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An early 20th-century look at the upper garden

Little is known about this image in Mount Vernon’s collection, except that it is a magic lantern slide of the upper garden, circa 1920. Hand coloring was applied to the slide to capture the floral hues.

The magic lantern is an early type of image projector popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It uses a positive print sandwiched between two pieces of glass and bound together by black paper tape. Often the photograph was painstakingly hand-colored to accentuate the image, which was then projected against a white wall.

In the 1920s, the upper garden was a Victorian-influenced space with elaborate rose beds and multiple pathways bounded by high boxwood hedges. The white structure (visible far left) was built on top of the original foundation of Washington's greenhouse, which had been destroyed by fire in 1835. Made of wood and glass, it was built in 1869 and used for growing and housing plants sold to the public, many of whom wanted “something grown in Washington’s garden,” according to the 1919 MVLA annual report. The structure remained until 1950, when an authentic replica of Washington’s original greenhouse took its place.