Colonnaded Courtyard Garden with Visitors, 1950s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Colonnaded Courtyard Garden with Visitors, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Colonnaded Courtyard Garden with Visitors, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-AB8F65

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Somewhere in the American Southwest or Mediterranean-influenced South, someone built this long colonnaded walkway and then filled every available inch of it with potted plants, because the 1950s had a deep faith that a corridor not yet overwhelmed by vegetation was a corridor still in progress. The arched stucco columns, the slatted wooden ceiling, and the courtyard beyond suggest a hotel, resort, or botanical institution of the kind that believed serious leisure required architectural gravity.

Two visitors move through the middle distance with the unhurried pace of people on a self-guided tour, which in this era meant receiving a folded brochure and being trusted to draw your own conclusions. The whole establishment operates on the postwar American assumption that a well-maintained garden colonnade, like a well-pressed suit, communicated that the right kind of people came here.

The overexposed light flooding from the far end pulls the eye forward like a promise the building is making about what comes next, and the orderly recession of columns gives the whole scene the look of a place that has arranged itself to be admired — which is precisely what it was built to do.

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