“Porches and front lawns of row of bungalows, Rockaway, N.Y.,” between 1908 and 1911, by Bain News Service, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Rockaway (or The Rockaways) is a peninsula of Long Island within the New York City borough of Queens. It became a popular beach resort in the 1880s, when a commuter rail line from Manhattan opened a stop there.
Small summer bungalows were prolific in Rockaway during the first half of the 20th century — there were over 7,000 in the area by 1933. Most were torn down, however, during 1960s urban development. The preservation of those that remain is the subject of a 2010 documentary, The Bungalows of Rockaway. You can see the trailer here — and more pictures of Rockaway bungalow life here.
“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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Porch 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.
There are two very good papers on the displaced people of Nicholson and Corbin Hollows on the National Park Service website, here and here.
Above: another Corbin Hollow farm.
Above: 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.
A late afternoon gathering on the south portico (or back porch) of the White House, probably between 1890 and 1910, photographer unknown, via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Encyclopedia Britannica defines ‘portico’ as a “colonnaded porch or entrance to a structure, or a covered walkway supported by regularly spaced columns. Porticoes formed the entrances to ancient Greek temples.”
The south portico of the White House was built in 1824, principally from an 1807 design by architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe, then Surveyor of Public Buildings. Latrobe was appointed and supervised by Thomas Jefferson, who loved neoclassical design and called Palladio’s books “the bible.”
“Housing and back porches in the inner city of uptown Chicago, Illinois, a neighborhood of poor white southerners. The inner city today is an absolute contradiction [from] the main stream America of gas stations, expressways, shopping centers and tract homes. It is populated by Blacks, Latins and the white poor. Some of the best American architecture survives in her “worst” neighborhoods.”
This photo* was taken by Danny Lyon in August 1974 for DOCUMERICA, a 1970’s photography program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It’s shown here with the original caption, presumably written by the photographer.
“Porches and front lawns of row of bungalows, Rockaway, N.Y.,” between 1908 and 1911, by Bain News Service, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
enclos*ure 