“The Veranda, The Hotel at Beverly Hills, California,” ca. 1889 – ca. 1931, a postcard by the Detroit Publishing Company, via New York Public Library Digital Collections.
Tag: California
Pasadena, California
A repeat post from July 2013. . .
Unidentified garden in Pasadena, California, 1930, by Diggers Garden Club, via Archives of American Gardens, Garden Club of America Collection, Smithsonian Institution Commons on flickr.
Simple, elegant, and a little mysterious. . .
The Diggers Garden Club was founded in 1924 and still exists today. It is a member of the Garden Club of America (which celebrated its centennial in 2013).
At its 75th anniversary, the GCA donated 3,000 glass lantern slides (of which this is one) and over 30,000 film slides to the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Gardens. Its members continue to contribute to the collection, which now has over 60,000 images.
Many of the gardens pictured in the Archives’ slides are unidentified. The Smithsonian is asking the public’s help in finding names and locations. Click here to view its “Mystery Gardens Initiative.”
I do think a garden should be seductive. The strength of any garden is its ability to take you away.
— David L. Culp, in “3,000 Plants, and Then Some,” The New York Times.
Los Angeles
Collegiate Institute, Los Angeles, California, ca. 1920, a hand-colored glass lantern slide, via Arthur Peck Photograph Collection, OSU Special Collections & Archives Commons on flickr.
Arthur Peck was a Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Oregon Agricultural College* from 1908 to 1948. This picture was part of his teaching library of 24 boxes of glass lantern slides — now in OSU’s archives.
I like the hose left out on the grass in this otherwise very neat picture. It would illustrate to a class the major problem in maintaining a lawn in Southern California.
Unfortunately, I can’t find anything about a “Collegiate Institute” in Los Angeles.
*The college later became Oregon State University (OSU).
Life in gardens: California
A repeat “Life in” from 2013. . .
I love this photo by Russell Lee, * of a May 1942 Turlock, California, backyard. (Unfortunately, it’s not very sharply focused.) The caption, possibly by the photographer, reads:
Housewife waters the lawn. All garden furniture and barbecue pit were made by her husband; about one out of every three houses in this town has such an arrangement in the backyard, and during the summer months people eat and spend many hours in their yards.
I particularly like the rolling sofa thing with the awning. Turlock is located in central California between Modesto and Merced. Continue reading “Life in gardens: California”
Vintage landscape: the stage
The outdoor theater of the Piranhurst estate of Henry Ernest and Ellen Chabot Bothin, Montecito, California, 1917, hand-colored glass lantern slides by Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
The Bothin’s fortune was made in coffee and spices (San Francisco), real estate, and water. Their estate became famous in the 1920s for the parties and performances held in its 350-acre “Tea Gardens” — which included the clipped cypress theater shown here.
Today, the site is in ruins and is part of the Mar Y Cel open space preserve. There are histories of the property here and here.
enclos*ure 