“Ruins of unidentified concrete home,” Lamar Co., Texas, 1935, probably by Fanny Ratchford, via Texas State Archives Commons on flickr.
Beautiful matrix of wild plants. . . . Be sure to click the photo and see it enlarged.
The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken,
These remain. . . .— Algernon Charles Swinburne, from “A Forsaken Garden“
“Unidentified Dogtrot* House” in Texas (exact location unknown), 1935, probably** taken by Fanny Ratchford, via Texas State Archives Commons on flickr.
Fannie Elizabeth Ratchford was a librarian who worked in the rare books collection of the University of Texas at Austin from 1919 to 1957. During the 1930s and 40s, she also began to put together a photographic and data survey of 19th c. Texas architecture.
Unfortunately, she ran out of time and funding before the planned book could be assembled and published. Her images, correspondence, questionnaires, and lists were donated to the Texas State Archives. Only the photos are available online, but they are wonderful. I’ll post some more in the coming weeks.
They sang Green, Green Grass of Home.
They sang Ne Me Quitte Pas beneath mesquite.— Ange Mlinko, from “Escape Architecture“
*More about dogtrot houses in Texas here.
**According to an email from the Archives: “Although the majority of the images within our Fannie Ratchford photograph collection were taken by Ratchford, she also acquired photographs from the Historic American Building Survey [HABS] as well as other photographers.”
“Plants and flowers in oil cans on back porch of [coal] miner’s house. Capels, West Virginia,” September 1938, by Marion Post Wolcott, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.*
Capels is an unincorporated community located in McDowell County, the southernmost county in West Virginia.
The homes shown here were “coal camp” houses, owned by Central Pocahontas Coal Co.
Above, detail from previous photo: perhaps the beginning of a winter garden on a windowsill.
Wolcott took a large series of photos of coal miners and their families in West Virginia. I think the house on the right below may be the same as the one above.
“Wives of coal miners talking over the fence.”
“The women in this photo [above] are dressed up, perhaps for their walk to the company store and back,” according to an online photo exhibit about West Virginia coal miners. “Miners’ wives often led difficult lives and relied on each other for support.”
“Better homes in coal mining town.”
Above, detail from previous photo: impressive vines on this porch. Note the house beyond and how it is built out from the hillside.
“Home of Negro families.” I count about 70 steps.
Above, detail from previous photo: African-Americans moved to the county to work in the mines, as the coal industry grew at the turn of the 20th. century.**
Immigrants also came from Greece, Italy, Poland, Russia, and Hungary.
McDowell County once set records for coal production in the state and country, but since the decline of the industry in the 1980s, it has lost thousands of jobs and has the highest poverty rate in the state. The mine in Capels (by then owned by Semet-Solvay) closed in the 1980s.
Photos of Capels in 2005 are here. There are photos of McDowell County in 2012 here (and more vintage pictures here).
A number of Wolcott’s West Virginia photographs can be found in the book New Deal Photographs of West Virginia, 1934-1943.
*All photos here were taken in Capels, September 1938, by Marion Post Wolcott, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. The captions in quotation marks are from the Library’s online catalogue and were probably written by Wolcott.
** “McDowell, which had no slave population and no free blacks after emancipation, became the state’s center of African-American population in the industrial era,” according to The West Virginia Encyclopedia. “McDowell County blacks established a power base within the state and local Republican Party. . . . A fourth of the population was black in 1950.”
“Cacti, Phipps (Schenley Park) Conservatory, Schenley Park, Pittsburgh, Pa.,” ca 1900-1910, by Detroit Publishing Co., via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
The Cacti House was added to the Phipps Conservatory in 1902. (The conservatory had been founded in 1893.)
Today the space is called the Desert Room.
There are two more winter gardens here and here.
Thousands of these gray-green
cacti cross the valley:
nature repeating itself. . .— Brenda Hillman, from “Saguaro“
The conservatory of the Mark Twain House, viewed from the library, Hartford, Connecticut, photographer not noted.*
Samuel Clemens (aka Twain) and his wife built the house in 1874 in a prestigious neighborhood, which included the homes of Harriet Beecher Stowe, garden writer Charles Dudley Warner, and suffragist Isabella Beecher Hooker.
“The Clemenses were known for their ostentatious lifestyle and entertaining,” according to the HABS. “[T]he house was fitted with the most advanced technological equipment of the day, including a telephone, speaking tubes and bells, burglar alarm, gas lighting, central heating, and extensive plumbing.”
The floor of the conservatory is pea gravel.
Another winter garden is here.
Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.
— Mark Twain
*The photo is part of a 1983 Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. You can see and read more of this survey here.
enclos*ure 