Rock Creek Park, Summer of 1924
On a summer day a century ago, DC photographers Harris & Ewing staged a series of photographs in Rock Creek Park. The photos featured the same nine women in cloche hats and stylish white dresses. They model fun things to do in Rock Creek Park circa 1924: painting, golfing, posing on rustic bridges.
We don’t know why these young women posed for these photographs, but we do know their names. They are, from left to right below: Katherine Wren, Norvell Munford, Mary Happer, Cecil Lester Jones, Jessie Adkins, Doris Wagner, Virginia Seldon, Mildred Crosby, and Mary Seldon.
The photographs show the freedoms women–or at least some women–enjoyed in Rock Creek Park in the 1920s. Here they pose with a convertible in front of the Peirce Mill teahouse, a popular gathering spot for Washington’s “society people.”
In many of the photographs, the women demonstrate popular activities in Rock Creek Park. In this image, one women sketches the portrait of another, who poses with a parasol.
The women pose with props from favorite park pastimes, including tennis and golf. They sit on boulders, fishing in Rock Creek.
Perhaps some day we’ll learn more about these nine young women, and why they posed for these photographs in 1924. But a hundred years later, a stroll in Rock Creek Park still seems like a good idea on a summer day.
The Rock Creek Park photographs are part of the Harris & Ewing Collection at the Library of Congress.
Click here for more information about the photographs.
Harris & Ewing was a prominent DC-based photography studio, founded by George W. Harris and Martha Ewing in the early 20th century. Harris was a news photographer, while Ewing was described in her obituary as a the “‘front man,’ persuading famous people to sit for studio portraits.”
In 1924, they were moving into a fancy new studio on F Street. The building and its elaborate Renaissance Revival facade still stand, but the photography studio is now a Roti Mediterranean Grill. By the 1930s, Harris & Ewing was the largest photographic studio in the United States, employing more than 120 people in five studios.
