The News from Newport News

at pay windows at weeks’ end. The shipyard also filmed those tradesmen, as an aid for training new workers, and those black and white films, recently restored, are now shown side-by-side with the paintings. A painting of workers laying out patterns, for instance, is echoed by similar filmed images. Scenes of workers pouring molten lead into a mold, bending white-hot steel strips into the shape of a prow, or turning a glowing propeller shaft are similarly juxtaposed. This may be, as museum curator Anna Holloway later told me, “the ultimate way of interpreting historic works of art, viewing the paintings and then seeing film footage of these things actually occurring.” Collis Huntington virtually created the modern city of Newport News by running his railroad there, then creating the shipyard. A small village sprang up nearby and was incorporated in 1896, the same year the