatives taken by Daily Hampshire Gazette photographers between the mid-1950s and mid-2000s.

Images From the Archives includes only a small portion of the Daily Hampshire Gazette collection. For photo research and to see images not currently included here, please speak with a librarian.

The photographs were taken by Charles H. Howard during July 1917. The series of 145 glass plate negatives contains individual portraits of all the members of Company I taken at the King Street Armory, on guard duty at Willimansett and at Camp Beckmann, up to the time the company left Greenfield for Camp Bartlett in July 1917. These men had been at the Mexican border in 1916, went to training and by November were with the 104th Infantry of the A.E.F. in France.

Photographs taken for the book Northampton Reflections on Paradise, published 1988.

Lionel Delevingne, a photojournalist since 1971, was born in Paris, France. He came to Northampton in 1975 where he lived with his family for many years. He currently lives in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
Delevingne worked with Faye S. Frail, who produced the interviews for the book, Northampton Reflections on Paradise, to document contemporary life in Northampton. He aimed to express his warm feelings of belonging to the community and gratitude to the city that welcomed him and his family.
Delevingne and Frail worked with the support of Forbes Library, as well as the Center for the Arts, to create photographic and oral archival materials on the city to serve as a resource for future generations.

Photographs and historical essays by Maurine Sutter documenting the Pioneer Valley Ballet from 1986 to 1991.
Silver gelatin photographic prints, some hand-colored.
Essays on the history of Pioneer Valley Ballet and on the wet darkroom (silver) photographic printing process.

Historic Northampton, in collaboration with the Northampton Camera Club and Forbes Library, invited the people of Northampton to photograph the city—its people, places and events—for two days in 2014: Friday, May 2nd and Saturday, May 3rd.

The Hampshire Room for Special Collections holds over 7,000 images of Northampton and the surrounding area. A sampling of these photographs can be viewed here. For image research, please contact the Arts & Music department.

Images From the Archives includes only a small portion of the Northampton Images collection. To see images not currently included here, please speak with a librarian.

Mark Majeski photographed the Northampton State Hospital buildings in 2002 after they had been abandoned in the early 1990s, and several years before they were finally torn down.

Wild Flower Photographs by H.E. Robbins, Pittsfield, Mass. A collection of 107 platinum prints, mostly hand-colored.

Henry Eugene (H.E.) Robbins was born on October 12, 1865 in Pittsfield, MA. As a young man, Robbins attended Pittsfield High School and Cornell University. He spent a great deal of time working as a clerk for his father's plumbing and heating company, Robbins-Gamwell Corp. As a photographer, Robbins admired and emulated the work of Edwin Hale Lincoln, particularly his New England Wildflowers collection. Robbins died on July 26, 1946. His funeral was held the next day on July 27, 1946 at his home. Though Robbins did not achieve much fame in his life, the Berkshire Museum held an exhibit of Robbins's work from January 19 to April 2, 1989.

Robert P. Emrick was born in Haydenville, Massachusetts on March 31, 1890. He lived in the Northampton area until his death on March 7, 1982. He was 91 years old. A prolific photographer, Emrick captured images of a plethora of subjects. From the early twentieth-century Look Memorial Park to the landscapes of the Connecticut River Valley, Emrick's photographs pay homage to the multifaceted history of Western Massachusetts.

Aside from his passion for photography, Robert Emrick was quite active within the Northampton community. He served on the city's Common Council in 1924, was elected to the Board of Aldermen in 1925, held membership in the police committee, the soldier's relief committee, and the state aid committee. Emrick was also active in the Boy Scouts, serving as scoutmaster of Troop 108 (Leeds).

The Robert P. Emrick Collection is housed within the Special Collections Department at Forbes Library and is available for both casual browsing and research. We suggest that you make an appointment with the archivist before your visit.

Anyone who wishes to comment on the continuing development of the Robert P. Emrick Collection, or has additional biographical information concerning Robert P. Emrick, is encouraged to contact the Arts & Music Librarian.

Sources: Daily Hampshire Gazette. Obituary for Robert P. Emrick, published on March 8, 1982.

See a Detailed Collection Description and Finding Aid for the Emrick Collection

Images From the Archives includes only a small portion of the Robert P. Emrick collection. To see images not included here, please speak with a librarian.

Images From the Archives includes only a small portion of the Walter E. Corbin collection. To see images not currently included here, please speak with a librarian.

Born in Brimfield and retired in Florence, Massachusetts, Walter Everett Corbin spent a large portion of his time both investigating and photographing life in twentieth-century Western Massachusetts. Hence, Corbin's name has become synonymous with local history, especially that of the Connecticut River Valley.