Cypress Water Pipe

We gave a tour of SEAA and our collections to colleagues from the Newcomb Art Museum earlier this week. We spent quite a bit of time examining one of SEAA's artifacts--a hollowed out cypress log, which was part of early New Orleans' water system, dating to the late-18th to early-19th centuries. The bored log would have been connected by iron rings to other logs to create the city's first water main. With recent interest in the New Orleans waterworks...this artifact seems rather charming. The log measures 64.5" long x 13" diameter. Here is a link with a vintage advertisement from Southern Cypress Manufacturers Association about the cypress pipes--http://www.albanywoodworks.com/2014/02/06/ad-louisiana-cypress-1700s-city-water-pipes/

                                                                                                                              Photos by K. Williams

                                           

Garden Library of the New Orleans Town Gardeners

We had a nice visit last week with Fionuala McGlinchey-Monsted, the newly elected chair of the library committee of the New Orleans Town Gardeners. Fionuala replaces long-serving chair, Ruthie Frierson. Thank you Ruthie for all your help in strengthening the library's holdings.

The Garden Library of the New Orleans Town Gardeners, a collection of the Southeastern Architectural Archive, has extensive holdings of published works dealing with gardens, gardening, and related subjects. The library contains well over 1,000 volumes representing approximately 800 titles. Founded in 1983, and given to Tulane in 1986, the library is a project of the New Orleans Town Gardeners, a New Orleans garden club affiliated with the Garden Club of America. The library has its own dedicated space within the archive's reading room.

The Garden Library is open to the public by appointment during normal SEAA hours, and is a great resource for general information on gardening and plants, but is also useful for more in-depth scholarly research. Areas of special interest include gardening of the southern United States, garden design and landscaping, and books by and about women in gardening. Of note are the handwritten gardening journals of Genevieve Munson Trimble, documenting her Afton Villa gardens in St. Francisville, Louisiana.

Please see our webpage for the library, which includes a search box to help locate items specifically in the Garden Library's holdings. You might also want to use the search tools on the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library's homepage, which will give you items in the Garden Library, as well as books, journals, and other materials on gardening and botanical subjects in other Tulane collections. The Louisiana Research Collection is the main source for published material on Louisiana gardens and gardening at Tulane.

     

Tulane Cemeteries Class Visit

We did a class instruction/archive tour session for Professor Heather Knight's TIDES class (Tulane Interdisciplinary Experience Seminar) on New Orleans cemeteries. We brought out examples of our cemetery/tomb holdings, including an 1830s wrought iron cross with cast zinc rosettes, a plaster inverted flame relief from an unknown tomb, an elevation drawing for the Egyptian Revival pyramid Brunshwig tomb in Metairie Cemetery by late-19th century New Orleans architect Thomas Sully (1855-1939), and from our Albert Weiblen Marble & Granite Co. Office Records--watercolor presentation renderings of tombs in Metairie Cemetery including the Brady/Arlington (now Morales family), Chapman Hyams, Cassard, and Dantoni tombs, granite and marble samples, and bronze reliefs, including the 3' tall mourning lady with roses. 

In our stacks, we gave the class a tour of our holdings to give the students an idea of what an archives looks like and how we store nearly 1.5 million drawings, 45,000 photographs, models, and other records of Louisiana architects and firms. We focused on more Weiblen Co. items--plaster presentation models for tombs in Metairie Cemetery that include the Joseph Harrington, Pearl Wight, and Buck family tombs.