Month: June 2017

In a vase on Monday: 1888

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Tea Room at the Crawfordsburn Inn, Crawfordsburn, County Down, ca. 1888, by R. Welch, via Public Record Office of Northern Ireland Commons on flickr.

I believe this is The Old Inn, built in 1614 and still in operation as a hotel and restaurant. The mail coach, on its way to the port of Donaghadee and passage to England, changed horses at the Inn. Among the travelers who stopped here were Swift, Tennyson, Thackeray, Dickens, and Trollope.

I’m recovering from foot surgery at moment, so I haven’t been able to make my own arrangement for “In a vase on Monday,” hosted by Cathy at Rambling in the Garden.  But I did want to share this wonderful photo in which the whole room is an arrangement.  At first, I thought those were peacock feathers fanning out over the portrait of the Queen and on the right, but they are tall grasses.  I would love to have lunch here.

Please click on the picture for a larger view.

The Sunday porch: Estero, Florida

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“Tent house on Koreshan property in Estero, Florida,” 1895, via Koreshan Unity Collection, Florida Memory Commons on flickr (State Library and Archives of Florida).

The Koreshan Unity was a late 19th and early 20th century utopian community whose members believed in a god that was both male and female, as well as in reincarnation, celibacy, collectivism, equality of the sexes, and cellular cosmogony.* It was founded by Cyrus Teed in upstate New York in the 1870s, and later there were also followers in Chicago and San Francisco. In 1894, the community began moving to a donated 320-acre property in Estero, Florida. During the next decade, it purchased over 5,000 additional acres and began building a settlement that “included a sawmill, cement works, bakery, machine shop, general store, art gallery, symphony, theater troupe, plant nursery and more,” according to USA Today. Its population peaked at 250 residents between 1903 and 1908; the majority were well-educated middle-class women, seven of whom managed the day-to-day affairs of the commune.

When Teed died in 1908 — and his body was not resurrected as he had promised — the commune began to decline; there were 10 members left in 1948. The last Koreshans deeded the site of its village to the state of Florida in 1961. It is now a state park.

*”Among the most interesting beliefs of Koreshan Unity was the cellular cosmogony, or the hollow earth,” according to Florida Memory.  “According to the cellular cosmogony, the earth was not a convex sphere but instead a hollow, concave cell containing the entire universe with the sun at its center and Earth’s populace living on the inside surface of the hollow cell.”

Ronde kom

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Round enclosure on Eeuwigelaan (street) in Bergen, The Netherlands, 1926, by A. J. Bonda, via Archief Alkmaar Commons on flickr.

I have been wondering about the purpose of this really nice rustic fence in a wooded area (there’s another view here). In a much larger version of the photo, you can see barbed wire all around the top rails. The ground inside has either been dug out or worn away.  There are two benches nearby, with more barbed wire fencing behind them. What appears to be a road in the background is actually a canal. (And you can also see that the man standing on the right is wearing wooden shoes.)

It could have been the site of a large tree of special local significance, which then died and was removed. Or the spot of some other removed shrine or monument.  But why not take away the fence and fill the hole after dismantling what was inside?  Then I thought it might have been the small crater itself that was important — perhaps the remains of a WWI shelling in the area.

Today, this street is lined with very large homes.

ADDENDUM:  Nope, wrong all round. 🙂 Please see the very interesting comment below.

June flowers

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Girl in flower field, Library of CongressGirl with wildflowers (cropped slightly by me), ca. 1900, photographer unidentified but possibly Rudolf Eickemeyer, Jr., via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Sunnie-Holme

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“Sunnie-Holme,” Fairfield, Connecticut, ca. 1930, a hand-colored glass lantern slide by John Duer Scott, via Archives of American Gardens, Smithsonian Institution Commons on flickr.

Sunnie-Holme was the summer residence of Annie Burr Jennings, whose father made fortunes in the California gold rush and as an investor in Standard Oil.  She designed at least some of the garden, influenced by the writings of Gertrude Jekyll. The house was demolished after her death in 1939 — a provision of her will. There is a photo here.