Founded in 1940, the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society is a private, non-profit educational organization that seeks to study, preserve, and promote the history of Charlottesville and Albemarle County, Virginia. The Society is a membership organization, open to all, and receives no continuing operating support from federal, state or local governments but rather relies on membership fees, gifts and donations, and grants from private foundations.
The Society's research library, administered by a librarian on the staff of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library, contains over 2,000 books and bound periodicals, as well as manuscripts, maps, pamphlets, newspapers, and vertical files relating to the history of our community. Additionally, the archival collection contains over 1,500 artifacts of historical significance to Charlottesville and Albemarle County in addition to over 60,000 photographic images.
The Society is located in downtown Charlottesville in the historic McIntire Building. Designed in the Beaux Arts style by architect Walter Dabney Blair, the McIntire Buidling was completed in 1921 and donated by local civic benefactor Paul Goodloe McIntire to the City of Charlottesville as the city's first municipal library. Following an extensive renovation by the Society of this city-owned building in 1993 and the Society moved into it in January 1994.
