Kinderhaus Canna Bed

Catherine Hershey loved cannas, and the gardens at High Point included many of them. For Fanny Hershey’s 80th birthday in 1915, Milton Hershey prepared a surprise breakfast party for his mother at High Point, where children from the Hershey Industrial School joined the celebration. Afterward, he told the children to hide in the large canna bed so a photographer could take their picture, producing a photograph that combined flowers, children, and sunshine. In June 1912, when the youngest students moved from The Homestead to Kinderhaus, their new home also had a canna bed similar to the one at High Point. In April 2007, when the Department of School History relocated from Founders Hall to Kinderhaus, that earlier photograph was used to create a new canna bed near the original one.

Hershey, Pennsylvania · United States