There's always room for one more at the Hagley Vault! This week, we're cozying up with workers inside a 5 cu. yard dipper being used on one of the big dipper dredges during the construction of the Panama Canal.

This photograph, taken between 1904 and 1914, is part of Hagley Library's collection of Chamber of Commerce of the United States photographs and audiovisual materials (Accession 1993.230). The Chamber of Commerce of the United States is the world’s largest business organization, representing the interests of more than 3 million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions. Chamber members range from small businesses and local chambers to leading industry associations and large corporations.

The Chamber traces its origins to an April 22, 1912, conference of commercial and trade organizations called by President William Howard Taft. The goal was to form a national group to advise the government on issues facing industry and business throughout the country.​​

Hagley's staff may be at work today, but the Hagley Vault can go to the beach whenever it wants. This week, it's traveling to 1930 to join the employees of Joseph Bancroft & Sons' Eddystone Print Works Division in Wildwood, New Jersey.

The Eddystone Manufacturing Company began its corporate life in 1877, when William Simpson and John Halliday began operating a textile mill built at the Falls of Schuylkill near Philadelphia. The company, which manufactured dyed and printed cotton textiles, later relocated to Eddystone, Pennsylvania. 

The year before this photograph was taken, the company was bought by the Joseph Bancroft & Sons textile company; this photograph and many others are now part of Hagley Library's collection of Joseph Bancroft and Sons Company photographs (Accession 1969.025).

Here's a Hagley Vault post that's just for fun. This ca. 1940s sticker for the Crescent Roller Rink in Cedar Lake, Indiana was collected by Genevieve Pittner of Monroe, Michigan.

This is one of over 500 roller rink stickers collected by Pittner through exchanging stickers by mail with other collectors in groups like the Universal Roller Skating Sticker Exchange, a national network of sticker enthusiasts who traded stickers amongst each other. Her collection is now the Genevieve Pittner collection of roller skating rink stickers (Accession 2012.213).

That's right, the Hagley Digital Archive is back up and the Hagley Vault is back on duty!

This beauty of an image is the cover to the pamphlet promoting a 1950 model Buick, and which advertises the aesthetic and practical features of the model's glass components.

The pamphlet is part of Hagley Library's collection of Z. Taylor Vinson collection of transportation ephemera (Accession 20100108.ZTV). For over sixty years, Zachary Taylor Vinson (1933-2009), a senior lawyer with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 1993-1995 president of the Society of Automotive Historians, and 1995-2009 editor of Automotive History Review amassed a large and comprehensive collection of printed material documenting on the history transportation, particularly automobiles.