Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
SEARCH OUR ARCHIVES!
Home
“GOOD FENCES MAKE GOOD NEIGHBORS,” wrote Robert Frost. But he may have been closer to the mark with another line: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”
A rich variety of fences is one of the many charms of the American landscape: the wooden rail fence of the rural Midwest and South and the picket fence of the town, crude barbed wire surrounding prairie fields and ornate iron palings protecting village lawns, the New England st
Modern technology enables the housewife to do much more in the house than ever before. That’s good- and not so good.
Things are seldom what they seem. Skim milk masquerades as cream. And laborsavine household appliances often do not save labor. This is the surprising conclusion reached by a small army of historians, sociologists, and home economists who have undertaken, in recent years, to study the one form of work that has turned out to be most resistant to inquiry and analysis—namely, housework.
The first settlers marked the borders of their lives with simple fences that grew ever more elaborate over the centuries
Good fences make good neighbors,” wrote Robert Frost, and he meant that fences did more than just enclose space; like his woods and roads, they bounded a social and psychological landscape.
Connoisseurs have long regarded him as the master of cold-turkey peddling. He’s been at it for 80 years.
Once upon a time, not too long ago, a doorbell would ring almost anywhere in America, a housewife would run to answer it, and there would stand a well-groomed, smiling gentleman. “I’m your Fuller Brush Man,” he would say, stepping back deferentially.
Beatrix Farrand’s exactingly beautiful designs changed the American landscape.
When Beatrix Farrand arrived to work on a garden, clients knew they were in the presence of someone extraordinary.
Israel Sack made a fortune by seeing early on the craft in fine old American furniture.
To a casual passerby on East Fifty-seventh Street in Midtown Manhattan, No. 15 looks like any other small, wellkept building. On the main floor is an antique-silver shop.
In designing, the University of Virginia, Jefferson sought not only to educate young men for leadership, but to bring aesthetic maturity to the new nation
ALTHOUGH THOMAS JEFFERSON had evolved very clear concepts of what a modern educational system should be, it was not until 1817 that he had the opportunity to put his theories into practice at Charlottesville, Virginia.
It was a suburb of orange blossoms and gardens, of gracious homes and quiet, dignified lives—until a regrettable class of people moved in.
THE IDEA OF HOLLYWOOD as a boomtown would not have surprised those who lived there as this century began, for they worked hard toward that very ideal.
War, patriotism, nature, and changing taste— all have been mirrored in our wallpaper
When George Washington visited Boston in 1789, the new President received a tumultuous greeting.
Featured Authors
