The collection consists of photographs and advertisements related to women working in industry dating from 1890 to 1948.
Scope and Contents:
Series 1 consists of photographs that include images of women in industry along with associated documents. Materials are arranged alphabetically by subject. The photographs date from 1890 to 1981, yet the bulk of the materials are from 1930 to 1948. A portion of the materials are undated. There is a notable shortage of material related to women of color. The photographs depict women working in engineering jobs, operating heavy machinery, working with textiles, and handling different types of technology. There are several types of machines and products featured in the collection including pneumatic drills, gas irons, typewriters, rivet guns, compressed air machines, an arbor press, bending roll machines, and light bulbs. Documents that correspond to the photographs discuss an increase in women taking men's jobs in the 1940s while the men were at war. Consequently, photographs from the 1940s in this collection represent the transition of making machinery more applicable to women and enabling them to do "man-sized" jobs. Many of the 1940's photographs depict women enrolling in engineering training programs and physically working with heavy machinery.
Earlier materials from the early 1900s show women sitting in factories next to lighter equipment such as sewing machines and typewriters. There are a variety of companies displayed in the photographs including B. F. Spinney Co., Computing-Bureau Freight Accounts, Curtis Publishing Company, Curtis-Wright Corporation, Deane Works, Draper Corporation, General Electric Co., Glenn L. Martin Co., Goodyear Aircraft Corp., Osborn Manufacturing Company, and Timken Roller Bearing Co. A portion of the commercial photographs were taken by companies including Commercial Photo Co., Eastman Kodak Company, Mercury MFG. Co., Novelty Photo Co., Science Service, and Underwood and Underwood.
Series 2 contains advertisements related to women in industry. These advertisements date from 1927 to 1946. The materials in this series promote products and jobs targeting women operating machinery such as safety bars, grinding tools, bending roles, gauges, double-seaming machines, and portable package staplers. There are a variety of companies featured in this series including Acme Staple Co., Ashcroft Gauge Division, Buffalo Forge Company, E.W. Bliss Co., The Sheffield Corporation, and Willson Safety Products.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into two series.
Series 1: Photographs, 1890-1948
Series 2: Advertisements, 1927-1946
Historical:
This artificially created collection traces the transition of women's work in industry during the twentieth century. Most of the collection materials have a different provenance, but thirty-two photographs were assembled by Helena E. Wright during her years working as a curator in the Division of Culture and the Arts at the National Museum of American History. Other photographs showing women in industrial sites were added to the collection by the curator Peter Liebhold in the Division of Work and Industry. The photographs and advertisements in the complete collection were arranged to exhibit the evolution of women in the workforce. Women's occupations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries included work in the clothing industry (i.e. Draper Corporation, B. F. Spinney Co.), factories, and production lines. Despite the low pay, laborious and unsafe working conditions that came with working in these industries, most women felt a sense of empowerment being employed outside the home. Many women welcomed the opportunity to provide an income for their families yet worked long hours in inadequate and dismal settings. During World War I and World War II, men left their industry jobs to serve in the war. In order to serve the war effort, women found more employment opportunities in several types of industries. These included electric companies (i.e. General Electric Co.), aircraft and aerospace engineering businesses (i.e. Glenn L. Martin Co., Goodyear Aircraft Corp.), foundry work (i.e. Osborn Manufacturing Company), steel making (i.e. Timken Roller Bearing Co.), as well as enrollment in engineering training programs (i.e. Curtis-Wright Corporation). These industries provided women with a broader range of employment opportunities, skills, and experiences. Consequently, other companies began creating and marketing products to help improve the lives of women in the workforce. Inventions such as the Willson Saf-t-Bra advertised comfort and protection to women working in various industry occupations.
Related Materials:
Materials in the Archives Center
Warshaw Collection of Business Americana Subject Categories: Women (AC0060)
Rosie the Riveter Health and Safety Records (AC0621)
Jantzen Knitting Mills Collection (AC0233)
Provenance:
Found in collections and assembled by curatorial staff.
Restrictions:
Unrestricted research access on site by appointment. Unprotected photographs must be handled with gloves.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
United States of America -- Connecticut -- Fairfield County -- Greenwich
Jefferson-Ebert House and Garden (Greenwich, Connecticut)
Scope and Contents:
22 digital images (2019-2020) and 1 digital file folder.
General:
The original six-acre farm had a small 1843 or earlier house done in the Greek Revival style that was expanded and altered in 1905 in the Colonial Revival style by architect Theodore E. Blake, for artists Charles and Mary Roberts Ebert. The current owners acquired the house with 1.61 acres in 1993, then renovated the house and landscape from 2008 until 2010. Projects for the gardens, formal and secluded, included defining sight lines, renovating old stone walls and building new ones, creating paths, and mass plantings of deer resistant materials. They attached a greenhouse with radiant floor heating to the house for houseplants, tropicals and seedlings. When the greenhouse floor is dampened the humidity spreads into the house. Custom built, the greenhouse has details that repeat white-shingled Colonial Revival style.
Some mature trees and shrubs dot the property, including kousa dogwood near the front wall and gate, sugar maple, shagbark hickory, red oak and cryptomeria, stewartia, holly and viburnum. There was one remaining rose from the garden of former owner Jane Righter, honored posthumously with a medal by the Garden Club of America. A variety of hardy ferns were planted around the foundation of the house. The small fieldstone patio to one side is shaded by a beech with underplanting of ginger, trillium and hellebore. There is a small fountain on the patio and an herb garden nearby. In view are woodlands and a brook with a spillway that once fed a sawmill. A bluestone walkway in front of the house is bordered by boxwood and a spring display of bulbs including allium. Pea gravel paths lead to outbuildings, including an old stone spring house and a bright red barn/potting shed. A fenced potager produces seasonal vegetables, roses, bulbs and annual flowers. On a small slope there is a spring display of daffodils and hyacinths backed by forsythia. An old maple with a circular bench looks onto a shady garden of fern, hellebore, tiarella, ornamental grass, trillium, and Japanese woodland peonies
A circle within a square sundial garden behind the house has dwarf black mundo grass in the corners of the cobblestone and pea stone paving, with an old English sundial in the center. Another circular feature is the old fieldstone-lined well with a wrought iron wellhead. An allée of English oak has a lower layer of boxwood and ground level layer planted with epimedium, geranium and amsonia. At the end there is a semi-circular ring of trees overlooking a pergola draped in native trumpet vine. Containers on stone walls, steps and driveway pillars have seasonal plants for year-round appeal.
Persons associated with the garden's design: Gordon Hayward (garden designer, circa 2010); Kendra Masicioli (sundial garden, 2013); Mary Hope Lewis Ford (horticulturist/conservationist, 1956-1965); Jane Righter (rosarian, 1925-1941).
Collection Restrictions:
Access to original archival materials by appointment only. Researcher must submit request for appointment in writing. Certain items may be restricted and not available to researchers. Please direct reference inquiries to the Archives of American Gardens: aag@si.edu.
Collection Rights:
Archives of American Gardens encourages the use of its archival materials for non-commercial, educational and personal use under the fair use provision of U.S. copyright law. Use or copyright restrictions may exist. It is incumbent upon the researcher to ascertain copyright status and assume responsibility for usage. All requests for duplication and use must be submitted in writing and approved by Archives of American Gardens. Please direct reference inquiries to the Archives of American Gardens: aag@si.edu.
Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Gardens, The Garden Club of America collection.
Sponsor:
A project to describe images in this finding aid received Federal support from the Smithsonian Collections Care Initiative, administered by the National Collections Program.
United States of America -- Maine -- York County -- Ogunquit
Mayfair Garden (Ogunquit, Maine)
Scope and Contents:
19 digital images (2023) and 1 file folder.
General:
The 2/3-acre property was overgrown but had towering trees that would be saved and woven into a complex tapestry in a landscape with challenges: dry shade and a downward slope behind the house. The property had passed down in one family from 1897 until 1960, and when the current owners acquired it in 1964 they modernized the entrance to the house, added decks and a brick terrace, and built an outbuilding modeled on a Japanese teahouse. The owner studied and became a landscape architect in 1979 and was inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright and Roberto Burl Marx to integrate the garden and the house. A deck off an upper level faces tall trees and a 120-year-old climbing hydrangea is draped over a pergola on the brick terrace. Finding the existing plants were best adapted to the heavy clay soil they nonetheless have worked in about ninety varieties of native and cultivated trees and shrubs. Perennials and spring bulbs are underplanted in freeform beds with winding pathways, and ground cover plants including invasive goutweed have replaced underperforming grass lawns.
The teahouse was used by growing children for sleep overs, and to entertain friends. It has its own garden with ferns, iris, daylilies, Japanese weeping cherry, kousa dogwood, conifers, and a footbridge over a recirculating stream and fishpond. A bamboo grove is contained by sunken metal barriers that go more than a foot into the ground. Ground covers in the teahouse garden include silver lace, lily of the valley, vinca and mosses.
Statues and sculptures are placed to denote different rooms in this woodland garden. The plant selection, especially perennials, bulbs and flowering azalea and rhododendron add pops of color throughout the year. To maintain the garden a mixture of compost, cow manure and evergreen fertilizer is applied throughout in early May, with bulb booster included where needed.
Persons associated with the garden's design: Louesa Gillespie (1962- ) and Martin Mace, consultant (1962-1977).
Collection Restrictions:
Access to original archival materials by appointment only. Researcher must submit request for appointment in writing. Certain items may be restricted and not available to researchers. Please direct reference inquiries to the Archives of American Gardens: aag@si.edu.
Collection Rights:
Archives of American Gardens encourages the use of its archival materials for non-commercial, educational and personal use under the fair use provision of U.S. copyright law. Use or copyright restrictions may exist. It is incumbent upon the researcher to ascertain copyright status and assume responsibility for usage. All requests for duplication and use must be submitted in writing and approved by Archives of American Gardens. Please direct reference inquiries to the Archives of American Gardens: aag@si.edu.
Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Gardens, The Garden Club of America collection.
Sponsor:
A project to describe images in this finding aid received Federal support from the Smithsonian Collections Care Initiative, administered by the National Collections Program.