19th-Century White House Garden Aligns with Solstice Sun

A 19th-century garden just north of the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue, in Washington, D.C., was designed so that its statues align with the rising and setting sun on the summer and winter solstices, a physics professor has found.

Using satellite imagery and astronomical software, Amelia Sparavigna, of Politecnico di Torino in Italy, discovered the phenomenon. The solstice sun aligns with the center of the garden, which contains a statue of President Andrew Jackson, and the endings of four walkways that now contain four statues of generals from the American Revolutionary War, the physicist found.

Sparavigna said she is not sure why Andrew Jackson Downing —who designed the garden and its walkways in 1851 — would have created such solstice alignments in his layout. Read more.

‘Kling-Klang Gloria - Deutsche Volks- und Kinderlieder / German folk and children’s songs’ illustrated by Heinrich Lefler and Joseph Urban. Published 1921 by G. Freytag, Leipzig.

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‘Old English nursery songs’ Music arranged by Horace Mansion. Pictured by Anne Anderson. Published 1921 by Brentano’s, New York.

See the complete book here.

Désert de Retz, Chambourcy (Colonne Brisée)

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The Désert de Retz is an Anglo-Chinois or French landscape garden - created on the edge of the forêt de Marly in the commune of Chambourcy, in north-central France. It was built at the end of the 18th century by the aristocrat François Racine de Monville on his 40-hectare (99-acre) estate. It is notable for the construction of 17 (or 20) buildings, of which only 10 still survive, referring to classical antiquity or in an exotic style. Those buildings include: a summer house (the “colonne brisée”, or ruined column), in the form of the base of a shattered column from an imaginary gigantic temple, an ice house in the form of an Egyptian pyramid, an obelisk, a temple dedicated to Pan, and a (now-lost) Chinese pavilion.

Garden façade of the Palace of Versailles, ca. 1675, depicting the terrace that was later to become part of the famous Hall of Mirrors under Louis XIV guidance.

One of the most evocative symbols of summer is the garden tent. In the late eighteenth century, Europeans considered tents the most characteristic of Oriental structures and erected them prolifically in their gardens. As picturesque as they were inexpensive, tents became a staple of Anglo-Chinese folly gardens and a number of them, such as the Tartar Tent at the Parc Monceau in Paris (above) were even constructed of permanent materials. Built circa 1775, it was also the first of its kind, inspiring similar tole-work tents at the Désert de Retz and at Haga and Drottningholm in Sweden.