Last week, it was about gloom, this week it’s all about bloom. Last week, we featured the Thanksgiving snowstorm of 1950, this week we bring to you the black-and-white photographs of the ever-green Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens from our archive.
We found many photographs of the annual Flower Shows hosted in the “greenest” facilities in the world. In 1966, during the 72nd annual Flower Show the “Alice in Wonderland” display captivated the public’s admiration. “The scene, depicting Alice standing in a garden of giant toadstools, was done in hundreds of daisy and pom pom chrysanthemums.” The show was considered to be one of the finest floral exhibitions in the United States, according to the Post-Gazette. The centerpiece of the 1968 annual Flower Show was Humpty Dumpty made of chrysanthemums with a giant story book for found visitors.
In 1964, the Flower Show featured something that looked like an ancestor of the Giant Rubber Duck made of flowers, but then after reading the cutline, we realized that it was a giant dove.
Phipps Conservatory has been in Pittsburgh for a long time. It was founded in 1893 by steel and real-estate magnate Henry Phipps as a gift to the City of Pittsburgh.
