Edward B. Van Voorhees Visual Materials Collection
Collection
Identifier: VAC379
The Edward B. Van Voorhees Visual Materials Collection contains black and white negatives and photographs illustrating Georgia Tech student life and activities, 1939-1943. There are many images of Georgia Tech dances, an NROTC summer cruise, initiations by various student organizations, and student life in general. The negatives have been scanned and the digital images are available for viewing.
(3 boxes, approximately 1010 images)
None.
Permission to publish materials from this collection must be obtained from the Head of Archives and Special Collections.
1.4 Linear Feet
The Edward B. Van Voorhees Visual Materials Collection contains black and white negatives and photographs illustrating Georgia Tech student life and activities, 1939-1943. There are many images of Georgia Tech dances, an NROTC summer cruise, initiations by various student organizations, and student life in general.
The negatives have been scanned and the digital images are available for viewing. Some of the negatives have slight deterioration that may affect the quality of the image. There was one negative that was brittle and broken; it was not scanned, however it appears to be the third of a series of three images of the same woman.
Not all of the images were taken by Edward Van Voorhees. A few photos are credited to other photographers; that information is written on the back of those photos. It is possible that because of Van Voorhees’ association with the Technique, Blueprint, and Camera Club, he may have acquired other students’ work. Additionally, it is possible that other items were intermingled with Van Voorhees’ when a different department used his images for a project in the 1990s. Despite the indefinite origin of some of the materials, it appears that all of the images date from 1939-1943, with only one exception. That exception is a set of four images of a graduation ceremony at Alexander Memorial Coliseum dating from circa 1957.
Although many of the images had little or no original identifications, some negatives were originally identified by a number and brief caption. Any such original information is in parentheses following the item description. A number of the images appear in various issues of the Blueprint; in these instances, the annual date and the page number are provided in brackets following the image description.
Edward Burnette Van Voorhees (04 July 1920-15 January 1998), of Nashville, Tennessee, entered Georgia Tech as a freshman in the fall of 1939. He graduated in 1943 with a degree in industrial management. Following graduation Van Voorhees, a member of Tech’s Naval ROTC program, was commissioned a lieutenant in the US Navy and served for the duration of World War II. After the war, Van Voorhees was the general manager of United Service in Nashville.
While at Tech, Van Voorhees was involved with many different student organizations. He was a member of the Tech Band all four years and was a member of the honorary music fraternity, Kappa Kappa Psi. Van Voorhees was also very involved in the YMCA, serving as secretary, then vice-president and president, as well as editing the “T” Book in 1941 (published by the YMCA). He was president of the Junior Class and was a Student Council member. Over the course of his years at Tech, Van Voorhees was also active in the Camera Club, intramural basketball, was on the staff at both the Technique and Blueprint, was a member of the Student Faculty Honor Committee, and served as president of the Tech Bible Class at North Avenue Presbyterian Church. Van Voorhees was also a member of the service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega and the honorary journalistic society Pi Delta Epsilon.
This collection is organized into 10 series: Academics; Athletics; Campus and Environs; Dances; Events; Military; Organizations; People; Student Life; and Miscellaneous.
Images placed in the “Miscellaneous--Not at Tech” and “People--Family” sub-series had no identification but seemed to have obvious differences in subjects and locations from the Georgia Tech images. The “Family” sub-series was established because of the presence of people older and younger than college-aged, however, because of the lack of identification, it is possible that the images are not actually of family members.
A print copy of this finding aid is available in the Georgia Tech Archives reading room.
Accession #1987.0302.
(3 boxes, approximately 1010 images)
Mandi D. Johnson processed these visual materials in July 2010.
Part of the Archives and Special Collections, Library, Georgia Institute of Technology Repository