Category: architecture

Vintage landscape: gourds and cans

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Gourd and Can birdhouses, via Library of Congress“Typical birdhouses, gourds and tin cans in Coffee County, Alabama,” April 1939, by Marion Post Wolcott, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Hanging clusters of gourd birdhouses for the purpose of attracting purple martins is an Alabama folk tradition, according to the blog Appalachian History.

Choctaw and Chickasaw gardeners began the practice.  The purple* martins would eat damaging insects and mosquitoes and drive away crows and blackbirds from the corn.  

Farmers of European and African origins later adopted the custom, particularly as the birds also protect chickens by scaring away hawks.

The gourds should be hung in groups of 10 or more, according to the National Wildlife Federation’s blog.  They should also swing from crossbars and wires on poles at least two-stories high.

*They are actually dark blue and black, or pale grey.

Vintage landscape: birds’ house view

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Farmhouse birdhouse, via Library of Congress“Birdhouse and landscape at an old plantation home [probably this one] near Eutaw, Alabama,” May 1941, by Jack Delano, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Farmhouse birdhouse 2, via Library of Congress

As I was reading about the history of birdhouses, I learned that shelters like the one above, which mirror a builder’s own house or other nearby architecture, were common in Turkey from the 15th century (and probably earlier).

Their compassionate purpose was to provide winter protection to non-migratory birds.  Many were quite ornate and built right onto the sides of “mosques, madrasas, libraries, houses, inns, baths, tombs, bridges, churches, synagogues, and even palaces,” according to the Turkish Cultural Foundation website.*

In Europe, during the same period, birdhouses were built from baskets, wood, and clay as traps for collecting eggs or for capturing the birds themselves.

In colonial-era North America, both Native Americans and European settlers used birdhouses to attract and increase the local bird population for hunting and insect control.

Pines in the distance begin to brighten,
deep blue to something like green.

Everything winged must be dreaming.

— Susan Ludvigson, from “Grace“

*There is also a nice photo here of the very large birdhouses that were placed in Istanbul parks in the 1960s. Last December, I saw many small birdhouses in the trees along the Hippodrome, put there by the local government.

The Sunday porch: small house

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Wide enough for two rocking chairs, at least. . .

Small house, via LoCNew Bern, North Carolina, 1936, by Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Vintage landscape: sunflowers

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Miss. house surrounded by sunflowers, via LoC“An old house almost hidden by sunflowers, Rodney, Mississippi,” July 1940, by Marion Post Wolcott on Kodachrome color film, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division on flickr.

I like the little birdhouse on the very tall pole.

Rodney was once a prosperous port on the banks of the Mississippi — until a large sand bar appeared  in the 1870s and changed the course of the river. The city was left two miles from the water.

By 1933, there were fewer than 100 people living there.  Today, it is considered a ghost town.

The Sunday porch: Washington, D.C.

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Rowhouses,  Southwest Washington, D.C., between 1941 and 1942, by Louise Rosskam on Kodachrome color film, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The photos show cast iron stoops and steps, which were typical in many D.C. neighborhoods after the city’s building boom of the 1870s.

“Iron was strong, inexpensive to produce, manufactured quickly, and easily assembled with little on-site labor,” according to an interesting pamphlet by the Capitol Hill Restoration Society on the history and care of old cast iron and wrought iron.

“Washington had five foundries in 1870 and fifteen most years from 1895 to 1905,” according to the pamphlet.  Because of the industry’s dependence on water (or rail) connections to obtain raw materials, they “were usually in Georgetown, near the canal terminus, or along Maine Avenue on the Potomac River Waterfront.”

At first, I thought that both of the photographs above were of the same two houses.  Then I realized that the screen doors are different and that the brickwork over the windows is painted white in only one of the pictures.

The narrow open passageway between both sets of houses is interesting.

You can see what the corner of N and Union (now 6th) Streets, S.W., looks like today here.

In the windows of the houses with the children on the steps, you can just see the families’ Blue Star service flags (put your cursor on the slideshow to pause it). They reveal that the family on the left had one son in the war and the family on the right had two. (A gold star on a window flag would indicate that a son had been killed.)