Toddlers in Winter Coats, Suburban Backyard with Clothesline, 1950s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Toddlers in Winter Coats, Suburban Backyard with Clothesline, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Toddlers in Winter Coats, Suburban Backyard with Clothesline, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-DC1531

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Sometime in the 1950s, a toddler in checked pants and a quilted navy jacket was bundled into enough cold-weather gear to survive a polar expedition and then sent into the backyard to play, which is exactly what parents did when they believed that fresh air was a treatment rather than a condition. The low-slung ranch house behind her — horizontal board siding, wide overhanging eaves, a row of aluminum-framed windows — is the era's optimistic domestic architecture, the house that looked like the future in 1955. Sheets and laundry dry on a line strung along the side of the house, because the automatic dryer was still a luxury and a clothesline was what a sensible household ran. The small ride-on toy she stands over was the decade's standard-issue plastic-and-chrome toddler vehicle, sold through hardware catalogues alongside lawn mowers and garden hoses as though children were simply smaller homeowners. She has turned away from whoever is holding the camera, which is the one thing toddlers have always done reliably when someone really wanted them to look.

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