Collection is open for research.
Permission to publish material from Carneal and Johnston Glass Negatives collection must be obtained from Special Collections, Virginia Tech.
Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: Carneal and Johnston Glass Negatives, Ms2014-016, Special Collections, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Va.
The Carneal and Johnston Glass Plate Negatives were purchased by University Relations and given to Special Collections in October 2014.
The glass plates have been scanned and the images are available online.
J. Ambler Johnston was born in 1885 and was a 1904 graduate of Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College and Polytechnic Institute. He also earned a master of science degree in 1905 from VPI. Johnston resided in Richmond, Virginia, where he served as a charter member of the Richmond Rotary Club and was a Civil War scholar. He died in 1974.
William Leigh Carneal, Jr., was born in Richmond on October 24, 1881, and graduated in 1903 from the Virginia Military Institute. He began his architectural practice around 1906 following a three year stint as a clerk in his father's company, Sitterding-Carneal-Davis Company. He died in 1958.
In 1908, Carneal and Johnston combined offices. The firm's first building was the original McBryde Hall on the VPI campus, completed in 1917. The firm helped to incorporate the Collegiate Gothic style to the campus landscape. For a brief period, the firm included a third partner and was known as Carneal, Johnston, & Wright. Both Carneal and Johnston retired in the 1950s. In 1999, the surviving firm of Carneal and Johnston merged with Ballou, Justice, & Upton Architects.
The collection consists of 23 glass dry plate negatives of architectural drawings made by the architectural firm Carneal and Johnston for various VPI campus buildings they designed, including the originial McBryde Hall and the original library/Gymnasium building, as well as proposed plans for an Alumni Hall (never built) and the Upper Quad Conversion (never built). Many of the plates are undated, but appear to come from the 1910s.
The 23 glass plate negatives are arranged in two boxes in the order that the plates were originally numbered.