More on Darlington (2 posts below)

These are woodwork details from Darlington, George Crocker's house in Mahwah, New Jersey. It was completed in 1907 and is described 2 posts below. A master carver named John H. Elliott worked on this project for 4 years, and the results are certainly splendid. Elliott was hired by the architect, James Brite, a man about whom I can discover very little. He started as a draftsman at McKim, Mead and White, teamed up with a co-worker named Henry Bacon, and went on to form a partnership called Brite and Bacon. Henry Bacon was the man who designed the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. Supposedly the partnership fell apart because of the excessive amount of time Bacon spent on the memorial. Brite clearly landed on his feet, judging from heavyweight clients like Herbert Pratt and George Crocker, but I'm having difficulty finding anything else he did.

Another James Brite House

The post following this one is of a house called Darlington, in Mahwah, New Jersey. This post concerns a house by the same architect, for a client very much in the same grand category. Herbert L. Pratt (1871-1945) was, among other things, President of the Standard Oil Company of New York, forerunner of today's Exxon-Mobil Corp. In 1912 he commissioned architect James Brite to design this neo-Jacobean mansion overlooking the Long Island Sound just west of Glen Cove. The house, called The Braes and finished in 1914, was originally serviced by a famous complex called Pratt Oval, dedicated to the maintenance of half a dozen Pratt family estates in the immediate area. After Herbert Pratt's death in 1945, a marine engineering school called the Webb Institute bought the house and converted it into a highly competitive naval architectural school. Unlike Darlington (see below) the building has been completely institutionalized. The room in the 3rd image down came from an English house called Rotherwas Court, being demolished at the time The Braes was going up. Pratt's will bequeathed the room to Amherst College.

In my Dreams

It is the honest truth that if I could contrive to live in a place like this, I would. It's called Darlington. The name commemorates a local squire named A.B. Darling, owner of the famous Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York. The house stands in renovated, single family condition in Mahwah, New Jersey on 12.5 of its original 1000 acres. Despite being surrounded by upscale split levels, the site preserves an unexpected degree of integrity. There's still a gatehouse, and a tree lined drive, albeit sandwiched between subdivision backyards. An imposing circle fronts the main entrance, and there's a fairly sweeping lawn out back. The architect was a man named James Brite, formerly employed by McKim Mead and White, and the client was George Crocker, son of railroad mogul Charles Crocker. Either Brite or Crocker must have had English Jacobean mansions on the brain. Completed in 1907, Darlington bears a very strong resemblance to Bramshill House in Hampshire. About fifteen years ago I visited Darlington with friends from Tuxedo. From the moment I set foot inside, I dreamed of living here. What is it about these kinds of houses that stirs my soul? I want to be in them; I want to touch them, and nurture them, and dream in them. Crocker lived here for only 2 years. In 1922 the next owner sold it to developers who planned to make it into a ritzy country club. The scheme ran off the track and the Catholic Church bought it in 1927. It was used as a seminary until 1986 when another developer bought it for around $9 million. Unlike many houses of this scale - in areas far more elite than Mahwah - Darlington has survived in amazingly intact condition. It is now being marketed to single family buyers for $25 million. And if I could, I most certainly would.

"Inisfada"

Tucked into the low hills of the Hudson Valley, is the little village of Millbrook, where I have spent the majority of my adult life. Millbrook fancies itself an elite place, and I suppose that's true. However, it is a very small place. When I find myself exploring, say, the north shore of Long Island, as I have in recent weeks, I realize just how small it is. "Inisfada" - perversely pronounced "in-ish-FAH-dah" and meaning "Long Island" in Gaelic - is the sort of house that puts little Millbrook in proper perspective. It is a perfectly immense building, still standing on 33 of its original 225 acres on Searingtown Road in Manhasset. Nicholas F. Brady (1878-1930), grand-uncle of the one-time U.S. Treasury Secretary of the same name, built it between 1916 and 1920. Brady was very rich, very upwardly mobile, and very Catholic. He died before he was sixty, and seven years later his widow gave the house to the Jesuits, who own it today.

The Bowling Alley, revisited (1 of 2)

I've blogged about our vintage Bowling Alley in a previous post, but it deserves to be revisited. It is truly an architectural "tour de force," an authentic Swiss chalet with all the trimmings, reinterpreted as a bowling alley by architect James E. Ware for 19th Century millionaire Chas. F. Dieterich. The first view is from the driveway in front of the house. The next shows the stairs to the terrace above. Image 3 is a detail of the balcony that runs around 2 sides of the second floor. The 4th image shows the house as seen from the terrace. And finally, guess when it was built?

The Bowling Alley, revisited (2 of 2)

Here's the view looking to the east, with the long twin alleys clearly articulated by the shape of the building. The next shot shows one of the German exhortations to good fun and clean living that are chiseled all over the exterior walls. These have been translated for me a dozen times over the last 28 years; if only I could remember where I stashed the translations. The 3rd shot shows the exterior access (there is no interior stair) to what was originally a 2nd floor billiard room. My landlords keep the building locked, so I must wait until they next appear on the property to get some interior shots. (It's amazingly fab). The 4th image is a long shot looking north from the west lawn (if you follow that). The trees around Daheim make the Rockefeller Center Xmas tree look sapling-like. The last view is a closeup of the balcony visible in the shot above. This provides access at the end of the alleys, presumably for a pin boy.

Past and present

I spent some time on google maps yesterday, cruising around Mill Neck, Long Island at low altitude. (How great is google maps?) Conventional wisdom has it that Long Island has been completely ruined by development, but whoever said that obviously hasn't been to Mill Neck. Long Island is on my mind because of my next "Old House" article for the "Millbrook Independent." I'm writing about a charming Greek Reveval style house owned for 50 years by Mabel Brady Garvan. She only used it as a hunting box, because she mostly lived at 740 Park Avenue, and at a big place on the Island called Roslyn House, which she and her husband, Francis P. Garvan bought in 1919 from Stanley Mortimer. The first image is a postcard view of Roslyn House from the era when rich people didn't mind having views of their houses sold in local drug stores. Located just west of the Old Westbury Country Club golf course, the estate was chopped into a zillion lots and the mansion demolished in 1974. Years ago I saw an evocative aerial photo of the Meadow Brook Hounds streaming across the lawn of this place on one of their final hunts, red coated field in hot pursuit, a line of splanches from a new housing development clearly visible in the distance. The other 4 images are of two very grand houses currently for sale in my neighborhood. The 2nd and 3rd are of 18 East 68th St., 36' wide, built in 1905, and supposedly in very good private house condition. It was listed in 2008 for $64 million, and is now reduced to $39 million. The final photos are of 22 East 71st St., a whopping 45' wide, with 21,000 sq. ft. of interior space. This house has brilliant public rooms and an amazing staircase, but has also suffered a lot of institutional alteration. It sold for $19.5M in 2004, recently went back on the market for $75M, and is now down to $59M.

Still in good shape

I really "got into" the Van Rensselaer house in Philadelphia (see the 4 posts following this), perhaps because it was both beautiful and damaged. This may say more about me than about the house. The images above are of Thorndale, a very undamaged house in my hometown of Millbrook, NY. The top image was published in a Poughkeepsie newspaper in 1900. It shows a fashionable Victorian country place whose origins as an upscale farmhouse are still visible. The second image, taken ca. 1910, shows the same house, which has now become a high style example of the Federal (or maybe Georgian) (or maybe Classical) Revival. Whenever an exact architectural label eludes one, tack on the word "Revival" and almost anything will work. A New York architect by the name of A.J. Bodker did the alteration. The same family has lived here for 228 years.

My Favorite House in Philadelphia (1st post of 4)

Preservoids and Hysterical Society members - among whose numbers I count myself - refer to this building as the Fell-Van Rensselaer house. Completed in 1901 at the corner of 18th and Walnut, it is the work of the famous Boston architectural firm of Peabody and Stearns. In 1898, Alexander Van Rensselaer had the good sense, and apparently the pedigree, to marry the recently widowed daughter of Anthony Drexel. The former Sara Drexel Fell is said to have paid for the house herself, hence the appelation Fell-Van Rensselaer house. To my eye, it exemplifies everything that is right about "Beaux Arts" houses. It is a beautifully balanced composition, erudite in its detail, gracious in scale and proportion, and totally appropriate to the lives of the people who built it. Besides finance, Mr. Van Rensselaer was a founder and longtime President of the Philadelphia Orchestra, as well as a Board President of Drexel Institute. His wife died in 1929, he followed her in 1933, after which the house remained shut throughout the Depression. In 1942 the estate finally rented it to the Pennsylvania Athetic Club rowing association. No doubt overjoyed to at last get warm bodies in the place, they probably took whatever the club could pay for rent. Penn Athletic's tenancy wasn't long term, however, and the house was soon empty again.

Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) photos (2nd post of 4)

In September of 1974, a photographer named George Eisenman took a series of 10 photos of the Van Rensselaer house for the Historic American Buildings Survey. It looks like he got there in the nick of time, as demolition is clearly in progress. The scale, detail, quality and much of the original layout of the house has not yet been destroyed. That big drawing room overlooks Rittenhouse Square, and one can well imagine the Persian rugs, carved tables, silk shaded lamps, gilt framed pictures and comfortable upholstered pieces that must once have sat beneath that elaborate ceiling. Compare the wall moldings in the third image with the contemporary image in the post below. The hall view was taken on the second floor. That curved railing in the distance overlooks the main hall below; the stair in the foreground rises to an unusual third floor balcony that also overlooks the main hall. There's a HABS image of that too in the post below. The last image shows a small decorated dome that was located just inside the front door. Its destruction seems particularly gratuitous.

1975 Alteration by Design Research (3rd post of 4)

Design Research, founded in Cambridge, MA in 1953, billed itself as America's first "lifestyle store." It promoted a fresh, innovative, often Scandinavian aesthetic in everything from furniture to clothing. We first heard of Marimekko thanks to D/R. The firm reached a high water mark in 1974 when founder/architect Ben Thompson rented the old Van Rensselaer mansion on Rittenhouse Square for the then substantial sum of $64,000/year. Old houses like 1801 Walnut St. weren't considered to have much architectural merit in the 1970s. Thompson accordingly tore out every wall, fireplace, railing and molding in the place, and substituted a sort of post-apocalyptic drama for the original Edwardian elegance. The stained and leaded glass dome over the staircase remains, but the staircase beneath it is substantially altered. Note how the marble fireplace in the HABS view of the original main hall is now truncated by the modern staircase. Ghosts of moldings scraped off in the course of alteration are visible in original condition in one of the HABS images in the post above. Design Research went bust at the end of the 1970s - possibly the victim of a curse hurled by some god of architecture. The building now houses the Philadelphia branch of Anthropologie.