The lush gardens of the “Moses Taylor Pyne house”, as
Drumthwacket (NJ’s Governor’s mansion in Princeton, NJ) was then called, were a
featured subject for Frances (Fannie) Benjamin Johnston in the early 1900s. Johnston,
one of the first professional woman photographer and photojournalist in the US,
established a reputation for portraiture among the affluent and influential of
Washington, DC high society in the late 19th and early 20th
century. At the turn of the 19th century, Johnston became engaged
with the “City Beautiful”/“Garden Beautiful” movements. These movements were,
in large part, a reaction to the rapid industrialization and crowded
urbanization of the American landscape that came with the affluence of the
Gilded Age.
Originally hired to
document the new “row house” lots and growing number of formal gardens on
estates as new design models, Johnston became a passionate advocate in the
movement to beautify America. These images of Drumthwacket (taken around 1906)
were among the hand-colored slides she featured in her talk “Our American
Gardens,” which was given to groups throughout the nation.
Moses Taylor Pyne, an industrialist and banker, purchased
Drumthwacket from the widow of Charles Smith Olden, the estate’s original
owner, in 1893. Money was no object for this successful industrialist. He and
his wife Margaretta Stockton Pyne (of the Morven Stocktons) added hundreds of
acres to the existing estate, bringing in noted landscape architect Daniel Webster
Langton (NJ native and a founding member of the American Society of Landscape
Architects) to create the formal Italian gardens that visitors to Drumthwacket may enjoy
to this day.
For insight on how hand colored glass slides like Johnston’s
were made, see this article by John Tennant in an 1899 issue of The Photo Miniature
