Name/Title
StereographEntry/Object ID
2023.055.3.0353Description
A black and white stereograph. Image is of two japanese cherry trees on the shore of a body of water, in the distance the Lincoln memorial can be seen. Above the image "22" is printed, below the imag "26863 The Lincoln Memorial - When the Cherries Are in Bloom - Washington, D. C." is printed, to the left of the image "Keystone View Company COPYRIGHTED Manufacturers MADE IN U.S.A. Publishers" is printed, to the right of the image "Meadville, Pa., New York, N. Y., Chicago, Ill., London, England." is printed. On the reverse the following is printed:
26863
CHERRY BLOSSOM TIME ALONG THE TIDAL BASIN, POTOMAC PARK, WASHINGTON, D. C.
It is necessary for us to walk but a few hundred yards across a corner of the park to reach the spot on the E. side of the Tidal Basin, from which, in springtime, appearst the enchangint vista which now opens before us. For in the distance across the dimpling water gleams as the white jewel of the Lincoln Memorial framed, like some temple of the Orient, by the blossom-laden boughs fo the Japanses cherry trees which for a few weeks at this season turn the banks of the Tidal Basin into a fairyland. These trees are famous in the Cpaital, and in his "Book of Washington,' Robert Shackleton says of then ; "Mrs. Taft, a month after going to the White House to live, had 80 Japanese cherry trees bough and planted here, because she had seen and admired them when in the East. . . . The city of Tokio then gave 3,000, and the waterside is now an exquisite, poetic dream of beauty in the springtime in delicate, etheral color, pecuriarly suited to the colors of Washington in the spring; to the blue sky, the river, the delicate green of the willows and grass and the white marble of the city's monuments and memorials. . . . These cherries are not fruti-bearing trees, and are the flower we known as "hawthron" on the porcelain jars of the Orient."
With its splendid, 6-mile motor speedway, its polo field, gold courses, and tennis courts and its beaches along the Tidal Basin crowded in hot weather with bathers, Potomac Park, both E. and W. of the Basin, is Washington's most extensive and convenient playground. As such it has long since well repaid the labor and expense put upon it years ago in redeming it, by filling and dredging, from the low and unhealthful morass which once it was.
Copyright Keystone View CompanyCollection
Photograph Collection