“Burning the autumn leaves on Broadway in Norwich, Connecticut,” November 1940, by Jack Delano.
Today, they might be advised to do this.
Both photos via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Have a happy Thanksgiving Day!
Category: North American gardens
The Sunday porch: as backdrop
What better setting for some summertime snapshots than a charming porch dripping with vines?
These are the Cabot children (and probably their mother), photographed by Thomas Warren Sears and via the Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Gardens, Thomas Warren Sears Collection.*
The Archives’ website says that these images were taken in 1930, but I would guess between 1900 and 1910, based on the clothing.
Sears studied landscape architecture at Harvard University between about 1900 and 1906. During that time, he also won awards for his amateur photography. One can well imagine him taking his camera to the summer home of friends and taking some casual pictures.
After graduation, he worked for Olmsted Brothers Landscape Architects. By 1913, he had established his own office in Philadelphia, from where he designed various types of landscapes in the mid-Atlantic region until the mid 1960s.
The Archives of American Gardens holds over 4,600 of his black and white glass negatives and glass lantern slides taken between c. 1900 and 1966.
Earlier this month, the Archives announced the acquisition of the Ken Druse Garden Photography Collection, which includes thousands of transparencies and slides of over 300 American gardens. Selected images will eventually be added to the Smithsonian’s online catalogue.
Little girl. . . .
She has things to do,
you can tell. Places to explore
beyond the frame . . .— Tami Haaland, from “Little Girl,” from When We Wake in the Night
*Used with permission.
The winter garden: Illinois farmhouse
“Window of farmhouse living room. Mercer County, Illinois. Hired man lives in house on farm which was formerly residence of owner-operator,” November 1936. Photo and caption by Russell Lee, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Another winter garden is here.
Let me go to the window,
Watch there the day-shapes of dusk
And wait and know the coming
Of a little love.— Carl Sandburg, from “At a Window“
Vintage landscape: marriage counseling
Photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston used slides of various prints and illustrations in her popular Garden and House lectures — which she gave from 1915 to 1930.
She took the ones below from the February 1875 issue of Fruit Recorder and Cottage Gardener. They are now part of the Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection at the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
The successful lady gardener dresses in modest clothes with sensible hat and apron and stays home to care for her flowers.
While the unsuccessful one dresses in low-cut bodice and frilly hat, threatens her flowers and chickens with an umbrella, and then goes out on the town.
A good husband carries and then holds the pots — he’s a keeper.
Oh, dump him.
The Sunday porch: Druid Hill Park
The Mansion House at Druid Hill Park, Baltimore, Md., between¹1900 and 1910, by Detroit Publishing Co., via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Somewhere underneath that 1863 Italianate porch and tower is a respectable 1801 Federal house, similar to Homewood House at John Hopkins University, according to Druid Hill Park: The Heart of Historic Baltimore.
It was built by landowner Nicholas Rogers as a summer house for his family, and it later became their primary residence. In 1860, his grandson sold the property to the city — which soon began turning it into a landscaped park.²
The new park’s (19-year-old) architect, George A. Frederick, added the open 20′-wide porch to all four sides of the mansion, and it was re-opened as a public pavilion, with refreshments sold in the basement. From the new tower, visitors could view the city. After 1876, a “zoological collection” could also be seen near the house.
In 1935, the porch was enclosed with large windows, and a Milk Bar and doughnut-making machine were installed. The Mansion House was advertised as “every man’s³ country club in the heart of Baltimore.”
In the 1940s, the building became a day school. Then, from the mid 1950s to 1978, exotic birds were displayed on the porch. In 1978, the house was renovated to hold the administration offices of The Maryland Zoo.
It so happens that I spent quite a bit of time in this house during the summer of 1979, when I was a student at Goucher College. I had an internship with the zoo’s Education Department.
Very newly renovated, the building was fresh, light, and airy, and almost empty. I can’t remember any other people in it: just the Education Director, his assistant, and me — perching, as is the usual situation for an intern, at the corner of the assistant’s desk.
I spent most of my time there working on the opening of a rather short-lived Insect Zoo ( possibly an idea ahead of its time). I learned to write exhibit labels, which had to be very brief and at the level of a 4th grade reader. This is actually quite difficult to do and was very good for me — I had to figure out what was really important or interesting about the animal or bug and then state it as simply as possible; no filler or showing off allowed.
A large part of the 745-acre park is forested, and one day the three of us went off to poke around the woods not too far from the house. I remember seeing old steps, discarded garden ornaments, and broken statuary — or maybe I only think I remember such a romantic thing.
Today, the building is still used for the zoo’s administrative office, and the porch can be rented for private events, such as weddings. The interior is very pretty in “buttery yellow,” with white trim, gold detailing, and rows of chandeliers.
ADDENDUM: A few months after this was posted, I received a email from a retired city employee confirming that the woods did contain a collection of old stone work, salvaged from houses that had been torn down.
I went by the Druid stone
That broods in the garden white and lone,
And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows
That at some moments fall thereon
From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing,
And they shaped in my imagining
To the shade that a well-known head and shoulders
Threw there when she was gardening. . . .— Thomas Hardy, from “The Shadow on the Stone“
¹The two other photos are c. 1906, by Detroit Publishing Co., via Library of Congress.
²It quickly sold off the Rogers’s grove of 40,000 pear trees.
³At that time, every white man’s, I suspect. Although African-Americans used many parts of the park from its beginning, some areas were “whites only.” The swimming pool and tennis courts were not integrated until 1956.
enclos*ure 