Category: garden design

Pasadena, California

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The garden terrace of the Myron Hunt house, 200 North Grand Avenue, Pasadena, California, 1917, a hand-colored glass lantern slide by Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

This looks like such a tranquil and comfortable garden space — while at the same time, just a little mysterious. If you look closely, you can see that there is a simple rope and board swing hanging from a tree limb in the center, and at least one of the chairs is a rocking chair.

Hunt was a successful architect in Southern California in the first half of the 20th century. He designed this house and garden for himself in 1905. Today, the house survives, but the garden is gone.

There is another Johnston image of the garden here, looking across an open garden room to the steps and elevated bust shown above.

Chaplin, West Virginia

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Back garden and porch of Hungarian-American coal miner’s home, Chaplin, West Virginia, September 1938, by Marion Post Wolcott, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (all three photos).

The miner’s wife and their back gate and fence. (Cropped slightly by me.)

Wolcott was on assignment for the U.S. Farm Security Administration.


Her neighbor — top left, in the straw hat — seems to have had a good flower garden, as well.

Front steps, Finland

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Front garden and steps, probably Finland, ca. 1900, by Hugo Simberg, via Finnish National Gallery on flickr (under CC license).

So much activity and anticipation in this shadowy old photo: the three women on the top left are waiting for the appearance of someone at the door.  Below them, a toddler has been left to perch a little precariously on the steps. On the right, a woman with a very large hat and a little girl pose for the camera. Vines everywhere.

(There’s a larger view here.)

The Sunday porch: Camden, Alabama

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Front of the Robert Tait House, Camden, Alabama, 1936, by Alex Bush for an Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (all three photos).

Looking west on the south porch. It looks as though the ceiling has been painted the traditional blue. And note that the columns do not rest on the porch floor foundation, but on the ground just in front of it, making this a Carolina or rain porch.

The house was built for Robert Tait in 1855. It still stands.

Looking north on the west porch.

Sheffield, Alabama

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“Kenneth Hall gives daughter Peggy a shower with garden hose in front of their [Tennessee Valley Authority] defense home, Sheffield, Alabama,” 1942, Arthur Rothstein, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.