Wednesday, June 18, 2014

High Art and Deep Pockets

This is Mrs. John Work Garrett (1877-1952), nee Alice Warder, whose husband was a grandson of the first president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The Garrett family fortune was a whopper, although by 1908, the year of Mrs Garrett's marriage, the B&O had already gone bankrupt once. Garrett dollars remained abundant, however, if no longer illimitable. Judging from the marcelled hair, the satin frock and the divine lighting, I'd say the photo was taken sometime in the early 1920s. Pretty hot for a forty-something. Mrs. Garrett is the star of today's post, and we'll return to her later.

In the summer of 1888, while out on the Chesapeake Bay, Mr. Garrett's father drowned in a yachting accident. He was only 39. John Work Garrett II (1872-1942), seen below, was 16 at the time, the eldest of three boys. "How can I ever settle down to be a business man, a banker or a railroader?" Princeton freshman Garrett wrote in 1892. "There is a splendid business waiting for us...(but)...it's hard work to enter without a father to show us what to do." Four years later the B&O was in receivership, and young Garrett was dealing with trustees he didn't really trust.

The Garrett's Baltimore house, called Evergreen, was built in 1858 by a fellow named Stephen Broadbent. In 1878, B&O President John Work Garrett I (1820-1884), bought it for his son, the unlucky yachtsman. Between 1885 and 1886 the house was substantially enlarged with athletic facilities - a gym, bowling alleys and a billiard room - for Garrett's three boys. One doubts the facilities got much use, however, as their mother, Mrs. Alice Whitridge Garrett (1851-1920), closed the house after her husband's death and moved to Princeton, NJ.



Widow and sons were back at Evergreen by the late 1890s, at which point Mrs. G. electrified the place, built additional servants' quarters on the north, combined the double parlors of 1858 into a modern drawing room, and added an elegantly canopied entrance, with paneled and mezzanined stairhall within.


Subsequent alterations eventually quadrupled Evergreen's floorspace.

The drive-through is part of yachtman Harrison Garrett's 1885 athletic addition. Guestrooms are above the arch; athletic facilities out of sight beyond it to the left; a sliver of Mrs. G's 1895 service addition is visible at left foreground.


The original athletic wing, re-purposed in the 1920s, is on the right, extending east from the back of the house. The roof of a 1908 enlargement lurks behind the cupola. The wing on the left is the library, completed in 1928.


I doubt the view from the library terrace included so much pavement in the Garretts' days. An ornate greenhouse originally stood between the retaining wall and the lawn.



The path and stairs once led to the greenhouse.

Let's continue closkwise around the building to the front door of 1858.





By age 29, John Garrett had solved the problem of what to do with his life. Thanks to a combination of education, social standing, natural tact and family connections, he became a diplomat. In 1901 he joined the Foreign Service and, at different times, served in Holland, Luxembourg, Berlin (where his future wife was studying voice), Argentina, Venezuela and eventually Rome. When his mother died in 1920, he inherited Evergreen and, together with his wife, turned an architectural showplace into a high culture mecca.

Garrett's father is responsible for the heavy late 1880s look of the main hall, as well as the reception room immediately left of the front door.




In 1895 Garrett's mother combined the Victorian double parlors of 1858 into one large drawing room. Beyond the door in the distance was the dining room, built simultaneously with the athletic wing.

The dining room from the late 1880s was transformed in 1932 into a reading room, really an extension of the 1928 library.



The library, from whose terrace we admired the lawn, is, to my eye, an apotheosis of 1920s architectural glamour. It manages to be grand, elegantly proportioned and elaborately paneled without recourse to Edwardian heft.




Let's recross the reading room, duck across the main hall (the tapestry is Flemish 17th century, which you probably guessed), and have a look at the relocated dining room. Considering the rest of the house, it isn't very inspiring, in spite of the fact its decoration is attributed to (of all people) the famous costume and set designer, Leon Bakst (1866-1924), about whom more later.





The door to the kitchen corridor is on the east wall. Past dish pantry and back stairs is a really interesting room - the kitchen.











Now we're back in the main hall, looking west towards the old front door.

Just short of the reception room, the hall makes a 90 degree dogleg towards the new front door.

An obscure footnote in American social history concerns John Garrett's uncle Robert (1847-1896). Robert Garrett had been president of the B&O until his retirement at age 40, when, according to his New York Times obituary, he became "mentally...unfit to participate in any business and ...seldom seen in public." Actually, he did go out a bit in society, accompanied by a patient wife who urged other guests to indulge her husband's delusion that he was actually the Czar of Russia. Or maybe it was Napoleon. This is one of those odd society stories you read, then cannot for the life of you remember where. Robert Garrett's mental collapse, one year before brother Harrison's drowning, only compounded problems at the B&O.





The view below looks north from the mezzanine to the stair down. The 2nd view below looks from the mezzanine up to the second landing.


These stairs lead to the third floor which, to my consternation, was "off limits" on my tour.

Houses built in 1858 are by definition deficient in bathrooms. Evergreen's many alterations and additions largely corrected that, although a slightly awkward hall bath survives at the western end of the second floor hall. The only room it serves is a guestroom immediately to the north.





On the south side of the hall bath, a pair of bedrooms were combined into an owners' suite, with new en suite bath. The dressing room (or boudoir or study or whatever they used it for) in the image below displays artifacts from Alice Garrett's many collections. P.S. Mrs. Garrett is not to be confused with her mother-in-law, whose Christian name was also Alice, and whose house the younger Alice move into with her diplomat husband in 1920. Mrs. Garrett Jr. was a financially able patroness of the arts who, accompanied by her dashing husband, inhabited a glamorous world of writers, artists, dancers, diplomats, critics and musicians. Alice Garrett was an early collector of Utrillo, Picassso, Dufy, Bonnard, Derain, a subject of Zuloaga (whose portrait of her husband hangs above the library fireplace), and the guardian angel who literally rescued Leon Bakst from homelessness.

Beyond the bedroom is the owners' en suite bath, redolent with '20s swank.





Across the hall from the owners' suite is a north-facing guestroom whose attached bath was decorated in 1886 by the famous high Victorian New York firm of Herter Brothers. (Think: Vanderbilt mansion, Fifth Avenue).



Herter Brothers' so-called "gold bath" is named for the curious excess of genuine gold leaf that has been applied to, among other surfaces, the seat on the can.






Mr. Garrett's boyhood room, above and south of the drive-through arch, became his study. The picturesque gallery looks original to the 1880s. Beyond this room is a double-doored elevator, on whose far side a corridor crosses the arch en route to the athletic wing.






A guestroom and bath situated en route above the arch overlook lawns and the site of the former greenhouse. Beyond the arch, long corridors lead to servants' rooms sandwiched originally between bowling alley below and gymnasium above.






Let's go up first, to what used to be a gymnasium.

In 1922, Leon Bakst arrived at Alice Garrett's Baltimore mansion in order to design a private theatre. And here she is, dancing "Songs in Costume" for her gala 1923 opening. The St. Petersburg born Bakst, who costumed Nijinsky and Pavlova and designed sets for Diaghilev's Ballet Russe, was part of the Garretts' cosmopolitan/artistic millieu. At Evergreen in the '20s, high culture and cutting edge art met at a venue of luxe living.

By his early 50s, Bakst's youthful fame and fortune had been replaced by physical woes and financial terrors. He might well have lost his house in 1919, plus most of his paintings, had Mrs. Garrett not advanced him substantial sums "...based upon my paintings." She become his professional agent, organized a series of successful shows, purchased a number of his works herself, and pulled him from the brink.

Bakst died at the end of 1924, only 58 years old but at least no longer worried about money.


Two levels down is the former bowling alley which, not being bowlers, the Garretts converted early on to a gallery for their collection of Asian art.


Adjacent to the Asian gallery is the former billiard room, now a gift shop located strategically at the end of everybody's tour.

Evergreen is a huge house, much bigger than it appears at first blush. I estimate I missed about a third of it, about which I will say no more. John Garrett was 70 years old when he died in 1942, at which point Evergreen was willed to Johns Hopkins University, subject to a life tenancy by his wife. Alice Garrett died in 1952 at the age 75. There were no children. In the palmy 1880s, 51 servants worked in the house, stables and grounds. A comparative handful runs the place today, administering an important library and conducting public tours. The link is http://museums.jhu.edu/evergreen.php.

13 comments:

  1. There are so many features to admire here: the beautifully proportioned entrance canopy; the library, whose books are obviously curated; the kitchen, whose central hanging light fixture is worthy of its own note; the Dutch marquetry bedroom, whose pieces require and have happily received constant care (I own a few, falling to bits).

    I agree with your assessment that the golden loo is a tad over the top -- but, dear Mr. Foreman, I grumble at your describing a dining room with chrome yellow walls and vermillion silk panels by Bakst as 'uninspiring'.
    Granted, one would need a gown by Bakst to appear at the table but there's another good reason to have him as an in-house designer!

    The private theatre is a marvel of scale, as is the concept of hosts and guests performing on its stage. Contrast this with the modern media room in which one plops to drink and feed while viewing whatever.

    Private theatres, who built them and used them, would be an excellent subject for a coffee table book by John Foreman!

    ReplyDelete
  2. This has been my favorite tour to date! Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Fascinating! That Herter Brothers bathroom is one of the firm's few remaining intact interiors. A bit heavy handed with the gold, but very much in the high Aesthetic taste of the 1880s. Clearly, this house had everything you needed: private theatre, athletic facilities, greenhouses, and an art-enfused atmosphere. The '20s must have been a lot of fun in an establishment like this.

    Those crazy millionaire stories always seem to turn up in old social histories like "Fabulous New York". The Mrs. Astor was rumored, in her last years, to entertain imaginary guests in her dotage. Edith Wharton got a great, chilling short story of that tale: "After Holbein".

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The book I was thinking of is actually "Incredible New York: High Life and Low Life from 1850 to 1950" by Lloyd Morris. Great stuff.

      Delete
  4. Holy Cow! What a pile of a house! Usually I like to follow your "tour" in my head, turning right or left as indicated by your scrupulous narrative of the layout of the house. But this one is just too vast so, after a while, I gave up and just came along for the ride. A wonderful tour as ever. I concur with Beth Waltz' highlights of the light fixture in the kitchen and the marquetry bedroom. I even think the dining room is pretty fab with those silk panels but to me, that shade of yellow is a tad jarring. But I think my favorite feature is the idea that there are just so many books that the library can not hold them all, the bedroom floor corridor must be lined with them as well. I don't think I'd ever get to bed in such a house as I'd forever be waylaid by perusing the tomes outside my chamber door.
    I've often thought you should have your own show on HGTV, John, hosting tours of these monster houses - I suspect you'd have quite a following! Thanks again for introducing me to Evergreen.

    ReplyDelete
  5. How dare they bar you from parts of the house? Do you they not know you are???

    ReplyDelete
  6. I agree heartily with Carrowmac. At one time, before I owned a big old house, several networks had shows pertaining to old piles, i.e "Restore America", "Mansion, Monuments, and Masterpieces", etc. Of course, as soon as I took the plunge and bought a 130 year old house, all of those inspiring shows were yanked. You should seriously submit the idea of your own show,I think you would do quite well on HGTV or A&E.

    ReplyDelete
  7. This one is sooo beautiful. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  8. great tour! it's been decades since i was there; there was a big devil head on the front lawn at the time....

    ReplyDelete
  9. Terrific post! Thank you for sharing the wonders of Evergreen House, to which Billy Baldwin devotes a chapter in "Billy Baldwin Remembers" ( Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974).

    ReplyDelete
  10. The interior is a bit predictable and mostly hurt my teeth to view but its the exterior that really dazzles in my view.

    Everywhere you look at the exterior, we see exquisite and refined details. The architecture is like some centuries old Cote D'azur palace that grew over the ages, each royal generation adding on to the whole. Overall the exterior is magnificent to the max.

    ReplyDelete
  11. This has been my favorite house so far! As I read each week I try to picture living in the house and what I like and don't care for but this one is just perfection to me. Thanks for showing us these palaces!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Like eating a box of chocolates . . . and so sad when it's done . . .

    ReplyDelete