Tag: rocking chairs

Pasadena, California

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The garden terrace of the Myron Hunt house, 200 North Grand Avenue, Pasadena, California, 1917, a hand-colored glass lantern slide by Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

This looks like such a tranquil and comfortable garden space — while at the same time, just a little mysterious. If you look closely, you can see that there is a simple rope and board swing hanging from a tree limb in the center, and at least one of the chairs is a rocking chair.

Hunt was a successful architect in Southern California in the first half of the 20th century. He designed this house and garden for himself in 1905. Today, the house survives, but the garden is gone.

There is another Johnston image of the garden here, looking across an open garden room to the steps and elevated bust shown above.

The Sunday porch: Sagamore Hill

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T. Roosevelt porch, Library of CongressThe porch of President Theodore Roosevelt’s country home, Sagamore Hill, ca. 1905, photographer unknown, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (both photos here).

The rug was a mountain lion.

Roosevelt purchased the land in Oyster Bay, New York, in the early 1880s and began planning the Queen Anne house with his first wife, Alice. But she died in 1884, and it was second wife Edith who moved into the newly completed home two years later.

Sagamore Hill, ca. 1905, Library of Congress

Sagamore Hill was their family’s primary residence, except from 1901 to 1909, when it was known as the “Summer White House.”

Theodore died there in 1919, as did Edith in 1948.  The family continued to own it until the 1950s, when it was passed to the Theodore Roosevelt Association and later to the National Park Service.

The house reopens to the public today, after being closed for three and a half years for renovation.

The Sunday porch: shadows

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Lattice on 1935 Ala. porch, Library of CongressFirst floor porch of the Kenneworth-Moffatt House, Montgomery, Alabama, October 1935, by W. N. Manning for an Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Lattice Ala. porch, upstairs, Library of CongressSecond-floor porch of the Kenneworth-Moffatt House, Montgomery, Alabama, October 1935, by W. N. Manning.

Lattice on Ala. porch, full view, Library of CongressFront view of the Kenneworth-Moffatt House, Montgomery, Alabama, April 1934, by W. N. Manning.

The building — constructed in 1855 — is now called the Gerald-Dowdell House and houses a law office. A recent view on Google Maps is here.