“Log house at Silver Lake, Akron, Ohio,” between 1905 and 1909, by Illustrated Post Card Co., via Walter Havighurst Special Collections, Miami University Libraries Commons on flickr.
. . . I care less and less
about the shapes of shapes because forms
change and nothing is more durable than feeling.— Terrance Hayes, from “What it Look Like“
“Fenderson cottage at Lake City on Megunticook Lake in Camden, Maine, in September 1900,” by Theresa Parker Babb, via Camden Public Library Commons on flickr.
Lake City seems to have been a neighborhood of summer homes. From the late 1880s, “a flood” of people from the eastern cities –often rich and prominent– built cottages in and around Camden, drawn by the surrounding scenery and the town’s romantic seafaring past.
. . . Waved in the west-wind’s summer sighs.
— Sir Walter Scott, from “The Lady of the Lake“
A view from the summer house at Oatlands, Loudoun County, Virginia, in the 1930s, by Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Oatlands Plantation was established in 1798 by a member of Virginia’s prominent Carter family. In 1903, it was sold to William and Edith Corcoran Eustis, and Mrs. Eustis began to revive the old gardens in the Colonial Revival style. Since 1965, the property has been a site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It is open to the public from April 1 to December 30.
The west front of St. Francis Catholic Church, Moloka’i Island, Kalaupapa, Hawaii, July 1991, by Jack E. Boucher for an Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (all photos here).
The church was built in 1908 to serve the Kalaupapa Leprosy Settlement, now part of Kalaupapa National Historical Park.
The word porch — “1250-1300; Middle English porche < Old French < Latin porticus porch, portico” — was originally used to indicate the covered entrance to a church, usually on the south side.
The Ramsey-Jones-Bonner House, Oak Hill, Alabama, March 24, 1937, by Alex Bush for an Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (all photos here).
A nice front porch, but not especially interesting — except that it is a Carolina (or rain) porch.
Its columns rest on masonry bases set “directly on the ground . . . in front of the foundation of the porch floor. This is a distinctive regional characteristic,” according to the registration form (1998) for the National Register of Historic Places for the Oak Hill Historic District.
The back porch, however, is more unusual.
“[The] rear wings have integral recessed porches facing inward and creating an atrium-like space which has been roofed [with] corrugated metal. . . . [The] . . . first floor [is] essentially an enclosed dogtrot. . . .”
The house was built in 1836 by Abiezer Clarke Ramsey, a school teacher and Methodist circuit rider. In 1937, he married Elizabeth Amanda Wardlaw, a widow with four children. She and Abiezer had seven more before her death in 1854.
The house still stands in the Oak Hill Historic District.
Continue reading “The Sunday porch: Oak Hill, Alabama”
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