Yesterday, I made a trip down to the Special Collections & University Archives at the University of Oregon. Lord & Schryver’s business papers, photographs, and other miscellaneous items, are stored in the Special Collections. Over the years, our volunteers have made many trips to the Special Collections to find information about Lord & Schryver’s garden designs and to better understand their style and plant choices. Thanks to our volunteers, we have many copies of Lord & Schryver’s materials at Gaiety Hollow.

I am in the process of writing plans for the restoration of the gardens as a whole, and each garden “room” within the whole. Another visit was in order. I was particularly interested in seeing two boxes of film negatives. It had been years since a volunteer had looked at them and I wanted to see them for myself.

Visiting the Special Collections feels a bit like going on a treasure hunt. Not everything has been cataloged. We keep turning up new bits of information in obscure places.

For example, I found a recipe for French dressing stuffed in an envelope of negatives.

I was very excited to find a couple negatives of what looks to be the putto from Gaiety Hollow. We have been wondering what is his story. Based on these negatives, I’m guessing that Elizabeth found him in Italy and brought him back to Salem. I’m hoping that looking through other records will turn up an invoice or receipt for the purchase of the putto. (My apologies for the poor photo quality–these are negatives on a lightbox.)

Another great find was a negative of a poster that Lord & Schryver submitted as part of a design contest by the magazine House Beautiful.  I had heard about this image before, but had not yet seen it. The “legend” at the bottom confirms what volunteers had suspected–that the Pergola and grape vine, Parterre Garden, and several flowering trees, were remnants of the Elizabeth Lord’s mother’s garden. Seeing that the piece of land which became the allee with the two oak trees as not included in the designs, I gather that this contest submission was created in the early 1930s. The image of their living room, in the top right, and its description in the legend add insights into their taste and style.

Contest poster

Legend

I also found a smattering of new-to-us images of Edith meeting with clients. It’s nice to see images that humanize Edith and Elizabeth and show their professional and personal characters.

Edith, right, with clients

I look forward to retrieving more information from Special Collections in the coming months and sharing it with you. If any readers have old photographs of Lord & Schryver or gardens they designed, we would love to see them!

HISTORIC PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF THE LORD & SCHRYVER ARCHITECTURAL RECORDS, COLL 098, BOXES 6 AND 7, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES, UNIVERSITY OF OREGON LIBRARIES, EUGENE, OREGON.