All in Architecture
While the Goelet name is readily associated with number of familiar gilded age mansions and estates, due to them often living within a stones throw of each other and the preponderance of males in the family with the name Robert, sometimes confusing to know which Goelet actually lived where!
Amongst all the bold-faced names associated with Long Islands Gold Coast, “Phipps” stands out. Social, sporty and philanthropic, as an aggregate, few families could approach the scale of the half-dozen or more estates they owned and the legacy they created.
As we walked past the massive brownstone Engineers Club on a visit to Baltimore we were unable to resist peeking inside. Our quick view of some of the stunning interiors whet my appetite to learn more about the building’s history and the people who lived there.
A brisk walk around one of the squares and peeking down some side streets not only rewarded us with remarkably fine examples of mid-nineteenth century domestic architecture, but also the opportunity to take an up-close look at interiors by Charles A Platt, Stanford White, John Russell Pope, and Delano and Aldrich all on the same block!
Brendan and I were looking for someplace to visit on the drive back home from Boston recently. Our host suggested the Eustis Estate Museum, a mansion and eighty-acre grounds located about 10 miles southwest of downtown Boston operated by Historic New England. It was definitely worth the trip.
Many are familiar with the tales of Newport’s most famous gilded age cottages and the bold-faced names who lived in them; the Breakers and the Vanderbilts, Clarendon Court and the von Bulows, and so on. Part of what makes Newport so interesting for me is also discovering the stories associated with some of the lesser known ones. Each has their own interesting tale to tell. This is the story of one of them.
I am always curious to see how the characters’ homes in films based on lives of historical figures compare to the ones they actually lived. In the case of The Favorite, I thought they stacked up quite well. The film also re-sparked my interest in the queen’s first favorite, Sarah Jennings Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough. Here is a look at some of the homes she lived in throughout her life.
I was a little reluctant at first to do a post focusing on Cooperstown’s lost homes and mansions. So often these types of articles read accompanied by a gnashing of teeth and casting blame. For me it’s quite the opposite. Cooperstown, which abounds with architectural treasures, should be celebrated, for few places can boast such good stewardship of their architectural legacy. Through my research, I found some interesting homes, no longer standing, which served to complement the history of the village and its reputation as a resort town….
After looking at lost homes and mansions of the Upper West Side, Bloomingdale, and Audubon Park neighborhoods, the last installment in this series goes all the way to the northernmost tip of Manhattan, to what is today known Washington Heights and Inwood.
As Manhattan’s population surged northward during the latter decades of the nineteenth century, the formerly rural far reaches of the Upper West Side changed remarkably in character. By 1900, one could find an interesting hodge-podge of former summer homes dating back a century, along with brash newer mansions, middle class townhouses, and apartment buildings. Thanks in large part to the digitization of the photo archives at the New York Public Library and the Museum of the City of New York, this post will look at some the grand homes around Bloomingdale and Morningside Heights as well as what replaced many of them (almost all would disappear by 1930).
While the majority of the First Class Staterooms and Suites on the Titanic were populated by Americans traveling to their homes stateside, there was also a sizable contingent of passengers who lived in other countries. Not surprisingly, being a British vessel, the next largest group in terms of numbers was the English, followed by Canadians, then the French and a half-dozen Swiss. This post will look at some of their homes, as well as a few owned by American expatriates onboard.
While my last two posts looked at the homes of the very rich and famous and East Coast urban sophisticates, in this one I will take a look at some of the other homes representing passengers from the East coast to the West. As I wrote in my first post in this series, the first class passengers on the Titanic were a mixed lot, representing a broad swath of the upper-middle and upper classes at the time. This was reflected in the style and scale of their respective homes, which embraced many of the styles of the time, from older traditional Queen Anne architecture to newer Arts and Crafts or Colonial Revival styles.
Like any group of unrelated travelers, the First Class passengers onboard the Titanic’s maiden voyage were a varied lot; multi-millionaires, businessmen traveling on their company’s dime, splurging honeymooners and upper-middle-class families. For some, the experience was akin to traveling on a floating palace. For others, it paled next to their usual surroundings. One of the best indicators of how they might have viewed their surroundings at seas is to look at their various homes back on land.
It’s an all too familiar story. A gracious older home is purchased in a wealthy enclave or resort frequented by the rich. While seemingly perfectly adequate, it is torn down, replaced by a bigger, brasher mega-mansion seemingly out of context with the landscape, natural beauty, and character of the neighborhood…
In my last installment on the Fahnestocks, a family whose contributions to the architectural legacy of the Gilded Age are often overlooked, I focused on their townhouses. In this post, I will visit some of their country places....
While the name Fahnestock might not immediately roll off the tongue today when ticking off America’s great gilded age families, during the era they were undeniably important. The wealthy family took leading roles in the business, philanthropic and social circles of Washington DC, New York, and fashionable east coast resorts of the day. Over the next two posts, I will take a look at their homes, focusing on their residences in town in this first installment....
Watching The Greatest Showman recently, I was amused to see Woodlea (the former home of Margaret Vanderbilt Shepard, now the Sleepy Hollow Country Club) used as the home lived in by the snooty parents of PT Barnum’s wife, while interiors of the Duke Mansion on Fifth Avenue stood in for rooms in Barnum’s own mansion. While both were undeniably fabulous settings, neither was correct period-wise.It started me thinking about Iranistan, the exotically fantastic mansion that Barnum had built in real life. While searching for images of it online, I discovered PT Barnum had built no less than four splendid mansions in Bridgeport Connecticut over the course of his life.
