“Thebideau cabin,” near Franklin, St. Mary Parish, Louisiana, 1938, by Frances Benjamin Johnston for her Carnegie Survey of the Architecture of the South, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
The front yard is very neat. Two old tires protect the daisies and the little tree.
Detail of porch column, Le Droit Park, 3rd Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., 1974, by Ronald Comedy for an Historic American Building Survey (HABS), via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Le Droit Park is an old Washington subdivision of “large freestanding houses and duplexes of related architectural design,“ located just south of Howard University. When it was built in 1873, it was restricted to white buyers only and gated, but a series of protests brought the fences down in 1891, and by 1920 its residents were predominately African-American and included professors, politicians, and artists. The area suffered decline in the 1980s, but today its renovated homes are selling quickly, according to The Washington Post. The neighborhood is on the Heritage Trail, a self-guided walking tour developed by Cultural Tourism DC.
The home pictured above — with its distinctive porch columns — still exists.
A repeat porch from October 2014. . .
“Snapshot, two women sitting on the front porch of a house, unidentified,” ca. 1912-1934, by Michael Francis Blake, via David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University Libraries Commons on flickr.
Blake was one of the first African-American studio photographers in Charleston, South Carolina. His collection at Duke consists of 117 photos in an album entitled “Portraits of Members.”
. . . our effort to open the gift of the world,
our hope to find years
in this box we tear apart.— Allan Johnston, from “Evening Conversation“
Possibly a café, Sogn area, Norway, between 1897 and 1904, by Nils Olsson Reppen, via Fylkesarkivet (County Archives) i Sogn go Fjordane Commons on flickr.
Across the road, the sign on the house reads, “Logi for reisende. Udsalg av mad, Kaffe og Brus” (“Lodging for travellers. Sale of food, coffee and fizzy lemonade”).
Click the image for a larger view.
View from front porch of house on the bluff, Dubuque, Iowa, April 1940, by John Vachon, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Dubuque is located along the Mississippi River, at the junction of Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin. It is Iowa’s oldest city and one of the few with hills.
At the time of the photo, mill working was an important industry in Dubuque. Vachon, on assignment in Iowa for the U.S. Farm Security Administration, wrote home, “This is the biggest sash mill and door center in the U.S. Little things fly around and get in your eye all day. Lots of smoke too.”
He may have taken this photo on April 18, when he wrote again, “Today was a good day. I walked miles and climbed awfully steep hills and got terribly tired.”
enclos*ure 