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John A. Barrows Photograph Collection(ca. 1930)

  • MS 1996.22
  • 1023 items

Black and white photographs, negatives, postcards, and miscellaneous items of Norfolk native John Alden Barrows (b. ca. 1905, d. 1931), architect for the Colonial Williamsburg Restoration. The photographs—some taken by Barrows, Thomas Waterman, Milton Grigg and others—remain in their original order, which follows a somewhat erratic alphabetical arrangement by site/subject.

John A. Barrows joined the staff of the Williamsburg office of Boston architects Perry, Shaw & Hepburn as a draftsman in the early days of the restoration. Remaining with them until his untimely death, Barrows assisted in the restoration of the College of William and Mary’s Wren Building, and was involved with design work for the reconstructed Raleigh Tavern, Capitol, and Governor’s Palace. In addition to his research and restoration work, John A. Barrows co-authored The Domestic Colonial Architecture of Tidewater Virginia with colleague Thomas Waterman.

As part of his field research, Barrows—at the wheel of his 1928 Buick roadster “Lucy”—photographed numerous buildings and plantations throughout the Tidewater region, including sites in the now restored historic area of Williamsburg, Bacon’s Castle, Cleve, Carter’s Grove, King William Courthouse, Mt. Airy, Mt. Vernon, Rosewell, Stratford Hall, Sabine Hall, Shirley, Little England, the U.S. Capitol, and the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. These photographs form the core of the collection. The John A. Barrows Photograph Collection is an important adjunct to existing groups of photographic documentation for buildings in Williamsburg’s historic area and of Virginia architecture.

The Visual Resources section of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library has copy prints and negatives for photos from the Barrows Collection. Researchers can order copies of these photos at the Visual Resources reference desk. The copy negative number is given on the back of each original photo, and is also noted in the inventory. Please identify the negative numbers of the photos in which you are interested prior to going to the Visual Resources desk.

In the spring of 1991, Edward Acree Chappell, the Foundation’s director of architectural research, designed and curated an exhibit of materials from the collection. John A. Barrows and the rediscovery of early Virginia architecture: a catalog for the exhibit, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library, Williamsburg, Virginia, March 4-April 16, 1991 is available in Special Collections (NA2440.W7 C64 1991). Color prints of the exhibit are available in the collections file.

The John A. Barrows Photograph Collection was donated to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in 1989 by his brother David N. Barrows.

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