Tag: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Vintage landscape: Rabbit redux

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(Chapter the first, here.)

“Government experts test power of gas to keep weeds out of golf greens. Washington, D.C., Aug. 4[,1938].

“Attention golfers!! Your putting is bound to improve and your cussing cut down if the tests now being conducted by grass experts of the Department of Agriculture on the use of tear gas to keep weeds out of golf greens are successful. A.E. Rabbit, (left) grass specialist of the United States Golf Association with whom the Department of Agriculture is cooperating in making the tests, is pictured as he pours the gas into the soil while Stanley Graeff, Dept. of Agriculture, rakes it over. The gas treatment was developed by Dr. John Monteith of the Department of Agriculture.”

Photo and text in quotes by Harris & Ewing via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Vintage landscape: reflection

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“Washington Monument,” ca. 1900, Detroit Publishing Co., via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Good luck today, Washington.

Vintage landscape: Bluff Hall gate

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What a great old gate at Bluff Hall, Demopolis, Alabama, in 1936. I love the fat finials.

The playwright Lillian Hellman may have passed through this gate in the first decades of the 20th century.  Her mother’s family was from Demopolis, and she visited there as a child.  She later used the town as inspiration for the setting of The Little Foxes.  Lionnet is said to have been based on Bluff Hall and another local mansion.

Today the house is on the National Register of Historic Places and is open to the public as a museum.

Photo: by Alex Bush for the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Vintage landscape: tobacco flower

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“George Barbee, 13 years old topping. . . . Nicholas County, Kentucky” by Lewis Hine, August 1916, via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Tobacco plants have to be topped and suckered in order to produce good leaves for market.   The flowers of Nicotiana tabacum are pink.

Photo by Donald Lee Pardue, via flickr.  

A short documentary about traditional tobacco growing methods is here.

Vintage landscape: picket fence and carriage platform

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“Fence style — Hebron Lutheran Church, State Routes 638 & 654, Madison, Madison Co., Virginia.” The photo — taken 1937 or 1941, photographer unknown — is part of an Historic American Building Survey (report written 1979), via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The church was constructed in 1740 by German settlers. The Madison area is between the cities of Culpepper and Charlottesville.

The church and at least one of its platforms (there were three) still exist, but the fence is gone.

I’m traveling for the next week or so, but I’ll be posting a “vintage landscape” from time to time. Thanks for your comments. I’ll try to answer everyone when I get home.