Photo Essays: Summer in the City, 1920s Style

Anna C. Bowling

A hot summer day can make anybody cranky. Add a toddler and subtract modern conveniences such as air conditioning, television, computers, mp3 players, DVDs and refrigeration. For many, this may sound like the start of a story of modern horror. For those who lived before the age of modern conveniences, it was just summer, and family and friends provided plenty of entertainment.

One of the best parts of historical research is remembering that no matter what era it might be, the people who lived then have the same needs we do today. Since primary sources are the most accurate research tools, vintage photographs can be a window into a world of generations past.

Today, we'll join a young couple and their toddler son enjoying the great outdoors in 1924 New York City. Though these photos may not all be from the same day, it is the same family, and they've invited you to their summer outing.

Either this water is very interesting or someone is looking for the plug.


Gathering with friends means dressing up for everyone. Note the matching caps on the couple and the menswear on the Mrs.



No matter what the era, everything is better when shared with friends...



...and it's always good to go home at the end of the day.



Vintage photos give us the opportunity to exercise our creative muscles. Who are these people and what was important enough about this particular moment that was worth capturing to share with generations to come? Is it so that we can drool over the details of gorgeous clothing, play forensic psychologist and analyze subjects of the photos, or something else altogether? What is it about vintage photos that catches your interest?

Writing historical romances allows Anna C. Bowling to travel through time on a daily basis and make the voices in her head pay rent. Her current release, ORPHANS IN THE STORM, is available from Awe-Struck E-books.

Photo Essays: Bridges and Walls

By Karen Mercury

The other week I decided to finally fill that big blank spot on my bedroom wall, and purchase a print to frame.  That’s where it became difficult.  I wanted something American and “modern,” and by that I mean the first half of the 20thC.  No Da Vinci or Caravaggio.  Something sort of urban, with at least one figure in it.  I was trying to create a mood that would be apropos for a bedroom.  I think I was hearkening back to my childhood in that I wanted to recreate the sunny, secure, and mellow feeling I used to get in my father’s living room in Brooklyn Heights.  Urban, but not loud.  More Simon & Garfunkel than Kool & the Gang.

And nothing so abstract that it would make your head spin:

Joseph Stella, Brooklyn Bridge

This was on my bedroom wall in my 20s, but it makes me too dizzy now:

Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase

No, for the bedroom you want to simulate that happy, secure, and comforting feeling you only ever got for a few brief prepubescent weeks, never to be recreated again in your life—although at the time, your naive teenaged happiness seems to be endless.  For me it was those languid summers at my Dad’s.  No screaming, no dramatic Germanic scenes, no breaking glass.  Just good clean, warm and sunny drenching in culture.  In Brooklyn, people discussed art.  In California, you had loud people screaming like the Loud Family.  Letting it all hang out until you wished they would shove it back under the rug, something the cultured, genteel, aesthetic citizens of Brooklyn were such experts at.  I don’t know why they say New Yorkers are loud.  No one was louder than the occupants of my mother’s house in California.

An American Family, 1973

So it was the calm I wanted to reproduce, while avoiding reminders of the endless scream fests.  You know how they say as you grow up, you’re able to pick and choose which aspects of your childhood to reject, and which to retain?  For instance, I still like Van Gogh, although a few hung on the walls of that unsettled house in California.

Van Gogh, Wheat Field with Cypress

Now for the living room, I’ve told my husband it’s all right to hang some nature landscape, even if it does include a deer, duck, or bison.  I used to try to exclude paintings of animals a hunter might like, but I’ve since given up on that, while sticking to my guns in refusing to allow actual heads on the walls. This is one of my favorite landscapes on my living room wall that includes “things a hunter might like”:

Alfred J. Miller, Buffalo Hunt

This gives me a homey feeling, because the figures are having a good time, although the animals aren’t, and most historical scenes are comforting because they’re so distant from our current childhood traumas that, well…They’re just old.  And old is comforting.  Like this lithograph that’s in my dining room:

 

Currier and Ives, A Home on the Mississippi

For some reason, depictions of Southern plantation life soothe me, although others might have an opposite reaction.  I think it’s a past life thing because my sister feels the same way, although neither one of us has been to the South, in this life.

So to find this awesome, calming, tranquilizing painting of a quiet urban scene with at least one figure, I started Googling around in a few spare moments every day.  It took me about a week to realize that I kept returning to one artist, and I already had two framed prints of his work in my house.  I’d never even noticed when I hung the second one that I already had one.  This was the first, hanging twenty feet above my living room couch:

John Singer Sargent, Smoke of Ambergris

Also in my bedroom already was:

John Singer Sargent, Paul Helleu Sketching with his Wife

I am still hard-pressed to explain why historical, “old” paintings are more comforting than modern art. In your 20s and 30s, when you don’t place comfort top on your list of priorities, it’s perfectly cool to have cardboard cutout people walking downstairs as though viewed after a hit of four-way Windowpane, or a Brooklyn Bridge viewed after a case of Schlitz Malt Talls.  Back then, of course, there were the obligatory heavy metal or “psychedelic” posters:

Ain’t Gonna Work on Dizzy’s Farm No More

That poster was best viewed at night under a black light.

But as a peace-seeking adult, I’ve always preferred the real to the surreal.  I suppose that’s why I write historicals and not fantasy.  So I’m pleased to have finally, at long last filled that space on my bedroom wall with:

Edward Hopper, Room in Brooklyn

It’s ginormous, and I matted it in that burnt orange to match the building.  It makes me feel serene, especially when the sun shines on it.  I can dream, and wish that I was that woman sitting in the sun reading a book in a room in Brooklyn.  (Or…what is she doing?)

Would any UH readers care to post a link to their favorites?

Photo Essays: Tombstone, AZ

By: Lorelie Brown

In October, 2009, my family moved to Arizona. On the weekends, we spend our time taking daytrips to all sorts of places. But what we love most of all are the ghost towns. They combine my husband's love of the wild with my sense of history--like they're tiny little pockets where both combine.

So naturally we had to visit one of the most famous Old West locations in Arizona. We made it to Tombstone in January, 2010.

The fabulous part is the old portion of Tombstone looks almost exactly like it did more than a hundred years ago:

See? Here it is today, with only the addition of some asphalt in the street (Well, and the tourists.):

I've always had a special fondness for Western romances. I feel like they harness that special optimism that's so very American. Of course we can put a town in the middle of a desert with no water around for miles, just for the silver under ground. And of course men can make their fortunes on dust.

Stagecoaches still roam the streets in Tombstone and for a small fee you can take a ride in one. I did, naturally:

We stopped by Boot Hill on our way out of town. Rows and rows of all sorts of people. Chinese who came with the railroad, gunslingers, gamblers, even women and children. My head went the places it usually does. Who were these people? What would prompt them to live in Arizona, of all places? I imagine they'd have to be a hardy, blunt sort to make it, whether living there was their choice or not.

The Bird Cage Theater is almost exactly the same as it was back then. What would life have been like if that had been your primary source of entertainment? No Blackberries, no iPods, no movies.

I won't say that Tombstone was the only influence on my upcoming western romance. Obviously, there's no silver mining and Dean is dragging Maggie halfway across the country, not staying in one town populated by gamblers and miners. But I like to think that a tiny bit of Tombstone's spirit--since it's "The Town that Wouldn't Die"-- has imbued CATCH ME.

Lorelie Brown's first book, JAZZ BABY, is currently available from Samhain Publishing in both e-book and paperback formats. CATCH ME, an 1880s-set western, will be published by Carina Press on 18 July.

Photo Essays: The Alhambra

By Lisa Yarde

The Alhambra is not only the most visited, but also the best-conserved site from the Moorish period in Spain. It has existed since at least the 9th century. It became the royal residence of the sovereigns of Granada, from 1236 until 1492. In November 2001, I visited and fell in love with this old relic of a bygone era, after researching the Nasrid Dynasty that ruled from the Alhambra.

In Arabic, the name Alhambra, from the Arabic al-Qal'at al-Hamra, means "the red one" and refers to the color of its red, brick walls. It rises from a sloping hill, known as the Sabika in Moorish times, and overlooks the city of Granada. A UNESCO World Heritage site, it was more than a royal palace in Moorish times; a palatial city, it housed the residence of the ruling monarchs, their families and advisors and the military barracks


There are two entrances to the Alhambra; in the north, the Puerta de las Armas (the Gate of Arms) and in the south, the Puerta de la Justicia (the Gate of Justice), which is the best-preserved of the two and the gate through which modern-day visitors enter the Alhambra. The 14th century King Yusuf I is thought to be responsible for its construction in 1348.

After you enter the Puerta de la Justicia, the stout walls of the Alhambra’s Alcazaba (Arabic al-Quasaba) rise in the west. This military fortification goes back to the 9th century, and contains the barracks of the kingdom’s soldiers, a kiln and cistern, and the Moorish prison. In the 13^th century, King Muhammad III had his primary residence in the Alcazaba, from which he could hear the screams of countless prisoners whom he tortured during his murderous reign.

The most prominent tower of the Alcazaba, Torre de la Vela, rises 87 feet. The Torre de la Vela offers a fantastic view of Granada, provided you’re willing to ascend the spiral staircase that rises to the summit. In January 1492, when the united Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, completed their Reconquista with the capture of Granada, they raised a cross at the Alcazaba for the first time in seven centuries. 

East of the Alcazaba is the palace of Mexuar (Arabic mashwar), which was not considered a palace when King Ismail I (maternal nephew of Muhammad III) built it in the early 14^th century. The King’s council met in this chamber to supervise administrative duties and enforce judicial edicts. There were once two floors in the room, allowing the Moorish King to watch the activities below while hidden from view.

The northern façade of the Mexuar serves as a portico for the Cuarto Dorado (Golden Room) courtyard. Sunlight filters in through the open roof and glints off the walls, illuminating decorative motifs and the shield and emblems of Ferdinand and Isabella. Lattice windows on the second floor overlook the space and there are two doors, only one of which is open to the public.

The Cuarto Dorado is part of the Torre de Comares (Comares Palace), built primarily under the 14^th century King Muhammad V, who was son of Yusuf I and grandson of Ismail I. The Hall of the Ambassadors on the northern façade is the largest room in the Torre de Comares. This was the center of diplomatic life in the Moorish period.

The cedar ceiling of the Sala de Barca, just outside the Hall of the Ambassadors, represents the seven heavens of Islamic religion.

The entrance to the Hall of Ambassadors derives from the Patio de los Arrayanes (Court of the Myrtles), where marble columns reflect in the recesses of a long central fountain set in the marble pavement. King Charles V destroyed whatever once stood to the south of the Patio de los Arrayanes.

The Patio de los Leones (Court of the Lions), considered the private residence of Muhammad V and his family, has it its center a stone basin supported by 12 marble lions. Since the Koran forbids the figurative representation of animals (as well as humans, no one knows whether the figures are from the Moorish period or the later, overlapping Mudejar period, which artisans blended Christian and Muslim styles.

The Sala de los Mocárabes (Hall of the Mocárabes), through which visitors enter the Patio de los Leones got its name from the Christian architects who worked on the Alhambra after the Reconquista, men influenced by the Moorish style. They changed the original cupola for a baroque ceiling.

The Sala de los Abencerrajes (Hall of the Abencerrajes) derives its name from an Arabian noble family, the Banu Sarraj. Legend (mainly from the fertile imagination of Washington Irving) states that in 15^th century, King Abu’l-Hasan Ali (Spanish Muley Hacen), the penultimate monarch massacred the Saraj family because their chieftain Ahmet was having a love affair with the King’s second wife, Soraya (Spanish Isabel de Solis).  

In the Sala de los Reyes (King's Hall) to the east, a painting adorns the central vault of the ceiling. It supposedly features the first ten Moorish Kings of Granada.

The Sala de las dos Hermanas, (Hall of the Two Sisters), which was built by 1362, is perhaps the most beautiful room adjoining the Patio de los Leones. The ceiling features gold and lapis lazuli. Legend states the name comes from two sisters held as captives during the Moorish period, or it could derive from the two slabs of marble at opposing corners of the room.

Beyond it is the Mirador de Daraxa (corrupted from the ‘Ayn dar Aisha), which is supposedly a reference to King Abu’l-Hasan Ali’s first wife, Aisha. Legend says that the jealous first wife pined away for her husband, who had cast her off for his second wife, from this spot and plotted her revenge through her son, Muhammad XI (Spanish Boabdil). It overlooks a garden.

The baths of the Alhambra are between the Sala de las dos Hermanas and the Patio de los Arrayanes. When I last visited, they were not open due to restoration work.

The Partal dates from the 15th century. It was the primary residence of King Yusuf III, grandson of Muhammad V.

Further east of the complex is the Generalife (Arabic Janat al-Arif), built by Ismail I in the 14^th century, as a summer palace of the Nasrids. Again, legend points to this site as the meeting place of Soraya and Ahmet of the unfortunate Sarraj clan.

On the now obliterated southern portico of the Patio de los Arrayanes is the palace of Charles V, an Italian renaissance structure. Its architect, Pedro Machuca, was a student of Michelangelo in Florence. It houses the National Museum of Spanish-Moorish Art, where you can see many relics from the Alhambra.

Lastly, the Church of Santa Maria now stands on the site of the mosque of the Alhambra, which Muhammad III built.

The Alhambra is a place of fragile beauty, frightful violence and tragic history. To learn more, visit Alhambra.org.


Lisa J. Yarde is a historical fiction author. Her novels ON FALCON'S WINGS, an epic medieval novel chronicling the starstruck romance between Norman and Saxon lovers, and SULTANA, set during a turbulent period of thirteenth century Spain, are available now.