This photograph of the bollards that run down 2nd Street SE next to the Adams Building was taken in late 2010. What caught my eye was how the bollards with just a bit of snow on top reminded me of the paintings of ladies wearing powdered wigs and ruffs, collars, or fichu.
At first I thought of women in Elizabethan England (which makes it amusing since you can see the Folger Shakespeare Library in the back of the photograph). But I changed my mind. I decided that they seemed to look more like what colonial era women like Martha Washington wore because the white collar was not as prominent as the ruffs worn during Queen Elizabeth’s day.