Tag: porch chairs

The Sunday porch: Houston, Texas

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Mexican-American home in Houston, Texas, April 1973, by Danny Lyon for the DOCUMERICA project, via The U.S. National Archives Commons on flickr (all three photos here).

Lyon made a series of 21 black and white photographs in East Texas in 1973. “They document the environments remaining from the 19th century in terms of architecture, commerce and lifestyles,” according to their original captions. “The pictures also compare the contemporary city showing displacement of the unique by the ordinary and noting current urban problems.”

Above: houses in the Fifth Ward, Houston. Click on the images to enlarge them.

DOCUMERICA was an photography program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). From 1972 to 1977, it hired over 100 photographers to “document subjects of environmental concern.” They created an archive of about 80,000 images.

In addition to recording damage to the nation’s landscapes, the project captured “the era’s trends, fashions, problems, and achievements,” according to the Archives, which held an exhibit of the photos, “Searching for the Seventies,” in 2013.

The Sunday porch: Dallas, North Carolina

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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 Sunday porch: Newport, R.I.

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Wakehurst, Newport, RI, 1950s, via Library of Congress:The Sunday porch-enclos*urePorch at the residence of Margaret Brugiere, Wakehurst, in Newport, Rhode Island, August 6, 1958, by Gottscho-Schleisner, Inc., via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The house was built in 1887 by James J. Van Alen as an exact replica of 16th century Wakehurst Place in West Sussex, England.

Margaret, or “Daisy,” Brugiere was Van Alen’s daughter-in-law (widowed and remarried), and she kept the place going in a high style until her death in 1969.

At some point, the family must have wanted the comforts of an American porch and created one with awning.  Its interior style seems inspired by Naples — both the city in Italy and the one in Florida.

Wakehurst porch, Newport, RI, 1950s, via Library of Congress:The Sunday porch-enclos*ure

The property exists today as the student center for Salve Regina University.

The Sunday porch: Mechanicsville, Md.

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Mechanicsville MD 2, Library of CongressMr. and Mrs. Herbert on their porch in Mechanicsville, Maryland, June or July 1942, by Marjory Collins, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (all three photos).

Mechanicsville MD, Library of Congress

All the elements of a good screened porch are here: a slipcovered glider and a wicker chair, a rocker with a cushion (because the caned seat is nearly gone), a Boston fern and an angel-wing begonia, a newspaper and a copy of Good Housekeeping.  Both Herberts are wearing summertime white shoes.

Only a little iced tea could make it any nicer. Judging from the way they are dressed, I would guess this is a Sunday afternoon.

Mechanicsville MD house, Library of Congress

The couple — Charles P. and Bessie D. — built their Queen Anne house in 1909, although, curiously, it appears that they only bought the land beneath it in 1914, according to a Maryland Historic Sites Inventory Form filled out in the 1990s or later.

Charles had moved to the the area to be an express agent for the railroad.  Bessie was the town dressmaker. They lived in the house until their deaths during the 1960s.

A photo attached to the Inventory Form shows that the screening on the east side of the porch was later removed and some lacy trim was added along the entire front.  I could not find the house in a current Google Maps satellite view, however.

As usual, I wish we could see more of the garden.

Marjory Collins took these pictures about six months after moving to Washington, D.C., to join the documentary photographers of the U.S. Office of War Information.  Her “upbeat, harmonious images” of that time “reflected the OWI editorial requests for visual stories about the ideal American way of life,” according to a biographical essay about her by the Library of Congress.