Sunday, November 7, 2010

Paxhurst, Tuxedo Park, NY






In 1977, my wife and I scraped together every penny we had (and then some) to buy this beautiful old house in Tuxedo Park, New York. It was designed in 1904 by the firm of Barney and Chapman for William Mitchell Vail Hoffman. Hoffman was a prototypical Park type. The family firm was a player in the Manhattan real estate market. As well as being very social, which was the rule in the Park back then, they were very Episcopalian as well. One brother was a bishop. We bought Paxhurst for $175,000 - a spectacular deal - despite which we were spectacularly unable to hold on to it. It was really my doing, and my then wife bears little guilt for our abbreviated 3-year stay.

Image 1 - Here's the house from the air. The driveway loops down a steep hill and exits the property through stone posts beyond the stable, which is just out of sight at the bottom of the frame.
Image 2 - When we came, the drive had lawned over, as we say. We bought the adjoining stable and reunited it to the original estate, although to call it an "estate" sounds a bit grand, seing as it was only 5 acres. On weekends I restored the drive by hand, cutting away years of turf to expose the gravel and the hand laid stone gutter - truly the definition of a "labor of love."
Image 3 - It was a very impressive stone house - original in design, magnificent in scale, sumptuous in detail.
Image 4 - We parked our car in front of these steps.
Image 5 - Here are the original owners. That's Mr. Hoffman in the middle, wearing his weekend hat. His wife, the former Irene Stoddard, is on the right. We never discovered the name of the fellow on the left.

More Paxhurst






Image 1 - The front door opened into a small panelled foyer, and then into a grand stair hall. The newel posts were topped with fanciful creatures - a motif swiped from Knole in England.
Image 2 - The long retaining wall supports the drive coming up from the stable. Two very fine rooms faced east: the Gold Room, or ballroom on the right; and a small marble floored conservatory on the left.
Image 3 - The south facade had an open porch on the right. The cantilevered room on the left was a summer dining room with pale gray and white walls, floor to ceiling glass doors, a marble floor and an alabaster bowl chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Treillage laid on the walls in perspective patterns surrounded painted views of birds and flowers.
Image 4 - The summer dining room is visible on the right. On the left is the porch off the original kitchen, above which was a terracotta floored terrace with bad leaks. As a result of these, the original kitchen and pantries on the lower level were in ruins and we rarely went down there.
Image 5 - This is a vintage shot of the garden that unfortunately doesn't give much idea of the plantings.

It was the most beautiful house in which I ever lived. We sold it for twice what we bought it for, but that did little to soothe the sense of loss. After Paxhurst, we rented an even grander joint called Lindley Hall where, once again, our reach exceeded our grasp. At last report, both Paxhurst and Lindley Hall are in about the same condition they were when we left them.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Then and Now






Sometime during the next year, myself and the owner of the Millbrook Independent will publish "Old Houses in Millbrook," being a collection of my monthly columns of the same name. I have a small but devoted media following and I am, at least within a 4-mile radius of Millbrook, nearly famous. I've also got many more images than there've been room for in the paper, especially for my current topic, a grand old place called Edgewood. It was a white elephant to be sure, and in run down condition when the last occupant died in 1967, but there's a part of me that weeps for old places like this. Edgewood was bulldozed in the early 1970s. This must have been about the time the first image above was taken. The house was demolished in spite of a half million dollar trust the heir also inherited, earmarked specifically for its upkeep. He eventually gave the land minus the big house to the Millbrook School, which sold it to a developer. Interestingly, the former 200 acre estate is today owned by only two parties. There was once a fabulous walled garden at Edgewood, and the four images below the house photo show it in its heydey during the 1920s, and today.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

"Life is but a walking shadow...that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more."





I did a little Long Island tour yesterday with an old house pal. Creeping down an overgrown lane called Whitney Phipps Garvan Road - one not really even open to traffic - we came across the back gate to Roslyn House. This was Francis P. Garvan's place in Old Westbury, sandwiched between his neighbors the Whitneys and the Phipps. The Whitney place is now the Old Westbury Country Club, whose 1940s-era mansion (the original was razed) is much disfigured by club additions. The Phipps house, called Spring Hill, was demolished in the 1960s, but the estate survived as open land until just recently. It's being subdivided as I write. The Garvan place, called Roslyn House, was pulled down in 1974 and the estate is now a subdivision called Stone Arches. That old gate in the second image is buried in a patch of surviving woods on abandoned Whitney Phipps Garvan Rd. It is evocative to say the least, facing a line of subdivision backyards through a screen of trees across the lane, while behind it, almost obscured by wild underbrush and unkempt forest, are glimpses of tony new-ish houses in Stone Arches. Some unknown vandal sprayed blue paint on the sign, but it still says, in barely readable lettering, "Mrs. F.P.Garvan Private, No Trespassing." The top image is of now vanished Roslyn House, to which that old gate once led. The next is of the gate itself buried in woods. The third image is of Edgewood, the Flagler house up here in Millbrook, probably taken about 1903. Yesterday's trip down Whitney Phipps Garvan Lane brought it to mind. The fourth and last image shows the same view today, minus Edgewood, which was pulled down in the early 1970s. Unlike the places in Old Westbury, the original 200 acre Flagler estate - minus the mansion - is basically intact. It's owned by two people, each of whom owns half of it.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Three Little Devils





They've been sitting atop a statue on the approach to Daheim for over a century. I'm not sure anyone has completely figured out what they're doing - or perhaps what they're about to do. Stone decorations like this are part of the charm of Victorian country estates. We've got a lot of this stuff at Daheim.

Monday, October 11, 2010

A gentleman's bowling alley






It sounds today like a contradiction in terms, but private alleys were commonplace on the estates of rich clients ca. 1900. This being the Columbus Day weekend, my landlords' maintenance man has left our vintage 1896 alley unlocked. I wasted no time running in to get a few candids. When I first came to Millbrook in 1981, this building was in ruins. Vandalized during the Leary years, at the mercy of a leaking roof and an uncaring farm manager (now deceased), it was fast headed for destruction. About 10 years ago, my landlords got religion and restored the place. You'd never know now that the ceiling was caving in, the windows were kicked out, or that trees were growing out of the roof. If the beautifully carved interior hadn't been solid oak, it's very doubtful it would have survived. The images above are of the exterior and the main floor. The post below illustrates the second floor.

more bowling alley






These are of the second floor, originally a billiard room, accessible by an exterior stair with a balcony entrance.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

A fine Colonial house






Colonial houses don't really rock my world. I respond to early 20th Century Colonial Revivals instead, as long as they're grand and formal. The legitimate articles, however, are too restrained for my corrupted taste. Having admitted as much, I will confess to admiring a very fine Colonial style house near me in Millbrook. Built in 1832 by a house proud farmer named Tristram Coffin, it is adorned with particularly fine Greek details. During the 1920s a rich New Yorker named Alfred Maclay enlarged the house - perhaps a bit too much - and named it Killearn Farm. The first image shows the house before it gained weight, so to speak. Having already tripled its size, Mr. Maclay decided to push forward a portion of the kitchen wing wall so as to make it flush with the original facade. The second photo shows the result. Photo 3# is a view under the eaves showing a motif I've never seen before - literally thousands of dominoes. The fourth image shows the main stair. Nothing Edwardian here, but so fine a piece of work - both in terms of aesthetic restraint and quality of craftsmanship - as to be a definition of elegance. The last is a picture of the front door, whose delicate Greek porch is famous amongst Hudson Valley architectural historians.

Monday, October 4, 2010

the "big room"




My daughter grew up at Daheim, a house with a "front room." I'm not really sure why we never called it the living room, but we never did. Our front door opens directly into the front room, which in turn opens in a straight line into the library, the stair hall, and the dining room, a linear distance of about 100 feet. This has impact, but nowhere near the impact of the "big room" in the family home of my Philadelphia friend, Ms. Penrose. Horace Trumbauer added it around 1912 to Barbados Hill, her father's house on the Main Line in Devon. It's the big wing on the left in the exterior view. Ms. P's father, Dr. Penrose, rescued the marble fireplace from the demolition of the famous Albany in London. Underneath the big room was a huge model train room whose coved ceiling obscured an enormous secret vault. Warned by Senate colleagues of the inevitability of Prohibition, Grandfather Penrose filled it with demijohns - being over-scaled short-necked bottles typically encased in wickerwork - of the "good stuff," purchased on a special trip to Scotland. Senator Penrose enjoyed it until his death in 1921. His son, Dr. Penrose, finished the last of it in 1956, at which point it had become, according to his daughter, "magnifique." The house still stands, but is no longer in the family.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

more details....






The first 2 images are of Delano and Aldrich's Knickerbocker Club at 2 East 62nd St., a building that strikes a delicate note in a neighborhood of imposing houses. D & A succeeded McKim Mead & White as "the" club architects of New York. This 1915 opus is them at their Georgian best. The ironwork here is quite different, albeit equally beautiful as that on neighboring houses. The next 2 shots are of the door to 15 East 62nd St. I like buildings like this; they've got heft. The last shot is of a bracket on the facade of 1 East 62nd St., now a coop containing particularly magnificent rooms.

details, details...






Writing about ironwork on the new Ralph Lauren building up at 72nd and Madison (see the post below) has given me new eyes for the work on fine old Upper East Side houses. The examples above are from a few of the many within a block of my own apartment. The first 2 images are of 11 East 62nd St. Now owned by the Japanese government it was completed in 1900 for a granddaughter of William Henry Vanderbilt and her husband, Count Ernesto Fabbri. Note the wrought iron 'F' in the middle of the balcony. The next 2 shots are of 3 East 64th St., completed in 1903 for Orme Wilson and his wife Carrie (daughter of 'The Mrs.') Astor. How delicious are those iron morning glories twined around the middle element? The last is of an over-door grill at 11 East 64th. The glass is dirty, but the work is lovely.