Color Photos

The Elms, Newport, Rhode Island (2)

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The garden on the south side of The Elms in Newport, in 1914. Image taken by Frances Benjamin Johnston, courtesy of the Library of Congress, Johnston Collection.

The scene in 2018:

As in the previous post, the first photo here was taken by noted photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston. Her specialties included photographs of gardens, and many of these – including this photo – were hand colored on lantern slides, for Johnston to use in her various lectures. This photo is one of several that she took here at The Elms in Newport, and is shows the meticulously-landscaped garden on the south side of the house. At the time, Newport was still one of the most desirable summer resorts in the country, and The Elms had been built 13 years earlier by coal tycoon Edward Julius Berwind.

The family spent many summers here, and after Edward’s wife Sarah died in 1922, he continued to visit here, accompanied by his sister Julia. She inherited the property after his death in 1936, and it remained her summer home for the rest of her life, until her death in 1961 at the age of 96. Up until this  point, the house was still staffed by an army of 40 servants, long after most of the other massive Gilded Age mansions in Newport had been either demolished, converted to other uses, or preserved as museums. By the early 1960s, such homes had long since fallen out of fashion, and no other members of the Berwind family were interested in taking on the expense of maintaining a 48-room, 60,000-square-foot summer house.

As a result, the house was nearly demolished in 1962 in order to construct a shopping center here on the site. However, several weeks before it was to be demolished, The Elms was instead purchased by the Preservation Society of Newport County and opened as a museum. Both the house and the grounds have been preserved, and it is now one of many historic Newport properties maintained by the Preservation Society. This particular garden scene is not completely identical to its early 20th century appearance, particularly with the lack of hedges in the foreground, but the statue in the distance is still there, as are the ones on the patio to the left. Overall, the scene is still easily recognizable from the first photo, despite more than a century since Johnston captured this view in the first photo.

The Elms, Newport, Rhode Island (1)

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The gardens on the south side of The Elms in Newport, in 1914. Image taken by Frances Benjamin Johnston, courtesy of the Library of Congress, Johnston Collection.

The scene in 2018:

The first photo is from a lantern slide that was taken by Frances Benjamin Johnston, who was among the first prominent American women photographers. One of her specialties was garden photography, and in 1914 she took some photos of the gardens at The Elms, the summer estate of the Berwind family in Newport. These photos were taken in black and white, as color photography was still in its infancy at the time, but the resulting glass lantern slides were then hand colored, and Johnston used them in various lectures that she gave to garden clubs, museums, and other organizations.

This scene shows the gardens at the southwest corner of The Elms. The house had been constructed between 1899 and 1901, and it was used as the summer residence for Edward Julius Berwind, a Philadelphia native who had founded the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company. After making his fortune in the coal industry, Berwind joined the many other Gilded Age aristocrats who were building palatial homes here in Newport. He hired noted architect Horace Trumbauer to design the house, which was modeled after the Château d’Asnières, and the grounds were laid out by Ernest W. Bowditch, a landscape architect whose other Newport commissions included the grounds of The Breakers. Overall, the house cost about $1.4 million to build, equivalent to over $40 million today.

The house remained in the Berwind family for over 60 years. Edward and his wife Sarah had no children, but after her death in 1922 and his death in 1936, the property was inherited by his sister Julia. By this point, in the midst of the Great Depression, the heyday of the grand Newport mansions had passed. Such homes were increasingly seen as white elephants from a previous era, and many were either demolished or converted into different uses. However, life here at The Elms remained largely unchanged through all of this, with Julia continuing to spend her summers here, accompanied by 40 servants who ran the house.

The Elms was ultimately one of the last of the large Newport mansions to be staffed by such a retinue servants, and it was also one of the last that was still owned by its original family. This continued until 1961, when Julia Berwind died at the age of 96. Her nephew, Charles E. Dunlap, who was himself in his 70s at the time, then inherited the house. He had no interest in taking on the expense of maintaining the house, though, so he subsequently sold the property to a developer who intended to demolish the house and replace it with a shopping center.

This demolition nearly occurred in 1962, but at the last minute the property was sold to the Preservation Society of Newport County, becoming one of the organization’s many historic house museums here in Newport. Today, The Elms remains open to the public as one of the largest of the Gilded Age Newport mansions. Along with the house itself, the grounds have also been well-preserved during this time, including the sculptures visible here. Overall, very little has changed in this scene, with the gardens still looking much the same as they did when Frances Benjamin Johnston photographed them more than a century ago.

Lost New England Goes West: Clarence Anglin’s Cell, Alcatraz, San Francisco

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Cell #152 in Alcatraz, shortly after Clarence Anglin’s attempted escape in June 1962. Image courtesy of the National Park Service.

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The cell in 2015:

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Clarence Anglin and his brother John were convicted bank robbers whowere both incarcerated at Alcatraz. As explained in more detail in the previous post, they participated with their friend Frank Morris in what was possibly the only successful escape attempt from the prison. The first photo was taken in Clarence’s cell shortly after the escape was discovered, and the second one shows the cell as it appears today, complete with a replica of the dummy head that Anglin created to hide their disappearance.

In over 50 years since their disappearance, there have been no confirmed sightings of the three men, nor were their bodies ever discovered, which has led to plenty of speculation and reported sightings ever since. Perhaps the most interesting piece of evidence to surface recently, though, is a 1975 photo that was released last year, which supposedly shows the Anglin brothers in Brazil. Despite the resemblance to the escaped convicts, it remains inconclusive, but it is certainly possible that the men, now in their mid-80s, could still be alive and hiding in South America.

This post is part of a series of photos that I took in California this past winter. Click here to see the other posts in the “Lost New England Goes West” series.

Lost New England Goes West: Frank Morris’s Cell, Alcatraz, San Francisco

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Cell #138 at Alcatraz, seen shortly after Frank Morris’s attempted escape in June 1962. Image courtesy of the National Park Service.

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The cell in 2015:

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The prison at Alcatraz is probably best known for the June 11-12, 1962 escape attempt by Clarence Anglin, John Anglin, and Frank Morris. The three men, plus a fourth one who ultimately did not participate in the escape, began planning six months earlier. With Morris as the ringleader, they used discarded saw blades, spoons, and an improvised drill to slowly chip away at the corroded concrete around the ventilation openings in their cells. On the other side of the wall is a utility corridor, and once they had escaped from their cells they climbed up to the roof, constructed a makeshift raft, and left the island.

To prevent their absence from being noticed, they had created papier-mâché heads and left them on their pillows. As a result, the escape was not noticed until the following morning. The first photo here was taken in Morris’s cell, probably only a few days after the escape. The men were never found, and despite the publicity at the time and in the years since, there has been no conclusive evidence to suggest either that they drowned in the frigid waters or successfully made it to shore.

Less than a year later, the prison closed, not because of the escape attempt, but because of the exorbitant cost of running a prison on a small island in the middle of San Francisco Bay. Today, the property is administered by the National Park Service, and the old prison is now open for tours. The cells of the escaped inmates, including Morris’s as seen here, have been furnished to show how they would have appeared on the night of the escape.

This post is part of a series of photos that I took in California this past winter. Click here to see the other posts in the “Lost New England Goes West” series.

Beecher Street School, Southington, Connecticut (2)

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Another color photo of students at the Beecher Street School, in May 1942. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, FSA-OWI Collection.

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The scene in 2015:

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The caption of the original photo is “Children stage a patriotic demonstration, Southington, Conn.”  Like the one in the previous post, it was taken at the Beecher Street School, and was probably intended by the Office of War Information to show the patriotic zeal that even young American children display.  At the time, the Beecher Street School was an elementary school; it had been built in 1911, and it would later be converted into offices for the school department.  The students in the 1942 photo would be in their 80s today, and the school building itself now stands vacant, although it was purchased by a private company last year to redevelop into apartment units.

Beecher Street School, Southington, Connecticut (1)

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Students in front of Beecher Street School in Southington, in May 1942. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, FSA-OWI Collection.

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The school in 2015:

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The first photo is one of several color photos taken by the Office of War Information of the people of Southington during World War II.  The original caption reads, “School children, half of Polish and half of Italian descent, at a festival in May 1942, Southington, Conn.”  As with the other photos in the collection, it was intended for a pamphlet, which would be distributed overseas in order to gain support for the American cause.  The mention of Italian and Polish students is probably deliberate, because at the time Italy was allied with Germany and Poland was under German occupation.

Built in 1911, the Beecher Street School was an elementary school for many years, and more recently it was used by the school department for their central offices.  As of 2015 it is vacant, and the overgrown weeds and cracked pavement paint a bleak picture, in stark contrast to the original photo.  However, last year the historic school was sold to a private company, who plans to convert it into housing units.