Revivals.(Endnotes)(on the replanting of magnolias in New Orleans, and the inauguration of the New Orleans Antiques Forum)

Among the many devastating losses suffered by New Orleans in Hurricane Katrina three years ago, the magnificent magnolia trees that lined streets and ornamented parks and private properties are rarely mentioned. But the brackish waters that flooded the Crescent City for weeks in August and September 2005 suffocated the trees' roots and decimated hundreds of them, forcing their removal. Happily, one of the recent indications of New Orleans's poststorm recovery is the widespread replanting of magnolias by individuals and private and public groups around the city.

Somewhat surprisingly, the rendering of the glorious blooms of Magnolia grandiflora, Louisiana's state flower, that appeared on the cover of ANTIQUES in September 1968 was painted by the Yankee writer Harriet Beecher Stowe, best known, of course, her abolitionist masterpiece Uncle Tom's Cabin of 1852. But, as Alice Winchester, then editor in chief of the magazine, wrote, this was "only one of her many books, which included sketches, reminiscences, and poems as well as novels. ... and most people do not know that she liked to paint as well as to write." The occasion for the discussion of Stowe was the opening to the public in June 1968 of the house at Nook Farm in Hartford, Connecticut, where Stowe lived from 1873 until her death. Built in 1871, it is, as Winchester noted, "a fairly typical, unassuming New England residence of the latter part of the nineteenth century," with the asymmetrical floor plan of the Gothic revival and decorative bargeboards, brackets, and octagonal chimney pots commonly called Victorian. Most ...