This is really exciting. Yesterday, the Library of Congress released online the digital images of more than 1,000 hand-colored, glass-plate lantern slides of gardens taken (mostly) by Frances Benjamin Johnston.
The images in the collection were taken from 1895 to 1935. Originally black and white photographs, Johnston had them hand tinted and made into slides to illustrate her popular garden lectures, which she gave to garden clubs, horticultural societies, and museum audiences from 1915 to 1930. As part of the Garden Beautiful Movement, she encouraged Americans to grow gardens on tenement lots, in row-house yards and in parks, which had deteriorated from industrial pollution and neglect during the Gilded Age.
The slides have not been seen in public since Johnston last projected them during her lectures. They depict more than 200 sites — primarily private gardens — in all regions of the United States and in Europe. The entire collection, 1,130 digital images, can be found in the Library’s Prints and Photographs Online Catalog, here.
I’ve just begun to enjoy this beautiful resource, but here are 11 images that I pulled out quickly during my first enthusiastic look.
The photo above is of Chateau of Bréau, Dammarie-les-Lys, Seine-et-Marne, France. July 1925. (Click any photo to enlarge it.)
The Touchstone Garden, New York, New York. Sculpture exhibition, summer 1919.
“Cliveden,” Viscount Waldorf Astor house, Taplow, Buckingham, England. Long Garden, summer 1925.
Myron Hunt house, 200 North Grand Avenue, Pasadena, California. Garden Terrace, spring 1917.
“Inellan,” Walter Douglas house, Channel Drive, Montecito, California. Pathway to Pacific Ocean, spring 1917.
“Flagstones,” Charles Clinton Marshall house, 117 East 55th Street, New York, New York. Tea house/sleeping porch.
“Gray Gardens,” Robert Carmer Hill house, Lily Pond Lane, East Hampton, New York, New York. View to Garden Trellis.
West Potomac Park, Washington, D.C. Irises along the embankment, April 1905.
Dr. Charles William Richardson house, Chevy Chase, Washington, D.C. Irises, 1921.
“The Fens,” Lorenzo Easton Woodhouse house, Hunting Lane, East Hampton, New York. Pergola, 1914.
Unidentified city garden, probably in New York, New York. Pathway, 1922.
A selection of 250 of the color images can also be seen in a new book by house and garden historian Sam Watters, Gardens for a Beautiful America, 1895-1935: Photographs by Frances Benjamin Johnston. It will be published this month by Acanthus Press, in association with the Library. ($79, here — not yet available.)
The Library of Congress is the repository of Johnston’s personal papers and approximately 20,000 photographs. But the lantern slides lacked garden names, locations, and dates and, therefore, had not been released to general public access. Watters took on the challenge of cataloging the collection, and after five years of research in libraries and archives, he has transformed vague earlier library notations into detailed data. For example, an unlabeled slide was recognized as a prize winner in a 1922 design contest and is now identified as “The Janitor’s Garden, 137 E. 30th St., New York City.”
For more information about Frances Benjamin Johnston, see here and here.
This photo was taken during the 1860s. The statue of Thomas Jefferson had been there since 1848. Photo by National Photo Company, via the Library of Congress.
Things were pretty simple in this 1881 etching, via the blog American Garden History.
By 1885, the fountain was surrounded by flower beds in teardrops and circles. Photo by Underwood & Underwood, via the website The White House Museum.
The design was more elaborate by 1894. Photo by B.L. Singley, via American Garden History.
There was a more squared-off arrangement in 1901. Photo by Detroit Publishing Co., via Library of Congress.
Above, gardeners were planting out the fountain area in 1902, via The White House Museum.
By 1905, the whole Victorian mess had been cleared out for simple plantings of bulbs and peonies. Photo by Detroit Publishing Co., via Library of Congress.
Above, sometime later, before 1920, the peonies were gone. I like all the irises around the fountain. Photo by Detroit Publishing Co., via Library of Congress.
Above is my photo of the north lawn in March 2012.
enclos*ure 