Long Island, New York

“Unidentified Garden in Long Island, New York,” 1930, a hand-colored glass lantern slide by an unknown photographer, via Archives of American Gardens, J. Horace McFarland Company Collection, Smithsonian Institution (used by permission).

Thoughts of summer. . . we woke up to snow this morning in Stuttgart.

The Archives of American Gardens holds over 60,000 photos and records documenting 6,300 historic and contemporary American gardens. Among them are over 3,100 black and white photographs and 445 glass lantern slides from the J. Horace McFarland Company, from the years 1900 to 1962. The firm printed nursery catalogs, horticultural books, and trade publications.

McFarland was an author and horticulturist, as well as a publisher. He also became an important proponent of environmental conservation and the City Beautiful movement.

Bowling, 1861


“Group of people bowling on a wooden lane erected in a yard,” July 4, 1861, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

I just found this photo. It was taken exactly one year before yesterday’s picture, probably by James Hunter,* who would host the 1862 picnic.

The Library’s online catalogue says that “Mrs. H. Bowling and Coleman Sellers, Jr.,” have been identified in this image, although it doesn’t say where they are — probably the woman bowling (Mrs. H., bowling†) and perhaps the boy in charge of setting up the pins.

The full stereograph. I do hope they removed the baby from the lane before she bowled.

“By the mid-1800s, the game of ninepins was so popular that wealthy families installed bowling lanes at their estates. . . , ” according to American Profile. “When some states outlawed ninepins [in the 1830s and 40s] because it encouraged gambling, the modern game of tenpins evolved to skirt the laws.” I’m not sure if there are nine pins in this picture or ten. What looks like one middle pin may be two pins lined up.

The image is part of the Charles F. Himes collection of stereographs by amateur photographers, primarily members of the Pennsylvania Photographic Society (1860-61) and the Amateur Photographic Exchange Club (1861-63).


*James Hunter may have been co-owner of the Print and Dye Works in Hestonville, Pennsylvania.

†H. for Hunter? Coleman Junior’s father was Coleman Sellers II, a prominent engineer and inventor from Philadelphia. — as well as an amateur photographer.