The Hamptons: Color images of Gray Gardens (1916)

These photos show how the gardens at Gray Gardens — located on the sweetly-named Lily Pond Lane in East Hampton, New York — looked in the year 1916. The pictures here were all originally all lantern slides (glass transparencies), each one hand-colored with a light enough touch to provide exceptional realism.

Gray Gardens still stands, and its website describes the property at the time as so: ”Mr and Mrs Robert C Hill bought the home in 1913 as a summer cottage. At the time, the home stood on four acres of oceanfront land. Anna Gilman Hill, a dedicated horticulturist and garden writer, imported magnificent concrete walls from Spain to enclose the garden and temper the fierce winds and sea spray of eastern Long Island. With the walls and gorgeous wooden arbors in place, she then designed the garden with assistance from her landscape architect, Ruth Dean. They planted a variety of pale-colored flowers, including climbing rose, lavender, phlox, and delphinium.”

Come take a stroll through these gated gardens, and lose yourself in another era.