Tag: mountain view

The Sunday porch: the hollows

Cindy at enclos*ure1 Comment
Nicholson2
There seems to be a potted oleander on the left side.

The front porch of a home of the extended Nicholson family of Nicholson Hollow (top three images) in Shenandoah National Park, Virginia, October 1935.*

The Shenandoah National Park is a narrow strip of supremely lovely wilderness along the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. It begins at Front Royal, about 75 miles west of Washington, D.C., and ends west of Charlottesville.

The park was authorized by Congress in 1926 and fully established by the end of 1935 — two months after these pictures were taken by Arthur Rothstein for the U.S. Resettlement Administration (later the Farm Security Administration).

In order to create a fully “natural” environment, over 450 families were moved out of the park area under the process of eminent domain. Most were small farmers who had been portrayed in a widely publicized 1933 sociological study as desperately poor, primitive, and cut off from 20th century society.

Nicholson3

After they were gone, the Civilian Conservation Corps destroyed their homes and outbuildings. The only structures saved were some log houses and rail fences around Nicholson Hollow.

Nicholson

In the mid 1990s, the National Park Service sponsored an archaeological survey of 88 pre-park human settlements in Nicholson, Corbin, and Weakley Hollows.**

The findings of the study strongly refuted the earlier claims that the families (who were indeed often poor) were cut off the modern world. Researchers found china plates, mail order toys, 78 RPM record fragments, pharmaceutical bottles, and automobile parts.

CorbinPorch view of Corbin Hollow from one house of the Corbin family (above and below).

The Corbins were very hard hit by the Depression-years decline of the nearby Skyland Resort, which had previously given them employment and a market for their crafts.

Corbin3

There are two very good papers on the displaced people of Nicholson and Corbin Hollows on the National Park Service website, here and here.

Corbin Hollow farm, Shenandoah Natl. Park, 1935, LoCAbove: another Corbin Hollow farm.

ViewAbove: an abandoned house in Nicholson Hollow.

More of Rothstein’s Shenandoah images are here. Recording the last days of the park’s human inhabitants was his first assignment with the Resettlement Administration.

*All the photos here by Arthur Rothstein, in 1935, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

**In 2000, not long after the study was completed, a forest fire destroyed all but two of the remaining above-ground buildings.

The Sunday porch: Sherrill Inn

Cindy at enclos*ure7 Comments

1 Sherrill Inn, North Carolina, 1938, via Library of CongressSherrill Inn, Hickory Nut Gap, Buncombe County, North Carolina, in 1938, by Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (all photos here).

I know, and even better. . .

1a Sherrill Inn, North Carolina, 1938, via Library of CongressThis is what’s behind the boxwoods. (There’s another photo of this section of the porch here.)

In the nomination form for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, the porch columns were described thusly:

The porch is supported by gracefully tapered posts each rising without interruption from rectangular bases to approximately balustrade level, where it is quickly cinched in on all four sides; above, the post gently flares out to original width near eye level and then back in, until near the top the taper reaches its conclusion to flare quickly into a cap for the porch roof supporting plate to rest upon.

2bb Sherrill Inn, North Carolina, 1938, via Library of Congress

At the corner of the L-shaped porch,

2 Sherrill Inn, North Carolina, 1938, via Library of Congress

. . .the boxwoods cover the slope like giant boulders.

2a Sherrill Inn, North Carolina, 1938, via Library of Congress

And below is the porch after the turn,2b Sherrill Inn, North Carolina, 1938, via Library of Congress

2ba Sherrill Inn, North Carolina, 1938, via Library of Congress

and a view of the mountains.5a Sherrill Inn, North Carolina, 1938, via Library of Congress

A bit of heaven.

Best of all, it seems that most of the old boxwoods are still in place.  The property is being run as an organic farm by descendants of the McClures, the couple who owned the Inn when Johnston took these photos.

Pictures of a beautifully styled wedding held at the Inn in recent years show it to have been in loving hands over the decades.

The house began as two log structures, possibly built by 1806 or maybe even earlier.  Between 1839 and 1850, Bedford Sherrill connected and enlarged those buildings to make an inn for travelers on the “Hickory Nut Turnpike,” an early stage route to western North Carolina.

There are many more details about the history and design of the house and grounds here.