A hot Sunday in Washington, D.C., before air-conditioning.
All three photos of Ellipse Park by Marjory Collins, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
The mean daytime temperature that month was 86° — the high was 98°; the low was 78°. The daily high for humidity ranged from 76% to 100%.
In the dog days of summer . . .
The wind lifts up my life
And sets it some distance from where it was.— Meena Alexander, from “Dog Days of Summer“
Mr. and Mrs. Herbert on their porch in Mechanicsville, Maryland, June or July 1942, by Marjory Collins, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (all three photos).
All the elements of a good screened porch are here: a slipcovered glider and a wicker chair, a rocker with a cushion (because the caned seat is nearly gone), a Boston fern and an angel-wing begonia, a newspaper and a copy of Good Housekeeping. Both Herberts are wearing summertime white shoes.
Only a little iced tea could make it any nicer. Judging from the way they are dressed, I would guess this is a Sunday afternoon.
The couple — Charles P. and Bessie D. — built their Queen Anne house in 1909, although, curiously, it appears that they only bought the land beneath it in 1914, according to a Maryland Historic Sites Inventory Form filled out in the 1990s or later.
Charles had moved to the the area to be an express agent for the railroad. Bessie was the town dressmaker. They lived in the house until their deaths during the 1960s.
A photo attached to the Inventory Form shows that the screening on the east side of the porch was later removed and some lacy trim was added along the entire front. I could not find the house in a current Google Maps satellite view, however.
As usual, I wish we could see more of the garden.
Marjory Collins took these pictures about six months after moving to Washington, D.C., to join the documentary photographers of the U.S. Office of War Information. Her “upbeat, harmonious images” of that time “reflected the OWI editorial requests for visual stories about the ideal American way of life,” according to a biographical essay about her by the Library of Congress.
The porch of President Theodore Roosevelt’s country home, Sagamore Hill, ca. 1905, photographer unknown, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (both photos here).
The rug was a mountain lion.
Roosevelt purchased the land in Oyster Bay, New York, in the early 1880s and began planning the Queen Anne house with his first wife, Alice. But she died in 1884, and it was second wife Edith who moved into the newly completed home two years later.
Sagamore Hill was their family’s primary residence, except from 1901 to 1909, when it was known as the “Summer White House.”
Theodore died there in 1919, as did Edith in 1948. The family continued to own it until the 1950s, when it was passed to the Theodore Roosevelt Association and later to the National Park Service.
The house reopens to the public today, after being closed for three and a half years for renovation.
“W. D. Terrell in garden with radio,” probably in the Washington, D.C., area, July 7, 1926, by National Photo Company, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Mr. Terrell was Chief of Inspection Service of Radio at the U.S. Department of Commerce during the 1920s.
Just as Ariel, in the fables of the Middle Ages, was a spirit guardian of the air, so in this day of wireless, the Radio Inspector, a modern Ariel, stands a silent watch over the ether. But though he may be silent and, indeed, an angel, he is far from a fable, as those who attempt to dispute his wavemeter soon find out.
— from “Guiding the Good Ship Radio,” an October 1925 interview with Terrell in Radio Broadcast magazine
First floor porch of the Kenneworth-Moffatt House, Montgomery, Alabama, October 1935, by W. N. Manning for an Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Second-floor porch of the Kenneworth-Moffatt House, Montgomery, Alabama, October 1935, by W. N. Manning.
Front view of the Kenneworth-Moffatt House, Montgomery, Alabama, April 1934, by W. N. Manning.
The building — constructed in 1855 — is now called the Gerald-Dowdell House and houses a law office. A recent view on Google Maps is here.
enclos*ure 