My trip to the Portland Antiques Expo….made four incredible finds!

[CarltonHendricks]

Thank you so much everyone for your kind words, glad you enjoyed it.

Rhys, Would have been a pleasure to see you again, I think last was a couple Nationals ago...I look forward to next year...Hey let's see those finds!

John Thorn, Thanks very much for your posts...very informative, great to know all that, wow even the original prices...good dig'n

In the 19th century the Yale fence was a meet up gathering place for students that apparently was so popular or highly regarded that it took on institution status. Recently I did a feature on a 1888 cabinet photo of Yale baseball team mates Amos Alonzo Stagg and Jesse Chase Dann which you can read here. The photo was shot in a studio but they are sitting and leaning on a fence. Apparently the Yale fence was so popular the photographer Pach Brothers made a facsimile in their studio and incorporated it into photos.





Chapter two of the 1895 book “Yale Yarns” is probably the best available source of information on the Yale fence. The fence was taken down in 1888 to make room for improvements to the campus, and the impact wasn’t taken lightly. Below are some excerpts, from chapter 2 titled “The Old Fence. Thanks to the internet you can read the entire Yale Yarns book on line in this link. Also above is a poster that advertised the book and as you can see the fence is front and center in the illustration. Below the poster is a large print of the same illustration which I saw at the 2005 National in the Hunt Auctions booth, which you can read about at the bottom of the page in this link

THE OLD FENCE.
Up to the time when the march of improvement began, which has ended with the beautiful Vanderbilt Hall and the complete enclosure of the campus, the fence, from the path near the corner on College Street around the corner of Chapel and up to South College, was the one great institution of Yale. Tradition fades quickly in college, and the student of to-day is inclined to smile at the expression of regret for the fence's loss to which the old grad. is apt to give vent on returning to New Haven….

The dear old fence !

On it men crammed for recitation ; read the newspapers ; interchanged stories ; gossiped ; talked athletics ; got acquainted ; sung songs; flirted with passing girls; lived. The fence over in front of Durfee is something like it in a feeble sort of way, but it 's not quite the same thing. There was always some wandering musician who played, or a boot-black who shone for five cents, or an influx of grads. up from New York, or the passing of a pretty girl, to create a diversion on the old fence. It was the centre of the good-hearted, manly, democratic Yale, and when it was taken away there were many forebodings by the grads.