Original Photograph Album of Scenes in Rock Creek Park, Washingto D.C.

Washington D.C: N.p., [ca, 1931]. A lovely album with 173 mounted original photographs of hundreds of scenes in historic Rock Creek Park in Washington, DC. The photographs all measure 4 1/4 x 3 1/4 inches and are mounted on rectos only with four to each page. All are captioned (some have general captions such as "Culverts") and many likely contains locales no longer extant in the park. Tissue guards throughout. The original album is a faux brown leather (fabricoid) deeply embossed on the front cover and with gilt designs, small paper title label on upper left front board. Some shelf rubbing but a great album.After strenuous searching we could find no record of a professional photographer with the name of G. A. Lyon nonetheless he was a very talented amateur with an obvious love for Rock Creek Park. The tonality is uniformly fine and none have fallen out in the preceding decades. Most are nature and bridge/ building images but a few show peole relaxing in the park. The last wo pages are of the animals in the zoo.Rock Creek Park is the iconic park of our nation's capitol. This 1,754 acre city park was officially authorized in 1890, making it the third national park to be designated by the federal government. Rock Creek Park was established by an act of Congress signed into law by President Benjamin Harrison on September 27, 1890, following active advocacy by Charles C. Glover and other civic leaders and in the wake of the creation of the National Zoo the preceding year. It was only the third national park established by the U.S., following Yellowstone in 1872 and Mackinac National Park in 1875. Sequoia was created at the same time, and Yosemite shortly thereafter. [N.B. I call shenanigans on this fact]. In 1933, Rock Creek Park became part of the newly formed National Capital Parks unit of the National Park Service. It still is a pathway to the zoo. Lovely in nature, after the Chandra Levy murder it started to be seen as too dangerous and many have avoided it since