AA-2026-E3D894
On the image
Somebody's parks department built this little stone-and-shingle shelter at the water's edge on the theory that a pond alone wasn't civic enough, and a pond with a roofed destination was. The structure does no visible work beyond existing photogenically, which in the era of municipal beautification was considered a full-time job for a building.
The pond obliges by holding a second, wavier copy of the shelter and its ring of trees, decoration the city got for free simply by digging a hole. Shrubs at the near bank have already gone rust-coloured, the kind of early-autumn signal that sent a family out with the camera before the maintenance crews closed the place up for the season.
No one appears in the frame, which is its own small confession: the point of a 1950s park outing was often the view itself, proof of a pleasant Sunday that required no other participants to be worth keeping.
The historian's note
Small ornamental park shelters of this type, typically built from local stone with shingled roofs, were common features of American municipal and estate parks from the 1930s through the 1950s, often constructed under public works programmes or by local park commissions as rest stations along pond and lake walks.
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Park Pond and Boathouse Shelter, 1950s. 1950–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-E3D894. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/park-pond-and-boathouse-shelter-1950s.
@misc{aaAA2026E3D894,
title = {Park Pond and Boathouse Shelter, 1950s},
year = {1950–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-E3D894},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/park-pond-and-boathouse-shelter-1950s}
}TY - ART TI - Park Pond and Boathouse Shelter, 1950s PY - 1950–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-E3D894 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/park-pond-and-boathouse-shelter-1950s ER -
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