Today, I’m repeating a porch from August 2012, but it is a nice one. (We were traveling this weekend.)
“Cottages at Maplewood [Waseca, Minnesota],” c.1880-c.1899. By Detroit Publishing Co., via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.*
Maplewood Park on Clear Lake was a national vacation attraction at the end of the nineteenth century. (Click on any image to enlarge it.)
Above: Maplewood’s pavilion for Chautaquas. From the 1870s to 1920s, the Chautaqua movement brought speakers and companies of musicians, dancers, and actors to camps like Maplewood for up to a week at a time.
The Waseca Historical Society still hosts a Chautaqua at Maplewood Park every July.
To read about a similar sort of summer cabin living, which also continues today, see this 2012 New York Times article, here.
Above: the view of Clear Lake from Maplewood.
*All photos here: c.1880 – c.1899, by Detroit Publishing Co., via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
enclos*ure 
Hi Cindy – Have you been in DC? Everything is so late this year. My fig still has no foliage – hope it’s ok. I did lose almost all of my camellias – 90% of them dead! Thanks for sharing these vintage treasures! Lovely!! Loi
Hi Loi, Sorry for the delay in answering — my parents have been visiting from Virginia. They also reported that their figs (in Loudon Co.) hadn’t leafed out. One of them was just planted: a “Chicago Hardy,” which is supposed to have fruit in the summer, even if it died all the way back during the previous winter. Might be a good one to have with the usual “Brown Turkeys”, if D.C. winters continue to be so cold.
I’m so sorry about the camellias; that’s awful. I wonder what kind of losses they have had at the National Arboretum and Brookside?