The Driveway Gate
Last weekend's post about Vizcaya brought some marvelous comments and emails, and so I will do two more posts of these early photos of the dream palace created by James Deering and his talented designers. This post is a quickie intermezzo---the next post will bring the sublime courtyard and jaw dropping interiors when they were brand new old.
Approach to house from circular court at junction of drives
One of the comments on the last post led me to the excellent blog for Vizcaya's gift shop, which includes many interesting early photos and informational bits about this most wonderful place, definitely worth checking out. Here is the link: http://vizcayamuseumshop.blogspot.com/
And here are the pictures. The color photos are from National Geographic, November, 1950, when Deering's nieces still owned Vizcaya, which became public property three years later, and the black and white photos are from the first published photo shoot of Vizcaya, from Architectural Review, July, 1917.
So maybe keeping a gondolier on staff was a bit much.....
This photo of the barge terrace is also a good example of why
we are in so much trouble as libraries continue to de-accession
primary materials for scanned versions of uncertain quality.
Toward the yacht landing from the house terrace, flags snapping in the breeze
South Facade, grass terrace steps, service building to left
Gate to Service Yard West side of terrace
The balancing wall of the orchid garden on the east side
The North facade, with entrance to the billiard room and bowling alley in Basement
For part I of this post, please click HERE
For part III of this post, please click HERE
10 comments:
amazing stuff - esp. thanx for the blog link. that chinioserie room - sorry, but i copied it and ate the picture. what an imagination.
there's a pic on the blog looking back at the house with the barge on the right - how much of all that is still left?
you can post more of these houses anytime. any chance on an "Aerie" post. i've been to the gardens and the gardener at Thuja said "Thuja shows what you can do with a lot of money and the Rockefeller gardens show what you can do with a s**tload of money".
security word def - "pation" - what i was at the hospital
TPR, I definitely have an Eyrie post in the works...sometimes getting all the pictures together, AND getting my head around how I want to tell the story (and how much space I want to use telling it) doesn't come together....I've got half a dozen of those posts that won't quite gel--- The Eyrie, Brooke Astor's house at Northeast Harbor, some more Asher Benjamin (sorry, I know how you hate the simple New England stuff, but I like everything good..big, small, modern, ancient...), etc.
And yes, that drawing room is good enough to eat.
Just around the same time, much further inland (Lake Forest Illinois), in the very same style, on the same grand scale, also funded by International Harvester was Villa Turicum. Built between 1908-18 by Harorld and Edith McCormick, designed by Architect Charles Platt. Interesting, no?
http://villaturicum.blogspot.com/
http://www.joenisil.com/mccormick/mccormick.htm
ps - make sure to click the blog link and go to the vizcaya website and watch the pbs video - really well done. you'd never know the diocese was there. why do people think because the catholic church is involved that they'll do the right thing? i would have given it to the Levitts first.
security word def - "gradwain" - 19th century vehicular gift to a high school senior.
ps - dilletante - i suppose all that simple straightforward, didn't have to think much to come up with it, NE architecture is interesting to non-colonists. i only rail about it because there's so much more interesting (and vanishing or vanished) stuff out there. AB et al had the proportion, the symmetry, yada yada down but they just copied it from the greeks and romans. how hard was that. i have a t square and triangle too but that doesn't make me a great architect.
things like vizcaya even are copies but things like laurelton hall or the burden house (i know, i know -they're all houses - don't even say it) escape from the copy mold. that's all i'm saying. even I like impressive colonials and federals like the art museum house in portland and the ruggles house but i like wingwood, some of the nmizner (la ronda) and good Wright (ennis) better. eg - get on bing maps and go look at 174 Summer St, Bristol, CT.
Looking forward to Eyrie but i know you're busy getting set up to suck those tourist dollars out of their pockets. can't fault you there.
security word def - "trumarse" - slave's reply to the Colonel's comment about the coming civil conflict.
pps - for the Architectural Record issue of 1912 with lots of pix on Villa Turicum go to a site called "Digital Past"
I don't know Turner Pack Rats but we seem to be occupied by the word verification thingy. I don't believe in an higher power, but I might get sucked in by a giant database (HAL of 2001 reborn?) who throws out these crumbs and see who bites.
I thing that progress is a slippery slope. The 19th century had its beautiful leather cases fitted for tools and instruments and we get crap entombed in the plastic from hell.
I think it is why we are drawn to the remains of beauty. And thank you for sharing.
TPR: my code today is goeinal. As in going into nothing?
I commented on Aesthete's Lament earlier today, and though I forget the word now, I was blown away at the moment by how apt to my comment the fake word was. There is definitely someone with a sense of humor hiding inside the comment machine, cranking out those words.
'The Remains of Beauty' The Vizcaya story is sad. Although what remains is still devastatingly beautiful, some bad decisions were made along the way---the selling of the south lagoons (before the environmental movement which would have prevented it) without protective covenants, and a glass roof over the courtyard for which there is no excuse, although the director at the time, against all protests, made plenty of excuses to build it.
Oh my gosh that pool is fantastic, can I have it ;)?
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