Rose Garden hedge, Sweet Briar Institute, VA, 1909

About this postcard

The view looks along a tall, closely clipped hedge that runs like a green wall beside a lawn, with a brick building and columned porch at the right and trees behind. The printed caption names the scene the "Rose Garden" hedge at Sweet Briar Institute, Virginia, the name the school used in its early years; it is now Sweet Briar College. Founded in 1901 by Indiana Fletcher Williams in memory of her daughter Daisy, the women's college near Amherst opened for classes in 1906, and its early campus took shape in Georgian Revival buildings by Ralph Adams Cram, with formal gardens and clipped hedges among the grounds. The card was mailed in March 1909. Its writer, Harvey, reports that he has had the measles and has been "real bad off," but is better now and hopes to see the family by the fifth of April, the ordinary sort of news that traveled on a postcard in that era.