Tag: decomposed granite

Fontainebleau

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Part of the formal garden of the Château de Fontainebleau, with the Grand Canal barely visible in the distance, Ile-de-France, France, between 1914 and 1925. This is a glass lantern slide by Williams, Brown & Earle, Inc., via Archives of American Gardens, Garden Club of America Collection, Smithsonian Institution (used here by permission).

The Archives holds over 60,000 photos and records documenting 6,300 historic and contemporary American gardens.  At its core are almost 3,000 hand-colored glass lantern and 35mm slides donated by the Garden Club of America, which is the source of this image.

(Click on the picture to enlarge it.)

Cheshire County, N.H.

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“Ladies playing croquet,” probably Cheshire County, New Hampshire, ca. 1900, by Bion Whitehouse, via Keene Public Library and the Historical Society of Cheshire County Commons on flickr.

Technically, they are playing roque, an American variant* of croquet, which is played on a hard sand or clay surface. Introduced in the late 1880s, it was extremely popular in the first few decades of the 20th century — and an Olympic sport in 1904 — and then almost entirely disappeared after the 1950s.

The roque grounds.

The photo above was published between 1900 and 1919, photographer unknown. It is part of the Termaine Arkley Croquet Collection and via UBC (University of British Columbia) Library Digitization Centre Commons on flickr.

There’s also a photo of 1918 roque grounds in Florida here.

*There is also a modern game of beach croquet.

Vintage landscape: brick walk

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genthe autochrome, steps, via LoC
“Women on the steps of a multi-story white building with dark timbering,” between 1906 and 1942 (I think before 1920), an autochrome by Arnold Genthe, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The small size of the digital copy of this image makes it difficult to be sure whether the walk areas are brick (like the steps). But I believe they are. (They could be something like decomposed granite.) I love how the tree has been preserved as part of the space.