This is the Terraced Garden in Shadyside Park in Anderson Indiana about 1938. Actually I am certain its 1938, because there are three little girls in the passageway at the top of the hill and one of them is my mother. Of course, this is a somewhat fanciful colorization of the original B&W that my grandfather took. I only had a couples things to guide me when I colorized it: my memory, which isn't so reliable; a quite idealized 1930's hand-colored postcard; and an aunt who confidently insists that the large vases were "..Primary Blue just like a Crayola Crayon". At least I got that part right.What an idyllic place it must have been! I have found so many pictures of my family at Shadyside Park that my Mother, using her best little girl voice, joked "Did we live there?"
I was anxious to revisit the park on my next trip home so, here's a shot from Thanksgiving week, 2006. This shot was taken from very nearly the same spot as the 1938 photo but a lot has changed. Most of the interconnected waterways and ponds are gone and so are the vases. I am almost certain that I remember those vases from my childhood in the late 1950s and 1960s. Of course the plantings are completely different: missing the cut-leaf maples and dwarf blue carpet spruces. There is certainly one consistency and that is the huge tree on top of the hill. It may be a Sycamore; I cannot be sure. And too, the gas lights are authentic though they have probably been replaced. Walkways that were covered with giant slabs of granite, even in my day, are gone now, replaced by concrete sidewalks and stairs all properly equipped with hand-rails.Times change. The man strolling in from stage-left in the original kind of says it all. There are other pictures that show dozens of people strolling the paths and stone covered walkways at Shadyside in the 1930s, and that was certainly missing when I visited it last. It was a chilly fall day but very sunny, and we only shared the park with one other couple and, ironically, a homeless person.
3 comments:
I think the gardens were built during the depression as part of the New Deal projects. I like the building that appears in the upper left hand cornot of the new photo. It is Fellowship Masonic Lodge # 681 of which I am a member of. I believe it was built around 1956-57. The large tree at the top of the hill is not a sycamore or it would have white and gray bark. I will be at the lodge on March 3. If I remember I will try to identify it for you.
I think this garden was built during the depression as part of the New Deal projects. The building in the upper left hand corner of the new photo is also interesting to me. It is a picture of my lodge. Fellowship Masonic Lodge #681 built around 1956-7 time frame. The tree a the top of the hill is not a sycamore or it would have white and gray bark. I will be at the lodge helping with a fish fry on March 3rd if you would like me to try to identify it for you.
Greg - I always assumed it was a WPA Project but I don't know that for a fact. You're probably right about the tree: its too far from the river.
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