étatsunis

This was prepping for the Tafts' silver wedding anniversary party on June 19, 1911. An excerpt from White House archives states: "Two score electricians are now at work in the White House grounds, as thousands of electric lights will be placed among the trees and festooned across the lawns and terraces. The White House itself will be outlined completely by electric lights. No cornice, angle, or gable will be overlooked. On the west lawn of the White house an electric flag will wave. This will be a wonderful sight, the red, white, and blue colors flashing into the night."

Hi, I'm an admin for a group called Where Fine Art Thrives, and we'd love to have this added to the group!

We don't use the word 'festooned' enough.

Those were the days before worry, paranoia, and fences

It seems the cabin is actually in Oakland California: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joaquin_Miller en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Miller_cabin.jpg

Exile Bibliophile - they're two different structures. The one show here is now in D.C.'s Rock Creek Park: www.washingtonhistory.com/ScenesPast/images/SP_0607.pdf When this photo was taken, it was located on Washington's Meridian Hill, in the area now occupied by Meridian Hill Park. The cabin was moved by the Park Service in 1913.

It's now near the old Milkhouse Ford in Rock Creek Park.

On pages 385-386 of his book of memoirs, "Roadside Meetings" (1930) Hamlin Garland recalls a week he spent in Chicago in 1898, with the visiting Joaquin Miller: He [Miller] told us of his life in Washington City and of the log cabin he had built out near Rock Creek. "I made that my home for four years, but I was away much of the time. I didn't like it there. Congressmen and their silly wives wore me out. They all came to Washington as the great men in little towns, and their women, raw, silly, curious, had nothing better to do than to seek out Joaquin Miller, 'the man who lived in a tree.' They made life miserable for me and I fled."

Wystan: Love this kind of anecdotal tidbit - one that shows up in an obscure source that you'd never think to look in (or find with a keyword or subject search in a library catalog) if you were researching the subject! Interesting that he uses "the man who lived in a tree" - I wonder if this wasn't a misremembering of Miller's rant by Garland, since Miller's cabin was not far from "Airy Castle", the tree house of Allen B. Hayward, when he lived on Meridian Hill: chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1907-02-17/ed-... Hayward brought a lot of curiosity-seekers to what was then otherwise a comparatively quiet part of the District.