Covin Tree: small pool with figurine "Kneeling Girl" by Alfeo Faggi. Lantern slide, n.d. Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Gardens, Garden Club of America collection.
Books and films with Chicago focus.
Authors and filmmakers working on books and documentaries about unique corners of Chicago-area history often reach out to me. Sometimes the work means tracking down photographs of long-gone businesses, like State Street’s nickelodeons (that was a fun one). Other times it means digging into an archive I haven’t worked with before, as with the Hemingway family collection at the Oak Park Public Library, which we combed for Ken Burns’ Hemingway.
Now and then, I get the chance to take a deeper dive into a subject. That was the case with Chicago and Its Botanic Garden: The Chicago Horticultural Society at 125. Working with author Cathy Jean Maloney, the staff at Northwestern University Press, and the Chicago Botanic Garden’s internal team, I gathered images from a wide range of archives for this beautiful anniversary publication. Two sources stood out: the Garden’s own Lenhardt Library and the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Gardens. Getting to know these remarkable collections, while spending time in the Chicago Botanic Garden itself, was an absolute pleasure.
