Two weeks ago, Tentaclii’s Friday ‘Picture Postal’ post was of Lovecraft’s lane-end at night, or near enough. This Friday, much the same view and direction down College Street — only this time the camera is in front of the Gates, and it’s daytime in September 1911.
The entrance to Lovecraft’s Ely’s Lane is about 20 yards away on the centre-right. Find the far corner-end of Library’s white wall and you’ve found the start of the lane. The lane then ran down behind the high wall to reach 66 College Street and its garden court. The brown house seen through the trees is the house in front of Lovecraft’s house.
The pictures below are of the same scene prior to the building of the Library, with the street’s elm trees in their prime. The second one is behind what became the Gates. Photos such as this led to the realisation in the late 1940s that College Street’s old elms were then fading and failing. This led to a robust programme of restoration and replanting in 1949, enabled by a $2,500 gift from the class of ’24.
I’ve also made a new discovery of a picture of the same lane-end, seen below. The lane-end is seen on the far left of the picture. The cameraman was in the end house-garden opposite and a little further down the hill than the lane-end. The viewer peeps through the trees to see the rear wall of the lane at the corner of the Library.
From this vantage point and in this season one might have seen Lovecraft come walking down his shady lane in a light suit and summer straw-hat, to then turn and stroll down to the town.
Sadly the above scan is harsh and no-one has the booklet online as a better scan. The ‘ink-drawn effect’, only noticed when seen up-close, is probably an unintentional effect arising from the harsh scanning. The picture’s booklet is simply titled “Brown University” and appears to be a little campus-history guide, probably given out to visiting parents and relatives of students. It appears to be erroneously dated in its record to c. 1900, and does have a flavour of that era about it — yet the Library wall wasn’t up until 1911. Incidentally, you can tell that we’re looking at the correct side of the Library here… because we can see the two tall columns with the bobbles on top.
A further large picture has been found, that does look deeper down Lovecraft’s lane, but this is only available to my Patreon patrons.
I’ve also discovered that in 1929-30 this ‘bobble’ side entrance was… “the Alumni Office, John Hay Library (College Street entrance)” for the University. Also noted in Brown documents was the college rule that… “freshmen [at Brown] shall not walk on the south side of College street” although I don’t know if this was still observed in Lovecraft’s time. Freshmen is the American term for first-year students on a multi-year course.
Here we see the College Street side of the John Hay Library from above the Van Winkle Gate, during a summer parade, indicating that there was a small lawn above and to one side of the Alumni office gate entrance…
By 1942 it was still a lawn, but by the 1960s the lawn had become a dense shrubbery. Presumably as part of the general and successful attempt to re-plant and re-green the street.
