Tag: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

The Sunday porch: Cherry Spring, Texas

Cindy at enclos*ure2 Comments

North (back) side of Rode-Kothe House, Cherry Spring, Gillespie County, Texas, May 29, 1936, by Richard MacAllister for an Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (all three photos).

South (front) side of house.

The HABS says the limestone house was at least partly built in 1855 by German immigrant Dietrich Rode. (He completed it in 1879.) Rode was one of the founders of nearby Fredericksburg, as well as Cherry Spring.  He was also a lay Lutheran minister and a teacher, first in his students’ homes at night and then on the second floor of his ranchhouse shown here.

Detail of front porch.

The house may still stand near Christ Lutheran Church, which Rode helped found, but I cannot find a current picture of it.

The HABS says the building was “[s]ited to dominate its surroundings.”

Zion path

Cindy at enclos*ureLeave a comment

It’s National Trails Day.
Trail, Zion Natl Park, Utah, 1980s, Library of CongressDetail of the West Rim Trail, looking southwest, Zion National Park, Washington County, Utah, 1984, by Clayton B. Fraser, via Historic American Engineering Record, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The trail opened in 1926 and was paved in 1929 with oil mixed with sand and rock.  It was later repaved in concrete, most recently in 2007.

“Built of native stone and associated with the “National Park Service-Rustic” architectural style, the West Rim Trail possesses architectural integrity,” says the Record.  “Rock used in the masonry switchback walls was quarried locally and shaped as little as possible to provide a rough appearance, yet stable construction.”  You can read more here.

Memorial Day

Cindy at enclos*ure4 Comments

Memorial Day 2, Arlington, E. Bubley, Library of Congress“Decorating a soldier’s grave in one of the Negro sections on Memorial Day [1943],” Arlington Cemetery, Virginia, by Esther Bubley, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The graves of service members were segregated by race until 1948.

The Sunday porch: Dallas, North Carolina

Cindy at enclos*ure2 Comments


Mason House, near Dallas, North Carolina, 1938, by Frances Benjamin Johnston, via
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

A narrow porch for a narrow house. I think those are cannas at the bases of the columns.

This picture was published in The Early Architecture of North Carolina by Johnston and Thomas Tileston Waterman in 1941, but I can’t find out anything else about the building.

The front window

Cindy at enclos*ure2 Comments


“Mrs. Herman Perry in her home at Mansfield, Iron County, Michigan,” May 1937, by Russell Lee, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Look through the net curtains at her tomato plants in tin cans. I wonder if she really waited until the average last frost date* for zone 18 — which is currently between July 1 and 10 — to put them in the ground.

Lee took the photo on assignment for the U.S. Farm Security Administration. Mrs. Perry was “the wife of an oldtime iron miner who worked in the mines before they were abandoned.”

*The average first frost date is between September 1 and 10.