Tag: porch

Vintage landscape: Biloxi, Mississippi

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Montross Hotel, Biloxi, Miss
Hotel de Montross (or Montross Hotel), Biloxi, Mississippi, ca. 1900, via Cooper Postcard Collection, Mississippi Department of Archives and History Commons on flickr.

Because of its waterfront location, Beloxi has been a summer resort town since the first half of the 1800s. The Hotel de Montross — facing the Mississippi Sound — was one of its oldest hotels. Today, it is long gone, with a Hard Rock Hotel and Casino located on approximately the same spot.

(There’s another picture of the hotel’s grounds here.)

The Sunday porch: Bon Echo

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Bon Echo cabin, Cloyne & District Historical SocietyRustic birch lattice on the porch of the North Cottage of the Bon Echo Inn, near Cloyne, Ontario, 1935, via Cloyne and District Historical Society Commons on flickr (both photos).

The Bon Echo Inn was established in 1889 on Mazinaw Lake.  It attracted wealthy guests who were also tea-totalers, as the religious owners did not serve alcohol.  Later, it was purchased by a founder of the Canada Suffrage Association, who made it into a retreat for artists and writers, notably James Thurber. In 1936, the Inn and many of its outbuildings were destroyed by fire and never rebuilt.  The surrounding area is now Bon Echo Provincial Park.

Bon Echo Inn, Cloyne & District Historical SocietyTea service on the verandah of the Inn, between 1920 and 1936.

The Sunday porch: Kentucky

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Prosperous farmer 1, Kentucky, Library of CongressFarmhouse porch with plants in painted lard buckets, Morehead, Kentucky, 1940, by Marion Post Wolcott for U.S. Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

I wish we could see the colors of the painted* containers.

Prosperous farmer 2, Kentucky, Library of Congress
Two special supports were built along the front of the porch to display the plants. (There’s a third view of the house here.)

*Here, here, and here are examples of 1930s interior paint color combinations.

The Sunday porch: Strawberry Hill

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My first “Sunday porch,” from August 2013. . .
Vintage Photo of Strawberry Hill, Forkland vic., Greene County, Alabama, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Strawberry Hill plantation, Greene County, Alabama, in 1939, by Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The front porch is often a box seat for the theater of the garden or the street.  This one seems to have half drawn its curtains against the buzzing, chirping action of the cottage garden below.

Strawberry Hill, 1936, HABS, Library of Congress
Strawberry Hill, November 1936, by Alex Bush, for HABS, via Library of Congress.

The mid-19th century house still exists, although without the vines and flowers.  Its surrounding land is now a cattle ranch.

The Sunday porch: Austin, Texas

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A repeat porch from June 2014. . .
Austin dogtrot, 1935, via Texas State Archives“Remains of log dogtrot house near Webberville Road. . . Austin Texas,” 1935, probably by Fannie Ratchford, via Texas State Archives.

Unfortunately, it’s a little out of focus, but still beautiful.

. . .  I woo the wind
That still delays his coming. Why so slow,
Gentle and voluble spirit of the air?
Oh, come and breathe upon the fainting earth
Coolness and life!

— William Cullen Bryant, from “Summer Wind“