Category: architecture

In Brussels Park

Cindy at enclos*ure4 Comments

I noticed the bare, pleached trees near the end of the taxi ride from the airport  — a double row of long limbs on high, grid supports.

As soon as we dropped our bags at the hotel (and after a mid-morning snack of Liege waffles), we walked back to Brussels Park.

The Parc de Bruxelles (or Warandepark in Dutch) is the largest urban park in the city center, as well as the oldest. A rectangle, it is capped on the north end by the Belgian Parliament (the park is on a north-east to south-west axis) and on the south end by the Royal Palace (below).

In the 12th century, it was the hunting ground for the dukes of Brabant. In 1774, Empress Maria Therese of Austria (the ruler of Brussels at that time) ordered that the space be turned into a French-style garden.

The original design by Barnabé Guimard remains to this day.  The predominate feature of the layout — that the north fountain and the two outer wide allées form the shape of an architect’s compass — reflects the influence of Free Masonry in 18th c. Brussels.

While formal, symmetrical, and on a grand scale, the park is simply planted with banks of shrubs, forest-style groupings of tall (naturally shaped) trees, and the rows of pleached lime trees, which border the whole garden and the north fountain.

Curvy, auxiliary paths wind between the main allées.

On the west side is a lovely 1841 bandstand designed by Jean-Pierre Cluysenaer.

The park also contains about 60 sculptures inspired by Roman-Greek myths.  Most were originally taken from the Brabant dukes’ castle, Tervuren, and the Thurn und Taxis Palace.  Today, however, many are copies.  The entire park underwent a restoration in 2001.

The urns and sculptures below circle the north fountain.

To scroll through larger versions of the above photos (and some others), click on ‘Continue reading’ below and then on any thumbnail in the gallery.

Continue reading “In Brussels Park” →

Korte violetstraat, Brussels

Cindy at enclos*ure1 Comment


On a walk around the neighborhood just south of the Grand-Place (Grote Markt in Dutch) in Brussels, I came across the gate to ‘Little Violet Street.’

Halfway down the pedestrian way, an elephant gable stone marks the site of the 16th century “Old Elephant” tavern. (Click the photos to enlarge them.)

Gable stones are carved and often painted stone tablets set into exterior walls of buildings. Coming into use in the 16th century, they both identified (in the days before house numbers) and decorated homes and businesses. They can be found in many northern European cities, like Brussels, Amsterdam, Maastricht, Lille, and Copenhagen.

According to Wikipedia, “they normally combine a picture with an inscription, or sometimes just a date. Some illustrate the name or profession of the owner, for instance a quill pen as a badge for an author, or a ship for a sailor. Some are named after notable people (The King of Bohemia) or faraway trading destinations (Königsberg). Some stones act as talismans, quoting from holy scripture.”

Garden Bloggers’ Foliage Follow Up: Whittemore House

Cindy at enclos*ure6 Comments

It’s wet and gloomy again this morning (the rainy season) and nothing in the garden really inspires me at the moment. So I went back to the Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection at the Library of Congress website and searched ‘foliage.’

This was what came up, and it’s quite something.

It was the interior of Whittemore House, at Dupont Circle* in Washington, D.C.  Johnston took the photo sometime between 1890 and 1920.  In addition to the copious foliage, it features a leopard rug and a moose head.

The house has been the home of The Women’s National Democratic Club since 1927 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Unfortunately, judging from the club’s website, the current decoration, while pretty, is more conventional. (Rooms are available for private parties, weddings, and special events.)

Whittemore House was built from 1892 to 1894 for opera singer Sarah Adams Whittemore, a descendant of President John Adams. She lived there until her death in 1907. The interior in the photo may be hers, as Johnston took her portrait in 1900.

Thanks to Pam at Digging for hosting Garden Bloggers’ Foliage Follow Up the 16th of every month.

*1526 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W.

The lantern slides

Cindy at enclos*ure19 Comments

This is really exciting.  Yesterday, the Library of Congress released online the digital images of more than 1,000 hand-colored, glass-plate lantern slides of gardens taken (mostly) by Frances Benjamin Johnston.

The images in the collection were taken from 1895 to 1935.  Originally black and white photographs, Johnston had them hand tinted and made into slides to illustrate her popular garden lectures, which she gave to garden clubs, horticultural societies, and museum audiences from 1915 to 1930.  As part of the Garden Beautiful Movement, she encouraged Americans to grow gardens on tenement lots, in row-house yards and in parks, which had deteriorated from industrial pollution and neglect during the Gilded Age.

The slides have not been seen in public since Johnston last projected them during her lectures.  They depict more than 200 sites — primarily private gardens — in all regions of the United States and in Europe.  The entire collection, 1,130 digital images, can be found in the Library’s Prints and Photographs Online Catalog, here.

I’ve just begun to enjoy this beautiful resource, but here are 11 images that I pulled out quickly during my first enthusiastic look.

The photo above is of Chateau of Bréau, Dammarie-les-Lys, Seine-et-Marne, France.  July 1925. (Click any photo to enlarge it.)

The Touchstone Garden, New York, New York. Sculpture exhibition, summer 1919.

“Cliveden,” Viscount Waldorf Astor house, Taplow, Buckingham, England.  Long Garden, summer 1925.

Myron Hunt house, 200 North Grand Avenue, Pasadena, California. Garden Terrace, spring 1917.

“Inellan,” Walter Douglas house, Channel Drive, Montecito, California.  Pathway to Pacific Ocean, spring 1917.

“Flagstones,” Charles Clinton Marshall house, 117 East 55th Street, New York, New York.  Tea house/sleeping porch.

“Gray Gardens,” Robert Carmer Hill house, Lily Pond Lane, East Hampton, New York, New York.  View to Garden Trellis.

West Potomac Park, Washington, D.C.  Irises along the embankment, April 1905.

Dr. Charles William Richardson house, Chevy Chase, Washington, D.C.   Irises, 1921.

“The Fens,” Lorenzo Easton Woodhouse house, Hunting Lane, East Hampton, New York. Pergola, 1914.

Unidentified city garden, probably in New York, New York.  Pathway, 1922.

A selection of 250 of the color images can also be seen in a new book by house and garden historian Sam Watters, Gardens for a Beautiful America, 1895-1935: Photographs by Frances Benjamin Johnston.  It will be published this month by Acanthus Press, in association with the Library. ($79, here — not yet available.)

The Library of Congress is the repository of Johnston’s personal papers and approximately 20,000 photographs. But the lantern slides lacked garden names, locations, and dates and, therefore, had not been released to  general public access.  Watters took on the challenge of cataloging the collection, and after five years of research in libraries and archives, he has transformed vague earlier library notations into detailed data.  For example, an unlabeled slide was recognized as a prize winner in a 1922 design contest and is now identified as “The Janitor’s Garden, 137 E. 30th St., New York City.”

For more information about Frances Benjamin Johnston, see here and here.