Grape vines over the porch of an old outbuilding at Struan, Arden, North Carolina, 1938, by Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Detail of the above; note the potted plants on the old ladder.
By the time Johnston photographed the old plantation of Struan for her Carnegie Survey of the Architecture of the South, the property had been a school for boys, Christ School, for 38 years.
An old cabin on the plantation of Chasley, Monroe County, Alabama, May 2010, an infrared photo by Carol M. Highsmith, via The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
“Old Birds’ Nest Tavern, Marionville vic., Northampton County, [on the Eastern Shore of] Virginia,” ca. 1930s, by Frances Benjamin Johnson, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. (Marionville was also known as Birdsnest.)
Beautiful summer meadow around the house. . .
Johnston’s notes on the photograph call the building a “sailors’ tavern.” It was probably one half to two miles from the creeks and marshes of Hog Island Bay on the Atlantic Ocean, maybe closer.
Her notes also say that it was “the first three story house in the country [county?].”
According to a 1927 economic and social survey of Northampton County, “[f]rom the low room in the middle of this building originated the name of ‘Bird’s Nest’.”
Unfortunately, I can’t find anything to indicate that it has survived to the present day.
When the world turns completely upside down
You say we’ll emigrate to the Eastern Shore
Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore;
We’ll live among wild peach trees, miles from town, . . .
We’ll swim in milk and honey till we drown.— Elinor Wylie, from “Wild Peaches“
“Sommer,” between 1910 and 1933, by Inga Breder, via Preus Museum Commons on flickr.
Inga Breder, was born in Bodø, Norway, in 1855. As an adult she lived in Oslo (then Kristiania) and became an amateur photographer, competing in and judging competitions.
Flowers in a window at 326 East 61st Street, New York City, 1938, by Walker Evans, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
I really wish Evans had turned a little to the left and given us the other window as well.
enclos*ure 