United States of America -- New York -- Westchester -- Rye
Scope and Contents:
The folder includes worksheets and photocopies of articles.
General:
Located on the banks of the tidal Blind Brook estuary, lined with salt marshes, Bird Homestead was the home of Henry Bird (1869-1959), a prominent entomologist and president of the New York Entomological Society who specialized in the study of moths. The landscape and garden was of a modest size and represents a unique combination of a small self-sufficient farm with ornamental perennial beds, shrubs, and roses plus fruit trees that combined both beauty and utility, along with specific plants grown for entomological research. The Greek revival style house, outbuildings, picket fence and stonewall all date to the 19th century, a rarity on Westchester County's Long Island Sound Shore.
The garden features date primarily from the 1920s and 1940s, with additions in 2012 for educational purposes. The Bouton-Bird Erikson family owned the property for five generations from 1852-2009. The non-profit Bird Homestead Preservatio trust now operates the property as a historic, environmental, and educational site.
The Greek revival style house built in the 19th century, white oak trees shading the house, the remains of earlier gardens, and outbuildings including a barn, a workshop and chicken coop. The small family farm was self-sufficient until well into the 20th century, raising chickens and growing fruits and vegetables. The property is being restored by the Bird Homestead Preservation Trust and is used to teach children about the natural environment including organic gardening in four raised beds on the site of an earlier large cold frame. A cedar arbor for grape vines was recently hoisted back to stand vertically in the garden after many years of leaning at a severe angle. Surviving shrubs near the house include lilac, wisteria, roses, azalea, mock orange and beautybushes, and a bed of ferns is undisturbed by neglect for many years.
Henry Bird encouraged the use of beneficial insects in the garden rather than spraying pesticides and maintained a small garden area with plants that would attract the insects he wanted to study. Bird also was a proponent of native plants and established a large natives garden at 'Bye-Wood' on the Mr. and Mrs. William J. Knapp estate, which led him to write "A Proposed Type of American Garden" with Louise Allen Knapp, published in 1929 in ASLA's "Landscape Architecture" journal. Daughter Alice Bird Erikson (1903-1993) was an artist and trained as a landscape architect at the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture. In 1942 she illustrated Trees of the Countryside (Alfred A. Knopf) by Margaret McKenny, who had been a classmate.
Persons associated with the garden include Henry Bird (former owner, 1959), Alice Bird Erikson (former owner and landscape architect, 1903-1994); City of Rye, New York (2009- ).
Related Materials:
Bird Homestead related holdings consist of 1 folder (24 digital images)
Collection Restrictions:
Access to original archival materials by appointment only. Researcher must submit request for appointment in writing. Certain items may be restricted and not available to researchers. Please direct reference inquiries to the Archives of American Gardens: aag@si.edu.
Collection Rights:
Archives of American Gardens encourages the use of its archival materials for non-commercial, educational and personal use under the fair use provision of U.S. copyright law. Use or copyright restrictions may exist. It is incumbent upon the researcher to ascertain copyright status and assume responsibility for usage. All requests for duplication and use must be submitted in writing and approved by Archives of American Gardens. Please direct reference inquiries to the Archives of American Gardens: aag@si.edu.
Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Gardens, The Garden Club of America collection.
Sponsor:
A project to describe images in this finding aid received Federal support from the Smithsonian Collections Care Initiative, administered by the National Collections Program.
Riley, Charles V. 1883. "Notice of an "Illustrated essay on the Noctuidoe of North America."." Bulletin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society, 5 77–79.
101 Stories from the Field,Research / Elaine R. S Hodges, Keiko Hiratsuka Moore, Vichai Malikul.
102 Conservation / James Merle Weaver, Scott Odell.
Local Numbers:
FP-1996-CT-0117
Date/Time and Place of an Event Note:
Recorded in: Washington (D.C.), United States, July 6, 1996.
Restrictions:
Restrictions on access. Some duplication is allowed. Use of materials needs permission of the Smithsonian Institution.
Collection Rights:
Permission to publish materials from the collection must be requested from the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections. Please visit our website to learn more about submitting a request. The Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections make no guarantees concerning copyright or other intellectual property restrictions. Other usage conditions may apply; please see the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for more information.
Working at the Smithsonian Fieldwork: Interview with Elaine Hodges (scientific illustrator, department of entomology, NMNH) by Robert Sayers
Collection Creator:
Smithsonian Institution. Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage Search this
Extent:
1 Sound recording (compact audio cassette)
Type:
Archival materials
Sound recordings
Date:
1996 February 14
Collection Restrictions:
Access to the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections is by appointment only. Visit our website for more information on scheduling a visit or making a digitization request. Researchers interested in accessing born-digital records or audiovisual recordings in this collection must use access copies.
Collection Rights:
Permission to publish materials from the collection must be requested from the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections. Please visit our website to learn more about submitting a request. The Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections make no guarantees concerning copyright or other intellectual property restrictions. Other usage conditions may apply; please see the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for more information.
Collection Citation:
Smithsonian Folklife Festival records: 1996 Festival of American Folklife, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.
Working at the Smithsonian: Interview with George Venable (scientific illustrator, entomology, NMNH) by Robert Sayers
Collection Creator:
Smithsonian Institution. Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage Search this
Extent:
1 Sound recording (compact audio cassette)
Type:
Archival materials
Sound recordings
Date:
1996 April 1
Collection Restrictions:
Access to the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections is by appointment only. Visit our website for more information on scheduling a visit or making a digitization request. Researchers interested in accessing born-digital records or audiovisual recordings in this collection must use access copies.
Collection Rights:
Permission to publish materials from the collection must be requested from the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections. Please visit our website to learn more about submitting a request. The Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections make no guarantees concerning copyright or other intellectual property restrictions. Other usage conditions may apply; please see the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for more information.
Collection Citation:
Smithsonian Folklife Festival records: 1996 Festival of American Folklife, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.
Brown, John W. 2001. [Book review] "Hawkmoths of the World. An annotated and Illustrated Revisionary Checklist (Lepidoptra: Sphingidae), by Ian J. Kitching and J.-M. Cadiou." Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington, 103, 260–261.
16.25 cu. ft. (16 record storage boxes) (1 half document box)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Scientific illustrations
Manuscripts
Place:
Missouri
Date:
1866-1895 and undated, with information to 1915
Descriptive Entry:
These papers concern entomology, mostly economic, including scrapbooks compiled by Riley and occasionally by others, 1872-1894, tracing the history of entomology in
clippings from a wide variety of sources arranged topically and especially useful for tracing Riley's work as state Entomologist of Missouri; Memorandum Entomologicum,
1866-1879, consisting of descriptions, drawings, observations and some rearing data on a wide variety of injurious insects; outgoing correspondence, 1866-1895, including letters
from Riley to other entomologists; incoming correspondence, 1882-1883, relating to silk culture; notes and papers, mostly on psyllidae; and notes and correspondence concerning
Phengodes and Zarhipis. See Record Units 138 and 139 for records of the Division of Insects of the National Museum. Correspondents include: Cleveland Abbe, William Harris
Ashmeade, George Francis Atkinson, Lawrence Bruner, Daniel William Coquillett, Ezra Townsend Cresson, Charles Henry Fernald, Stephen Alfred Forbes, Hermann August Hagen, Leland
Ossian Howard, George Duryea Hulst, Karl Lindeman, Franz Low, Eleanor Anne Ormerod, Charles Robert Osten-Sacken, Alpheus Spring Packard, William Hampton Patton, Charles Valentine
Riley, Eugene Amandus Schwarz, Samuel H. Scudder, John Bernhard Smith, Philip Reese Uhler, John Obadiah Westwood.
Historical Note:
Charles Valentine Riley (1843-1895) was one of two or three key figures in the development of economic entomology in the United States. An Englishman by birth with
little formal scientific training, he was a protege of Benjamin Dann Walsh and the first entomologist of the state of Missouri. Between 1868 and 1871 Riley established his
reputation in Missouri, and then he became the second entomologist of the United States in 1878. He also secured establishment of the United States Entomological Commission
in 1877. In 1882 Riley was named honorary curator of insects in the United States National Museum, and from his own collections and those of the Department of Agriculture
grew the national collection of insects. Riley also published two journals, in cooperation with others: the American Entomologist (1868, 1880) and Insect Life
(1889-1894).
The administration of the United States National Museum required curators to submit regular reports on the activities of the departments, divisions, and sections. Prior
to about 1900 these reports were often made monthly and semiannually as well as annually. The reports were traditionally submitted to the Director of the National Museum to
be used in preparing the published Annual Report of the United States National Museum. The individual reports, however, were not reproduced in their entirety in the published
Annual Report and generally contain more information than is to be found in the published version.
Reports were stored by the Office of Correspondence and Reports (later known as the Office of Correspondence and Documents), and then by the Office of the Registrar.
Includes reports submitted to the Director of the United States National Museum by curators and administrators.
