“Château de Dampierre: the château’s façade from the garden side, with a formal parterre garden in the foreground,” Dampierre-en-Yvelines, France, July 8, 1936, a hand-colored glass lantern slide by an unknown photographer, viaArchives of American Gardens, Garden Club of America Collection, Smithsonian Institution (used here by permission).
The Archives holds over 60,000 photos and records documenting 6,300 historic and contemporary American gardens. At its core are almost 3,000 hand-colored glass lantern and 35mm slides donated by the Garden Club of America, which is the source of this image.
“Group of people bowling on a wooden lane erected in a yard,” July 4, 1861, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
I just found this photo. It was taken exactly one year before yesterday’s picture, probably by James Hunter,* who would host the 1862 picnic.
The Library’s online catalogue says that “Mrs. H. Bowling and Coleman Sellers, Jr.,” have been identified in this image, although it doesn’t say where they are — probably the woman bowling (Mrs. H., bowling†) and perhaps the boy in charge of setting up the pins.
The full stereograph. I do hope they removed the baby from the lane before she bowled.
“By the mid-1800s, the game of ninepins was so popular that wealthy families installed bowling lanes at their estates. . . , ” according toAmerican Profile. “When some states outlawed ninepins [in the 1830s and 40s] because it encouraged gambling, the modern game of tenpins evolved to skirt the laws.” I’m not sure if there are nine pins in this picture or ten. What looks like one middle pin may be two pins lined up.
*James Hunter may have been co-owner of the Print and Dye Works in Hestonville, Pennsylvania.
†H. for Hunter? Coleman Junior’s father was Coleman Sellers II, a prominent engineer and inventor from Philadelphia. — as well as an amateur photographer.
Fourth of July picnic at Mr. James Hunter‘s, Hestonville, Pennsylvania, 1862, a stereograph by Coleman Sellers, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Hestonville is now a neighborhood of Philadelphia.
enclos*ure 