Richard Carver Wood Photographs
name: label: Photographer
content: Van Vechten, Carl, 1880-1964
label: Donor
content: Asch, Patsy
label: Photographer
content: Wood, Richard Carver
label: Names
content: Abbott, George, 1887-1995
label: Names
content: Baragwanath, Jack
label: Names
content: Barrett, Edith
label: Names
content: Barrymore, Ethel
label: Names
content: Borge, Victor
label: Names
content: Bowman, Patricia
label: Names
content: Brown, John Mason, 1900-1969
label: Names
content: Cassini, Igor, 1915-
label: Names
content: Castle, Irene, 1893-1969
label: Names
content: Cornell, Katharine, 1893-1974
label: Names
content: Coward, Noel, 1899-1973
label: Names
content: Dowling, Eddie
label: Names
content: Eckstein, Gustave
label: Names
content: Edmonds, Walter Dumaux, 1903-1998
label: Names
content: Fleischmann, Raoul L.
label: Names
content: Fontanne, Lynn
label: Names
content: Frost, Robert, 1874-1963
label: Names
content: Gordon, Ruth, 1896-
label: Names
content: Hart, Moss, 1904-1961
label: Names
content: Keller, Helen, 1880-1968
label: Names
content: Leigh, Vivien, 1913-1967
label: Names
content: Lunt, Alfred
label: Names
content: Martin, Mary, 1913-
label: Names
content: Marx, Harpo, 1888-1964
label: Names
content: McMein, Neysa
label: Names
content: Meade, Donald
label: Names
content: Miller, Alice Duer, 1874-1942
label: Names
content: Olivier, Laurence, 1907-1989
label: Names
content: Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy, 1929-1994
label: Names
content: Parker, Dorothy, 1893-1967
label: Names
content: Radziwill, Lee Bouvier, 1933-
label: Names
content: Rice, Grantland, 1880-1954
label: Names
content: Skinner, Cornelia Otis, 1901-
label: Names
content: Swope, Herbert Bayard, 1882-1958
label: Names
content: Woollcott, Alexander, 1887-1943
place: label: Place
content: Vermont
topic: label: Topic
content: Celebrities -- 20th century
label: Topic
content: Photographers -- New York
acqinfo: label: Provenance
content: Donated by Wood's daughter, Patsy Asch, to the Archives Center in 2007.
creator: label: Photographer
content: Van Vechten, Carl, 1880-1964
label: Donor
content: Asch, Patsy
label: Photographer
content: Wood, Richard Carver
setName: label: See more items in
content: Richard Carver Wood Photographs
abstract: label: Summary
content: Photographs taken by Wood including persons prominent in the New York City social, literary, and theatrical fields.  Other subjects include architecture, landscapes, still life, dunes, military, and theater in the United States and other countries.
bioghist: label: Biographical / Historical
content: Richard Carver Wood was born in 1902 in Binghamton, New York to Frank Hoyt and Eva Wood.  He studied at Hamilton College then the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1922-1929 where he graduated with a degree in architecture.  In the 1930s, Wood struggled to find work in his field and turned his attention to photography. His adopted father, a professor at Hamilton College, put him in contact with a former student, Alexander Woollcott, by then a theater critic with The New Yorker.  It was through Woollcott that Wood met many of the famous people he photographed, many on Woollcott's Lake Bomoseen, Vermont, property, though Wood also photographed places, buildings, and subjects like the Perkins School for the Blind.

When America became involved in World War II, Wood was stationed in Hawaii as part of the Army Signal Corps.  It was there that he turned to film, and after the end of World War II he worked first with a small dental company for a few years, and then began freelancing.  His film work culminated with the 1954 Academy Award winning documentary The Unconquered, a biography of his one-time photography subject Helen Keller. 

It was around the time of the Keller documentary that Wood again found work as an architect with an East Hampton firm.  He would remain in architecture from then on, rarely taking photographs.  Wood died on November 23, 1989 at the age of eighty-seven years old.
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 2 Cubic feet (11 boxes)
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1935-1978, undated
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Archives Center, National Museum of American History
identifier: label: Identifier
content: NMAH.AC.0964
objectType: label: Type
content: Collection descriptions
label: Type
content: Archival materials
arrangement: label: Arrangement
content: The collection is arranged into three series.

Series 1: People, 1935-1960, undated

Series 2: Places, 1939-1978, undated

Series 3: Subjects, 1941, undated
processinfo: label: Processing Information
content: Collection processed by Vanessa Broussard- Simmons.
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: Photographs, in both print and negative form, by Richard Carver Wood, including architectural photographs; art photographs, including landscapes and still life's; portrait and family photographs; photographs of persons prominent in the New York City social, literary, and theatrical fields. Many of these were taken at theater critic Alexander Woollcott's property at Lake Bomoseen in Vermont, and include Dorothy Parker, Vivien Leigh, Ethel Barrymore, and numerous others. Materials were maintained in the three series that Wood created: Series 1, People, Series 2, Places and Series 3, Subjects. The materials in each series are arranged in alphabetical order by Wood's folder titles.