Photography

In 1947, The Crisfield Times published an editorial prompting an annual crab derby, a sort of Kentucky Derby spotlighting one of Crisfield's greatest natural resources: the Chesapeake Bay blue crab. The next year, the National Hard Crab Derby began. Since that brief crab race in front of the Crisfield Post Office in 1948, the annual Labor Day weekend event has grown into one of the most recognized festivals in the United States. The entire country participates each year through the Governor's Cup crab race, and all eyes are on contestants as they attempt to break world records in crab picking and boat docking. Champion chefs from throughout the Eastern Seaboard hone their skills during the annual crab cooking contest. Skiff races recall days of the past when work boats sped in from Tangier Sound to sell their day's catch to the area's seafood packers. And Crisfield may be the only city in America where little girls grow up with the dream of someday being called Miss Crustacean!

When the Henry Belin Jr. Waverly Community House and Park was dedicated in 1920, Margaretta E. Belin intended both to honor her husband and benefit residents of Abington Township. The community house was envisioned by its progressive donor as the educational, cultural, and social heart of rural Waverly. By 1930, when Margaretta and Henry's six children added land and two wings to the original building in honor of their mother, chautauquas, concerts, clubs, sports teams, and Scout troops were filling the annual calendar of events. On site, a post office provided mail delivery, a canteen supplied merchandise from ammonia to pencils, and residents of Dalton, Factoryville, Clarks Summit, and Clarks Green pumped gasoline. No activity, however, was more celebrated both locally and regionally than the annual fair that united Waverly in purpose, labor, and pleasure at summer's end. Since its inception, the Waverly Community House has set and achieved ambitious goals to enrich community life, a mission that successive generations have strived to follow.

The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia started thanks to a heroic doctor's inspiration, was the first of its kind and still impacts children's lives today.

The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia opened its doors in 1855 amidst a turbulent time in the city. Dr. Francis West Lewis, a prominent Philadelphia physician, was deeply disturbed by the appallingly high mortality rate among infants and children in his city, a result of the poor sanitary conditions in the urban slums that arose in great numbers during the Industrial Revolution. After visiting London for the opening of Great Ormond Street Hospital, Dr. Lewis was inspired to open the first children's hospital in the United States in Philadelphia and advertised in the Public Ledger, Reception of children suffering from acute diseases and accidents will be received free of charge. The Children's Hospital continued to prosper and lead the advancement of children's health by creating many of the nation's first pediatric training programs and leading in the discovery of vaccines, lifesaving medical equipment, and pioneering treatments. Today, the hospital enjoys international recognition and continues to contribute to the advancement of children's health through a three-part mission of patient care, education, and research.

Millville had always been known for its glassmaking, but with the outbreak of World War II, the community's identity was primed to change forever. A private civilian airfield gave way to the creation of America's first defense airport, the training ground for the U.S. Army's Curtiss P-40 Warhawk and Republic P-47 Thunderbolt pilots. Bright and brave young men from across the country converged on Millville in the early 1940s to learn to fly and fight for freedom. Some died in training; others flew into history as heroes. While in Millville, they lived the average lives of the country's military men, playing baseball, flirting with the girls at the local USO dances, and attending Sunday night dinners with local families, creating lifelong friendships in a time when a young man's life expectancy was in the hands of America's enemies.

Washington Dulles International Airport is one of the three major airports that transports passengers into and out of the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. The beauty of the site is admired not only by millions who arrive and leave the area, but by local residents as well. After an extensive study of three separate locations in Virginia, Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower agreed to the Chantilly site and later chose to rename the world's first jet airport after his former secretary of state, John Foster Dulles. Renowned architect Eero Saarinen designed the magnificent building that serves as a gateway in and out of the United States. Today, the once peaceful farming area and small villages have turned into a fast-paced business world filled with thousands of new homes and residents.

Arthur Rickerby's illustrious career was spent capturing scores of the nation's significant historical events on film, from the Japanese signing of the Articles of Surrender aboard the USS Missouri in 1945, ending World War II, to famous sports images such as Don Larsen throwing the final pitch of baseball's only World Series perfect game for the New York Yankees in 1956. Today few people know of Arthur Rickerby, the New York born and bred photographer. Arthur Rickerby's New York City not only reintroduces the world-class photojournalist and pays tribute to his outstanding work, but it also features rare and previously unseen New York images that perfectly capture the enduring Rickerby touch.

Rare and vintage photographs depict the interesting and tragic history of the Essex Mountain Sanatorium.

Founded in 1907 amidst protests and a burgeoning suffrage movement, Essex Mountain Sanatorium was the result of two Montclair, New Jersey, women who successfully lobbied local government to establish a tuberculosis sanatorium in a then vacant cottage for wayward girls. From these humble beginnings, the hospital grew to become one of the finest treatment centers in the nation, expanding into a complex of 20 buildings that encompassed nearly 300 acres. Ironically, medical advances pioneered at places such as the sanatorium and the advent of antitubercular drugs in the years following World War II led to decreasing patient enrollment, which made such large facilities unnecessary. When it was eventually abandoned in the early 1980s, the hospital began its second act as a haven for urban explorers, vandals, and arsonists, becoming shrouded in mystery and the source of local legends and myths. After suffering years of neglect and abuse, the main complex would finally fall to wreckers in 1993, ending an important era in county, state, and national history.

The first hospital in St. Lawrence County, Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center opened in 1885 as the Ogdensburg City Hospital and Orphan Asylum. Although always a community-owned organization, it was managed by the Grey Nuns, Sisters of Charity, until 1976. The hospital's name changed twice: first in 1918 to A. Barton Hepburn Hospital to honor the local banker and donor, and again in 2000 to Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center in recognition of an exceptional gift from its own Dr. E. Garfield Claxton. The hospital was the home of a nursing school, with its first graduating class in 1905 and its last in 1968. With an innovative group of caregivers and community members, Claxton-Hepburn was the first to bring many new services to the region, including an artificial kidney machine in the late 1960s, long before many urban hospitals had one. In the 1990s and 2000s, the county's first dialysis center and comprehensive cancer center were constructed. Today, Claxton-Hepburn serves as a regional referral center for dialysis, radiation and medical oncology, psychiatry, and wound healing.

Established in 1947 by the Sisters of St. Basil the Great, Manor College transformed the lives of generations of students over the last 75 years through its liberal arts and career-focused degree programs. Nestled immediately outside Philadelphia in the bucolic surroundings of Fox Chase Manor, Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, the college initially focused on providing a quality liberal arts education to young women from the Ukrainian American community and the Sisters of St. Basil the Great when it first opened. It blossomed into a dynamic community that championed career-oriented education; promoted its Ukrainian ethnic heritage and Catholic ties; and thrived on the deep and everlasting bond, nurtured through countless academic events and campus activities, between the sisters and their students. The visionary leadership of its nine female and male presidents carried it through important institutional changes, which included building and improving academic and residential structures, becoming a coeducational institution, and modernizing its curriculum with the recent debut of its first bachelor's degree programs.