Smithsonian Libraries

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)



A Winter Vacation of the Past

This past summer, we featured travel and vacation related items, including ones about express steamers, a beach hotel, and a lake resort.  Each month this winter, we will do the same.  But this time we will feature winter vacation related items.  This month, we are featuring a 1906 brochure about The Court Inn.

 

Court Inn, Camden, SC.  Brochure, 1906, The Court Inn.

 

The Court Inn was a winter resort located in Camden, South Carolina.  The resort, which accommodated about 200 guests, opened each year on Thanksgiving Day.  The 1906 Brochure described the resort as having "every modern comfort and convenience, including electric lights, steam heat and open fireplaces, call bells, and bath-rooms, both public and private."

The resort had a lot of outdoor activities for guests to enjoy.  In front of the hotel, there was a garden with flowers and shrubs.  A five hundred foot long arched evergreen walkway and the Grove of Towering Pines was also located on the grounds.  Other outdoor activities included fishing and boating at a nearby lake, playing polo, and playing golf at the nearby Sarsfield Golf Club.

This 1906 Brochure about The Court Inn can be found 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.

Check back in January and February to read about other winter vacation resorts of the past!

-Alexia MacClain

Flipping Through a Holiday Catalog from 1898

The holiday shopping season is just around the corner.  Have you ever wondered what toys or other items people bought as gifts in the past?  This catalog gives us a glimpse of what shoppers over a hundred years ago might have been buying.

Holiday Catalogue of H. S. Prutzman & Co. is from the holiday season of 1898.  This particular catalog seems to focus on large items.  It also has a mix of items for outdoor play, such as sleds, and items for indoor play, such as rocking horses and toy sweepers.

Pictured below is one of several pages showing different types of sleighs and sleds.  Shown on the right side of the page below is a sleigh with two plumes.  This particular sleigh included upholstered seats and was available in natural wood or painted white.  It was also available without the plumes.

H. S. Prutzman & Co., Altoona, PA.  Holiday Catalogue of H. S. Prutzman & Co., 1898, page 6, sleds.

Other items shown in the catalog include rocking horses, wagons, toy wheelbarrows, toy sweepers, tricycles, and velocipedes.  Even though the catalog does not include a lot of description to go along with the images, it still gives us an idea of what might have been on holiday shopping lists in the late nineteenth century.

Holiday Catalogue of H. S. Prutzman & Co. 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 pages from this catalog.

-Alexia MacClain

Researching Your Treasures: How Our Trade Literature Collection Can Help

This is the first post in a new ongoing series, Library Hacks. It will feature library and online resources we think you will find useful, interesting, or just plain cool.

Your grandmother left you an antique sewing machine that she used to make her own clothes when she was a girl. You treasure it, but you don’t know much about it -– just that it has the name Norwood on it and that it’s pretty old. You ask yourself, “Who knows about old stuff like this?” The Smithsonian comes to mind immediately! But what resource does this venerable institution offer to help you research Granny’s sewing machine?

As with so many questions, the library is a great place to start finding answers. The Smithsonian Institution Libraries (SIL) has a “hidden gem” in its vaults -– a vast collection of trade literature with more than 500,000 catalogs, technical manuals, advertising brochures, price lists, company histories and related materials representing more than 30,000 U.S. companies. It is a valuable source to learn about products that were “made in America,” primarily covering the late 1800s to the mid-1900s. We have highlighted items from this collection previously here in the SIL blog.

To begin a search for information on Granny’s sewing machine, you’ll find a link for Trade Catalogs on the left side of the SIL homepage, which will take you to the screen shown below. Type “norwood sewing machine” in the search box you find there.

This search taps into the Smithsonian’s Collections Search Center, which provides information on items not only in the Smithsonian Libraries but also in the museums and archives located within the institution –- a really powerful resource! Since we started from the Trade Literature search page, our search is already narrowed to only trade materials. And we find two items that mention Norwood sewing machines.

The first item (framed in red) is a 1904 catalog of Norwood sewing machines, manufactured by the Standard Sewing Machine Company. This looks promising! To learn more about this item, click on the Expand link on the right side of the screen to view the full record.

This expanded record tells us in the Notes field that this catalog has both images and text, and that it has information on two different styles of Norwood machines. We also see that there appears to be a related Electronic Resource. By clicking on the grey box “Click to see other media,” we find an interesting online exhibit produced by SIL about historical trade literature on sewing machines from the Smithsonian Collections.

 
SIL is in the process of scanning and digitizing items from its extensive collections, including trade literature materials. If you are interested in seeing a trade catalog that is not yet available online, like this Norwood catalog, you are welcome to submit a question via our free Ask a Librarian service. The friendly and knowledgeable Smithsonian librarians will be happy to help you learn more about your family treasures!

-- Trina Brown, Instructional/Reference Librarian, National Museum of American History