Vintage landscape: a terrace

Heiloo, 1815, via Alkmaar Archives on flickrA farmhouse of To (or Ter) Coulster, in the town of Heiloo, Netherlands, 1815, by J. A. Crescent, via Regionaal Archief Alkmaar Commons on flickr.

You can click on the image to enlarge it. There are more of Crescent’s charming watercolors here.

A garden is the interface between the house and the rest of civilization.

Geoffrey B. Charlesworth

The Sunday porch: Lake City

Summer porch, c.1900, by Theresa. Babb, via Camden Public Library“Fenderson cottage at Lake City on Megunticook Lake in Camden, Maine, in September 1900,” by Theresa Parker Babb, via Camden Public Library Commons on flickr.

Lake City seems to have been a neighborhood of summer homes. From the late 1880s, “a flood” of people from the eastern cities –often rich and prominent– built cottages in and around Camden, drawn by the surrounding scenery and the town’s romantic seafaring past.

. . . Waved in the west-wind’s summer sighs.

— Sir Walter Scott, from “The Lady of the Lake

 

The Sunday porch: the frame

Oatlands, Leesburg, VA, Library of CongressA view from the summer house at Oatlands, Loudoun County, Virginia, in the 1930s, by Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Oatlands Plantation was established in 1798 by a member of Virginia’s prominent Carter family. In 1903, it was sold to William and Edith Corcoran Eustis, and  Mrs. Eustis began to revive the old gardens in the Colonial Revival style. Since 1965, the property has been a site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It is open to the public from April 1 to December 30.

The Sunday porch: Kalaupapa, Hawaii

1 St. Francis Catholic Church, Kalaupapa, HI, HABS, Library of CongressThe west front of St. Francis Catholic Church, Moloka’i Island, Kalaupapa, Hawaii, July 1991, by Jack E. Boucher for an Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (all photos here).

2 St. Francis Catholic Church, Kalaupapa, HI, HABS, Library of Congress

The church was built in 1908 to serve the Kalaupapa Leprosy Settlement, now part of Kalaupapa National Historical Park.

3 St. Francis Catholic Church, Kalaupapa, HI, HABS, Library of Congress

4 St. Francis Catholic Church, Kalaupapa, HI, HABS, Library of Congress

The word porch — “1250-1300; Middle English porche < Old French < Latin porticus porch, portico” — was originally used to indicate the covered entrance to a church, usually on the south side.