House of Rousseau, Les Charmettes, in Chambéry, France, between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900, a photochrom by Detroit Publishing Co., via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau lived at Les Charmettes from 1736 to 1742. Today, the property is a museum.
Late winter in Parc de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium, redux from 2012.
Still looking through some photos that I took this fall, when we visited Washington, D.C. . .
I admired the Andrew Jackson Downing Urn in the Enid A. Haupt Garden behind the Smithsonian Institution Castle. It was designed by Downing’s architectural partner, Calvert Vaux, and sculpted from marble by Robert E. Launitz several years after Downing’s death.
In 1850, Andrew Jackson Downing transformed the Mall into the nation’s first landscaped public park using informal, romantic arrangements of circular carriage drives and plantings of rare American trees. Downing’s design endured until 1934, when the Mall was restored to Pierre L’Enfant’s 1791 plan. Downing (1815-1852), the father of American landscape architecture, also designed the White House and Capitol grounds.
The memorial urn stood on the Mall near the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History for 109 years (1856-1965). In 1972, it was restored and placed on the lawn east of the Smithsonian Building (“Castle”) flag tower. In 1987, it was relocated to the Rose Garden at the Castle’s east door. The urn was moved to its location in the Enid A. Haupt Garden in 1989.”
– text of the plaque near the foot of the urn’s pedestal
I wonder where the urn will go in the new design plans for the area, recently released by the Smithsonian.
In October, during our trip to the U.S., I poked fun at a Bradford pear tree (happily?) missing from the grounds of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) building on the National Mall.
But I did like all the other American specimen trees there — and the demonstration vegetable and flower garden on the corner of 12th Street and Jefferson Drive, S.W., (across from the Smithsonian Metro stop).
I particularly liked the seating in what appeared to be an outdoor classroom.
Earlier this year, an interesting 15-year plan was announced to turn all the green space (and parking lots) surrounding the USDA building into a “People’s Garden,” focusing on sustainable cultivation. You can read more about it here.
“One of the many bird houses which Mrs. [Warren G.] Harding has installed in the White House grounds,” between 1921 and 1923, by National Photo Company, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
First Lady Florence Harding was a great advocate for better animal care and protection. In addition to the birdhouses, she also had squirrel huts placed around the gardens — and had the animal trophy heads removed from the State Dining Room, according to her biographer Carl Anthony.
Early changes to the residence’s outdoor space were part of the Harding Administration’s determination to banish the “gloom” of the war years under President Wilson, wrote John A. Morello in Selling the President, 1920. “More bulbs and flowers would be planted, and birdhouses were installed in trees.”
At least some of the official birdhouses came from Evans Brothers, “Manufacturers of Bird House and Lawn Accessories,” on Main Street in Evanston, Illinois.
A tiny article in the August 18, 1921, Chicago Tribune says, “Sparrows, robins, and other birds who are flat hunting at present may be interested to know that Conroy Evans. . . has just received an order from Mrs. Warren G. Harding for several bird houses to grace the White House grounds. . . and that Mrs. Harding will supervise the placing of the houses in trees.”
Conroy Evans contributed brief reports on the movements of Evanston birds to Bird Life magazine. In its fall issue of 1919, Evans Brothers also placed a small ad: “Who’s the ‘Mr. Hoover’ for the Birds? Why Evans Bros. of course.”
From 1917 to 1919, Herbert Hoover (later President Hoover) became well-known for his work on food relief for Europe as head of the U.S. Food Administration and then of the American Relief Association.
enclos*ure 