Potts Photo Collection

Robert “Bob” Potts was a lifelong Albany resident, serving in the military as a ham radio operator during World War II. He was a co-owner of Duedall & Pott’s Stationery Store in downtown Albany for many years. Potts was very involved in the history of Albany, and spent many years collecting photographs. In the 1990’s Potts wrote six books on Albany’s history, which included hundreds of historic photographs.

Through a joint project between the Albany Regional Museum and the Albany Public Library, approximately 7,000 photos from the Robert Potts Collection were numbered, sorted, and scanned. This project is supported in part by a grant from the State Historic Preservation Office, Oregon Parks and Recreation Department. The scanned images are hosted online at Google photos. Most of the photos were scanned both front and back. The white images you see in the collection are the backs of the photos and often include identifying information as well as their unique ID number. Click on a category below to view the photos.

The Museum recently received two grants to update this database! We will be rescanning some of the old images and scanning in new ones to offer a new keyword searchable database. Special thanks to the Oregon Heritage Commission and the Doris & Bill Scharpf Foundation for awarding us the grants to complete this project.

If you would like to purchase a copy of any of the photos, please contact the museum at 541-967-7122

CATEGORIES:

Aerial views – 280 images
Agriculture – 90 images
Bands – 107 images
Buildings – 700 images
Chamber of Commerce – 500 images
Clubs – 232 images
Events – 420 images
Fire Department – 353 images
Homefront (WW II) – 389 images
Homes – 350 images
Horses – 178 images
Industry – 328 images
Interiors – 270 images
Miscellaneous – 452 images
Outdoors – 230 images
People – 1997 images
People 2 – 1574 images
People 3 – 1000 images
People 4 – 1000 images
People 5 – 1278 images
Schools – 696 images
Sports – 365 images
Streets – 187 images
Timber – 342 images
Transportation – 708 images