A fenced-in backyard in Georgia, ca. 1899, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
These photos were included in one of several albums depicting African American life, which were compiled by W. E. B. Du Bois for the 1900 Paris Exposition.
There’s a brief history of the American backyard here. Until the 20th century, it was a space for work, not recreation.
“Tom Riley House,” 256 North Jackson Street, Mobile, Alabama, September 1936, by E. W. Russell for an Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Decaying. . . but still elegant.
A Google street view for this address shows an empty lot, but the house next door is still standing.
Federal Hill, Fredericksburg, Virginia, between 1927 and 1929, Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Peacocks are probably the ultimate garden ornament — if you have the room and patience. (It takes several years for a male to grow a substantial tail covert or “train.”)
. . . in Southwest Washington, D.C., 1941, by Edwin Rosskam, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Southwest is the capital’s smallest quadrant, located south of the National Mall along the Potomac River. After the Civil War, it was populated by freed Blacks to its east and Scotch, Irish, German, and Eastern European immigrants to its west. Its old neighborhoods were largely destroyed in some very questionable “urban renewal” in the 1950s.
Summer specializes in time, slows it down almost to dream…
— Jennifer Grotz, from “Late Summer“
Beatrice Baxter Ruyl on the chaise lounge with Barbara, and Mr. Ruyl seated with Ruth, 1913, by F. Holland Day, via The Louise Imogen Guiney Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
The photo was probably taken at Five Islands, Maine, where both F. Holland Day and the Ruyl family had homes.
Day was part of the pictorialist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its photographers posed or otherwise manipulated their images to create ‘fine art.’
Baxter Ruyl illustrated children’s books and also drew for the Boston Herald. She frequently served as a model for Day and Gertrude Käsebier.
Happy Labor Day weekend in the U.S.!
enclos*ure 