Saurbær Church, Saurbæjarkirkja, Iceland, ca. 1900, by Frederick W. W. Howell, Cornell University Library, via Cornell University Library Commons on flickr.
This now rare turf church still exists. You can see it in 2015 here.
Tag: green roof
Under grass
Turf farmhouse in Hlíðarendi, Fljótshlíð, Iceland, ca. 1900, by Frederick W.W. Howell, Cornell University Library, via Cornell University Library on flickr (both photos).
House covered with chamomile in Reykjavík.
The Sunday porch: Trondheim, Norway
Fossestuen Hotel, Trondhjem, Norway, between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900, a photochrom by Detroit Publishing Co., via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Click on the photo to get a better look at the building’s green roof and outdoor restaurant seating divided by planters and latticework.
Nestled in the mountains near the lower tier of the Lienfoss waterfalls, the Fossestuen Hotel drew many foreigners to this picturesque region of Norway. Built in 1892, the hotel was actually a restaurant that served dinner and refreshments to tourists. The building reflects the traditional wooden architecture of Norway, with the sod roof a source of insulation against the harsh winter cold.
— from the image’s page on World Digital Library, a project of the Library of Congress.
Vintage landscape: green roof
Man and woman work in front of a joint sod hut covered in grass and flowers, near the village of Vestre Jakobeselv, Norway. Taken 1900 by Ellisif Rannveig Wessell, via Preus Museum Commons on flickr.
Living in Finnmark, in the far northeastern part of Norway, Wessel photographed the hard lives of its rural poor. The Preus Museum — Norway’s national museum of photography — compares her to Jacob A. Riis and Lewis Hine.
She developed her own glass plates and used sunlight to make her prints.
Warm summer sun,
Shine kindly here,
Warm southern wind,
Blow softly here.
Green sod above,
Lie light, lie light.
Good night, dear heart,
Good night, good night.— Mark Twain, “Warm Summer Sun“
The Sunday porch: Petworth rowhouses
. . . . . Houses in rows
Patient as cows.— Robert Pinsky, from “City Elegies — III. House Hour“
Rows of houses in the Petworth neighborhood, Washington, D.C., ca. 1920-1950, by Theodor Horydczak, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Petworth was farm and forest until the 1880s when the land was purchased for development. In the 1920s and 30s, thousands of rowhouses were built, many of them in a style popularized by developer Harry Wardman (from 1907) — with its distinctive elevated front porch and tiny front yard.
Above: Petworth rowhouses on Shepherd St., 2010, by Carol Highsmith, via Library of Congress.
“The porches [were] a big part of growing up in Petworth. On my block there had to be 15 or 20 kids, and you’d come home from school, get on the porch, and look down the block, and you could see this long row of porches, and you’d see everybody coming out of their house. The porches made you get to know your neighbors, they made it a neighborhood.”
— A Petworth resident in the 1940s, quoted in the Washington City Paper
Wardman built his front porch rowhouses in large parts of northwest Washington, and several other developers copied them all over D.C.
Petworth was named a “Best Old House Neighborhood of 2013” by the magazine This Old House.
Above: backyards of rowhouses, neighborhood not noted, Washington, D.C., July 1939, by David Myers, via Library of Congress.
At the backs of Wardman-style rowhouses were screened sleeping porches (top) and kitchen porches (bottom).
Petworth resident Annette L. Olson decided to install a green roof on the top of her rowhouse front porch. She wrote about the process for the “Where We Live” column of The Washington Post here.
enclos*ure 