And so, about this tomb of mine. . .
Another beautiful photo by Carol M. Highsmith: “Cities of the Dead Cemetery tombs, New Orleans, Louisiana,” 2007, via the Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
This tomb is in the Masonic Cemetery in Mid-City.
“Necropolis de Colon, Havana, Cuba,” 2010, by Carol Highsmith, via the Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
The Cementerio de Cristóbal Colón [Christopher Columbus] was founded in 1876. The 140-acre cemetery is located in the Vedado neighbourhood of Havana, Cuba, and holds more than 500 family vaults, mausoleums, and chapels.
Carol M. Highsmith is a contemporary photographer who has specialized in documenting architecture and landscape — high and low — in all 50 American states. Her influences are Frances Benjamin Johnston and Dorothea Lange. You can read more about her life here.
Highsmith is donating her life’s work — more than 100,000 images — copyright-free to the Library of Congress. Many of her images are printed in the distinctive black and white style shown here.
A garden should make you feel you’ve entered privileged space – a place not just set apart but reverberant – and it seems to me that, to achieve this, the gardener must put some kind of twist on the existing landscape, turn its prose into something nearer poetry.
“Woman and girl standing in icy square, Washington, D.C.,” 1889, by Uriah Hunt Painter, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Uriah Hunt Painter, 1837-1900, took a number of snapshot photographs of his neighborhood around Franklin Square and of downtown Washington using the first Kodak cameras. Painter was a businessman and retired newspaper reporter.
“[The p]hoto shows a woman and a young girl posing mid-square with bundles. The two may be Painter’s wife, Melinda Avery Painter, and older daughter, Eleanor, returning from a marketing trip. Or perhaps Painter took their portrait because the girl is holding another Kodak – exemplifying the growing corps of amateur photographers who took advantage of Eastman’s simple box camera.”
— from the LoC online catalog
Above: “Market scene, Washington, D.C., snow view,” 1889, by Uriah Hunt Painter. I don’t know which square is pictured in these photos.
Above: “Franklin Square, Washington, D.C., snow view,” 1989, by Uriah Hunt Painter.
Pope’s famous lines, in his “Epistle to the Earl of Burlington,” on ‘the genius of the place,’ . . . surely evoke a conception of The Garden as an epiphany. For Pope, ‘the genius of the place’ does not refer, as it does for many later writers, to the ambiance or natural setting of a garden: rather, it is that which ‘Now breaks, or now directs, the intending lines’ and ‘Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs.’ Palpable, here is a sense of The Garden as both a response to and an exemplification of something beyond the control and invention of human beings.
— David E. Cooper, from A Philosophy of Gardens
(Thanks to View from Federal Twist.)
The view at night, under snow, of the Post Office Building, Washington, D.C., 1911. Via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, photographer unknown.
Merry Christmas!
In the first decades of the 20th century, horses toiled to move almost everyone and everything around the city of Washington, D.C. But one December day a year, for several years at least, they were rewarded with Christmas trees hung with apples and corn and accompanied by troughs of grain.
“Christmas Tree for Horses” was sponsored by the Washington Animal Rescue League. The 1918 gathering, shown in the photo above, took place at 12th and Little B Streets — the current site of the IRS offices at 12th St. and Constitution Ave., N.W., just south of the Old Post Office. A 1909 map of the area shows a “Horse Fountain” at 11th and Little B Streets.
These holiday horse dinners also took place in other American cities in the early 20th century.
The photos below show the 1923 event in front of the League’s O Street, N.W., offices.
The League was founded in 1914 and is the oldest animal shelter in Washington, D.C. It is now located at 71 Oglethorpe Street, N.W. (You can find out how to make a donation here.)
Another kind of antique seasonal cheer comes via this postal service truck liberally festooned with greenery.
In early December of 1921, it drove around Washington urging residents to mail their Christmas packages early.
All photos via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. The three photos just above are from the National Photo Company Collection. The top photo is by Harris & Ewing.
enclos*ure 