Owings Mills, near Baltimore, Maryland, July 1933, by Frances Benjamin Johnston, via
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (both photos).
The Sunday porch: shade
Tag: back porch
The Sunday porch: split level
“Backyard of a brick house in the suburbs with picnic table and barbecue,” location unknown, 1959, by Marion S. Trikosko, via U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
The Sunday porch: New Jersey
Back porch, possibly in Northwest Manville, New Jersey, February 1936, by Carl Mydans for the U.S. Resettlement Administration, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
The Sunday porch: Oak Hill, Alabama
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”
The Sunday porch: lattice and brick
“William Windom house, 1723 de Sales Place, Washington, D.C., Terrace,” ca. 1925, four hand-colored glass lantern slides by Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Johnston used these slides in her “Gardens for City and Suburb” lectures. (You can scroll through larger version by clicking on ‘Continue reading’ below.)
De Sales Place (now Row) is an alleyway between L and M Streets, N.W. (It connects 18th and 19th Streets.) The house is gone; an office building occupies the site.
The William Windom who gave his name to the home was twice Secretary of the Treasury, as well as a Congressman and Senator from Minneasota. He died in 1891. His son, also a William, may have been living in the house at the time of these photos. He died in 1926.
[We] usually learn that modesty, charm, reliability, freshness, calmness, are as satisfying in a garden as anywhere else.
— Henry Mitchell, from The Essential Earthman
enclos*ure 