The Louis T. Moore Photograph Collection in the North Carolina Room of the New Hanover Public Library contains 976 photographs, mostly of New Hanover County and vicinity. It is a remarkable collection of pictures, which were taken between 1921 and 1941, when Mr. Moore was secretary of the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce.  In a time when there were no Kodak instantmatics or Polaroids, Mr. Moore had a large unwieldy box camera.  For two decades, he captured landscapes, events and important locations of area life, that would have been lost if he had not recorded them on film.  He used the power of the photograph to promote the Lower Cape fear area, and in doing so, left a historic treasure to future generations.

After his death the collection was given to the New Hanover County Public Library.  In 1982 the Friends of the Library funded a project to copy all of the silver nitrate negatives and make contact prints of the collection. Since that time, the Moore photographs have appeared in numerous publications.  To purchase a copy of a photograph please contact the North Carolina Room of the New Hanover County Public Library,
(910) 341-4394.  These photographs cannot be reproduced without library permission.

The effort to digitize the collection was a joint project of the New Hanover Public Library and the Lower Cape Fear Historical Society.  The digitization was done by Thomas Martin.  The catalog and index were compiled by Ann Hewlett Hutteman.  Additional research for the catalog was provided by the late William M. Reaves and Susan Taylor Block, as well as library staff members, Beverly Tetterton, Joseph Sheppard, and JoAnn Galloway.  A companion volume entitled, Wilmington Through the Lens of Louis T. Moore, by Susan Taylor Block, is available from the library or the Lower Cape Fear Historical Society, (910) 762-0492.