Smithsonian Libraries

A Winter Resort from the Past

Each month this winter, we have featured a winter vacation related item.  Previous posts featured brochures about The Court Inn and Hampton Terrace.  Continuing with this theme, we are featuring a third brochure about a winter resort, a Laurel House of Lakewood Brochure.

 

Laurel House of Lakewood, Lakewood, NJ.  Brochure, ca. 1900, Laurel House of Lakewood.

 

Laurel House was located in Lakewood, New Jersey and was open from October until June making it a fall, winter, and spring resort.  Along with Laurel-in-the-Pines at Lakewood and the Waumbek and Cottages at Jefferson in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Laurel House at Lakewood was part of the Lakewood and Jefferson Resort System.

Situated in an area with a mild winter climate, the resort offered its guests outdoor recreational activities throughout the winter.  This included golfing, cycling, boating, and cross-country hunts.  Lakewood had several private clubs for outdoor sports and the clubs allowed resort guests to use the facilities during their stay.

Nearby were two lakes, Lake Carasaljo and Lake Manetta, available for boating and depending on the weather, skating and ice-boating.  A walk around Lake Carasaljo was described in the brochure as "one of the most charming walks in the vicinity."  There were gravel walkways with bridges as well as places to stop and rest along the way.

Located in an area with many pine trees, there were roads for driving, riding, or cycling through the pine forest as well as walks for those who preferred to enjoy the scenery on foot.

This Laurel House of Lakewood Brochure is located in the Trade Literature Collection at the National Museum of American History Library.  Take a look at the Galaxy of Images to see more pages from this brochure.

-Alexia MacClain

A Winter Holiday in 1905

Each month this winter, we are featuring a winter vacation related item.  In December, we featured a 1906 brochure about a winter resort in South Carolina called The Court Inn.  This month, we are featuring a 1905 Hampton Terrace Brochure.

Hampton Terrace, Augusta, GA.*  Hampton Terrace Brochure, 1905, Hampton Terrace.

Hampton Terrace was a winter resort located near the Savannah River in Augusta, Georgia.*  The hotel had three hundred rooms and accommodated up to five hundred guests.  The bedrooms at Hampton Terrace were "of generous size, amply furnished, having closets six feet square" and each room included a telephone capable of long distance calls.  There were six suites which included a parlor, dining room, two bedrooms, and a bathroom.  Connecting rooms were also available.

Those vacationing at the hotel could play golf on an eighteen-hole golf course, hunt, or fish in the nearby lakes and streams.  There was also a flower garden for guests to walk through.  For an extra cost, horses and vehicles were available from the stable.  To entertain guests inside the hotel, there was a dancing hall, sun parlors, billiard tables, and a music room with an orchestra.  Other activities included tennis, shuffleboard, and ping-pong.

Hampton Terrace Brochure is located in the Trade Literature Collection at the National Museum of American History Library.  Take a look at Galaxy of Images to see more from this brochure, including views of both the interior and exterior of Hampton Terrace.

Check back in February to read about another winter resort of the past!

-Alexia MacClain

*Based on the brochure, we thought Hampton Terrace was located in Augusta, Georgia, but after some research we're not quite sure (http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/picturingaugusta/aep028.php).  Do any of our readers know which state the resort really called home?  Was it Georgia or South Carolina?  (edited 1/19/2012)



Starting the New Year with something very old

Our oldest bound volume in the Smithsonian Institution Libraries is from circa 1280. It gives me a thrill every day that I can actually take off the shelf and hold in my hand a 730 year-old book! The text of the codex is in meticulous fine lettering in Latin, hand-writing of course, on smooth parchment. Page to page one can see the beautifully even layout, the red and blue markings for the end of the paragraphs and the occasionally occurring multicolored big initial letters. The first section of the book is a very detailed index making it possible for the reader to find certain names and topics in the volume.

 

 

The index is followed by the first text page which usually takes the viewers’ breath away. On the margins and within the large initial letters brilliant little illuminations appear: ornamental decoration, small figures, garlands, flowers and plants. All the vivid colors, including gold, have taken the test of times very well. Did the medieval artist know the content of the book? Can we draw conclusions from the decoration regarding what the text is about? Probably not; however, there is a delightful harmony between this first decorated page and the following literary work.

 

 

That is because the book is actually a compendium of things in nature, written by Bartholomaeus Anglicus, the 13^th century famously knowledgeable Franciscan monk. The title is The properties of things. This does not give us much concrete information about content.  On further examination it turns out that this very general title covers a work that best could be described as an encyclopedia. The subjects are early science and medicine, natural philosophy, natural history, the nature of things in the world in general, explained by the knowledge and intellectual tools that were given in the 13^th century.

 

 

The French great Encyclopedie comes to mind. That wonderful series of (in its first edition) 35 folio volume set also intended to compile the general knowledge of its age, but in the 18^th century, in the age of the Enlightenment. The difference is striking: 35 huge volumes compared to the one much smaller one-volume Latin Bartholomaeus manuscript; but the intention was very similar. Both works are early predecessors of  encyclopedias; of Wikipedia, if we wish to draw a modern parallel. My favorite of the three “Wikipedias,” however, is still the Smithsonian’s 730 year-old manuscript by Bartholomaeus.

— Lilla Vekerdy

New & Notables: December 2011

We're testing out a new way of displaying our "New & Notable" books by combining them in to one post per month. Also, above the book listings, you'll see a slideshow with links to the WorldCat records for each book. If you are not a user of our physical collection, WorldCat will help you find a copy of the book in a library near you. If you enjoy our "New & Notable" section, we would love to hear your comments below.

 

Here are some of the newest additions to the National Air and Space Museum Library collection:

	Ascend or Die: Richard Crosbie: Pioneer of Balloon Flightsby Bryan McMahon.  History Press Ireland, Dublin, Ireland, 2010.  TL620. C76 M36 2010
	Fighting Seventeen: A Photographic History of VF-17 in World War II by Lee Cook.  Schiffer Military History, Atglen, Pennsylvania, 2011.  D790. 375 17th C66 2011
	Millville Army Air Field: America's First Defense Airport (Images of Aviation) by John Galluzzo.  Arcadia Publishing, Charleston, South Carolina, 2011.  UG634.5 M55 G35 2011
	Storms of Controversy: The Secret Avro Arrow Files Revealed by Palmiro Campagna.   Dundurn Press, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 2010.   TL685.3 C35 2010

—Leah Smith

 

New books in the National Museum of American History Library:

	American Eden : from Monticello to Central Park to our backyards : what our gardens tell us about who we are by Wade Graham. New York : HarperCollins Publishers, c2011. SB451.3 .G718 2011
	Born southern : childbirth, motherhood, and social networks in the old South by V. Lynn Kennedy. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. RG652 .K46 2010
	The sword of St. Michael : the 82nd Airborne Division in World War II by Guy LoFaro. Cambridge, MA : Da Capo Press, c2011. D769.346 82nd .L64 2011
	Master mechanics & wicked wizards : images of the American scientist as hero and villain from colonial times to the present by Glen Scott Allen. Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, c2009. Q127.U6 A6815 2009
	American tempest : how the Boston Tea Party sparked a revolution by Harlow Giles Unger. Cambridge, MA : Da Capo Press, 2011. E215.7 .U64 2011

— Trina Brown

 

New items in the Botany-Horticulture Library:

Edible Landscaping by Rosalind Creasey. San Francisco : Sierra Club Books, 2010 SB475.9.E35 C74 2010

— Robin Everly

 

New books in the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum Library:

	Crystal and arabesque : Claude Bragdon, ornament, and modern architecture . Jonathan Massey. Pittsburgh, Pa. : University of Pittsburgh Press, c2009. NA737.B65 M37 2009 CHM From the 1890s to the 1930s, Claude Bragdon enjoyed an international reputation as an architect, designer, and critic working in the progressive tradition associated with Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Prairie School. In 1915 Bragdon created “projective ornament,” a system of geometric patterns designed to serve as a universal form-language integrating not only architecture, art, and design, but also a society divided by differences of class, gender, religion, culture, and national origin. Spreading across the surfaces of buildings, posters, books, and the settings Bragdon designed for massive community singing festivals, projective ornament came to symbolize the progressive potential of modernity for thousands of Americans.
	Triumvirate : McKim, Mead & White : art, architecture, scandal and class in America's Gilded Age / / by Mosette Broderick. New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. NA737.M4 B76 2010 CHM A rich, fascinating saga of the most influential, far-reaching architectural firm of their time and of the dazzling triumvirate—Charles McKim, William Mead, and Stanford White—who came together, bound by the notion that architecture could help shape a nation in transition. They helped to refine America’s idea of beauty, elevated its architectural practice, and set the standard on the world’s stage.
	Bauhaus : a conceptual model / / editor, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin/Museum für Gestaltung, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, and Klassik Stiftung Weimar ; in cooperation with, Museum of Modern Art, New York ; [translations, Benjamin Carter... et al.]. Ostfildern : Hatje Cantz, c2009. N6868.5.B27 B38 2009 CHM Essays: The Bauhaus on the market : on the difficult relationship between the Bauhaus and consumer culture / Regina Bittner ; Escape into the public sphere : the exhibition as an instrument of self-presentation at the Bauhaus / Patrick Rössler -- Selective appropriation : remarks on the reception of Bauhaus pedagogy in Germany / Rainer K. Wick ; Teaching at Black Mountain College and the New Bauhaus : the seperation of art and design / Gabriele Diana Grawe ; The Bauhaus : internationalization and globalization / Klaus von Beyme ; "Timeless gothic" instead of "Dentist-style with housing cubes" : The National Socialist opposition to the Bauhaus / Justus H. Ulbricht ; Vice versa-art of the people? / Ulrike Bestgen and Werner Möller ; The Bauhaus today / Philipp Oswalt.
	Gerrit Rietveld  by Ida van Zijl.   London ; New York, NY : Phaidon, 2010. NA1153.R5 Z54 2010 CHM From his first great design masterpiece, the Red-Blue Chair, to his final design for the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Gerrit Rietveld created a significant body of work and left a remarkable legacy. His simple yet dynamic design style has greatly affected international furniture design and has made a significant contribution to the history of architecture. His unconventional approach and extraordinary furniture, hailed by Theo van Doesburg as 'the new sculpture', inspired many of his contemporaries just as it continues to inspire today's designers; he has he has been cited as a source of inspiration by designers ranging from Verner Panton to Konstantin Grcic. This detailed yet accessible monograph is structured chronologically and richly illustrated with photographs and sketches of Reitveld's furniture design and his twenty-odd architectural projects.

—Elizabeth Broman