The Best of Norfolk & the Virginia International Tattoo

This volume will highlight more than 140 years of images that capture Fort Monroe's varied missions, historic buildings, the families who lived there, the resort hotels, and other aspects of this unique national landmark. Fort Monroe was once a powerful symbol of America's national defense system. From 1823 to 1945, its primary military mission was to protect Hampton Roads and the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay from enemy attacks. Over the years, as military technology advanced, Fort Monroe's defensive posture changed. To counter potential threats, American coastal defense installations such as Fort Monroe developed sophisticated steel disappearing guns, mortars, anti-aircraft weapons, and submarine mines. As the site of the army's Coast Artillery School, Fort Monroe trained thousands of soldiers. After World War II, Fort Monroe's role as a coastal defense installation ended, and the post took on new missions as a training headquarters facility. With more than 200 original photographs, this volume unveils the layered history of this massive stone-and-brick installation from the end of the Civil War to the present.

From Norfolk Naval Base, the world's largest naval base, to the Norfolk Southern Railway, one of North America's largest railroads, Historic Photos of Norfolk is a photographic history collected from the areas top archives. With around 200 photographs, many of which have never been published, this beautiful coffee table book shows the historical growth from the mid 1800's to the late 1900's in stunning black and white photography. The book follows life, government, events and people important to Norfolk and the building of this unique city. Spanning over two centuries and two hundred photographs, this is a must have for any long-time resident or history lover of Norfolk!

The Norfolk museum that would one day bear the Chrysler name was always a good museum of its kind, home to a respectable collection serving a smallish city. But when Norfolk native Jean Outland married Walter Chrysler, heir to the automobile manufacturing fortune and an avid art collector, the museum found a person with whom its fortunes would be intertwined, sometimes spectacularly, for decades to come. Walter had already established a Chrysler Museum in Provincetown, Massachusetts, but in 1971—in need of more space and, admittedly, a fresh start—he relocated the operation to Norfolk. In Legacy, Peggy Earle paints a vivid picture of this provincial museum’s transformation into one of the finest art museums on the East Coast. She also delivers a captivating portrait of Walter Chrysler, a generous and demanding man who found in art patronage a focus not only for his wealth but also for his tremendous energy. Not content to merely admire the work, Walter had a naturally gregarious side and was apt to deal with artists such as Pablo Picasso directly. And yet he was also intensely private. Earle provides readers with a fascinating view of the politics of the museum world, where even good relationships are never uncomplicated. (The addition of the Chrysler collection’s works to the museum was not unanimously applauded by the community; nor was it a foregone conclusion that, upon Chrysler’s death, the pieces would even stay with the museum.) This lively account of the unlikely union between an arts maverick and a city on the cusp of cultural evolution sheds new light on how great art finds a place to call home.

Straight from the archives of the Hampton Roads Naval Historical Foundation comes this visual history dating back over the installation's more-than 100 year history. Naval Station Norfolk is the world's largest naval station, supporting the Navy ships, submarines, and aircraft of the US Fleet Forces Command with a multitude of facilities and services. This shore establishment, located on the historic harbor of Hampton Roads, Virginia, has remained vital to the Navy since its foundation in 1917. Once established, the naval station focused on serving the fleet in four areas: aviation, recruit training, a submarine base, and a supply base. Men and women of the station continued to work on these and other activities through the pressures of World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, and wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Throughout its incredible history, Naval Station Norfolk made sure that ships and aircraft were successfully deployed to the far reaches of the globe--the nation's indispensable response to international conflicts. Nowadays, the station is the hub for Navy logistics supporting the defense of the entire Atlantic area, from the North Pole to the South Pole. A must-have for fans of United States Naval and military history.

With Norfolk: A People's History, Ruth A. Rose takes a fresh look at the people who made Norfolk but who are often overlooked in other versions of the city's history.

Norfolk Botanical Garden thrives as a testament to Fred Heutte’s visionary dream of beauty and community. The question posed at the beginning of this narrative asked why a botanical garden for Norfolk and the answer, to be certain, is the story told in the book itself. But it is also answered in the connection each of us make to this special place, whether we live in Hampton Roads or are just visiting. Gardens should surprise and comfort you. Anatole France (1844-1924), the French poet, journalist, and novelist, could have been addressing countryman and father of the Norfolk Botanical Garden Fred Heutte when he sagely observed: "To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan but also believe." Fred Heutte was a dreamer with a plan who believed that the garden he shepherded for nearly three decades would ultimately fulfill its destiny and take an honored place among the United States' premier botanical gardens-and it has.