IMITATION IS THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY, #7

My morning distraction was set in motion by an 18th century engraving of the Cabinet de Treillage at the Petite Trianon at Versailles.

I'm something of a geek (I could stop there, but do let's soldier on) about how designs travel and how they are re-invented in each iteration.

In 1799, Samuel McIntire, a self-taught carver, carpenter, and architect in Salem, Massachusetts, was engaged in his largest residential project, one of the grandest houses of its era in America, for the merchant Elias Hasket Derby.  

The program included a summer house for the garden, and this sketch by McIntire, for a Palladian-inspired garden folly, is thought to be a preliminary sketch for that structure.

Photograph of Derby-Beebe summer house by Joel Abroad, via Flickr Creative Commons

However, as built, the garden house had a flat roof with balustrade, ornamented with 8 urns carved by McIntire.  It is a charming structure, with the refined naive elegance and economy of design that typifies the architecture of New England of that era, wood standing in for the stone that would have been used in Europe.  And this is why the engraving electrified me this morning, for it appears that Mr. McIntire had got his hands upon a book of French designs, as in a departure from his usual Palladian and neo-classical inspiration, he seems to have based the design on the Cabinet de Treillage.  Or perhaps it's mere coincidence?

Cabinet de Treillage, Versailles

Coincidence or inspiration, the two buildings have unmistakable similarities of composition.  For your final consideration, I offer up this charming storefront, designed for the Pennel, Gibbs and Quiring decorating firm in Boston in the early 20th century.  By architects doubtless Beaux Arts trained, it takes the idea of the Derby-Beebe summer house and dresses it up in correct Academic orders (the treillage pavilion uses trellised pilasters of no particular order, and the summer house uses Corinthian, properly not for lower floors), but the design still appears to owe a debt to the earlier building in Salem--although a learned friend disagrees with me, I stick by this.  I leave it to the interested reader to draw his own conclusions.

When Elias Derby's great house fell to the wreckers, not many years after it was built, the summer house was moved to a family farm in Wakefield, later acquired by the Beebe family.  In the 20th century, the summer house was removed from the farm and returned to Salem, to the grounds of the Peabody-Essex Museum. Derby had another summer house designed by McIntire on his Danvers estate, which was spared demolition and traveled to his Granddaughter's "Glen Magna Farm", where it remains today..  It is one of the most exquisite buildings of the Early Republic, and spawned its own host of imitators, including wings of a cottage in Bar Harbor.  But that is a story for another day.

IMITATION IS THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY: YELLOW HOUSE

Few architects  had more impact on a region's built environment than Fred Savage, who practiced 100 years ago and more on Mt. Desert Island, and whose houses practically define the architecture of Northeast Harbor.   In the 1880's, he worked as a draftsman for Peabody & Stearns before setting up his own practice back home on Mt. Desert, and his early shingle style houses, large and small,  demonstrate that he learned the lessons of that office well.

The H.A.C. Taylor house at Newport

Peabody & Stearns were not the only firm who inspired him.  Savage clearly admired the work of McKim, Mead & White, arguably the most influential firm of their era.   In 1885, they designed one of the seminal houses of the era, the first great formal Colonial Revival house, for H.A.C. Taylor in Newport Rhode Island. Drawing inspiration from many early American sources, yet copying no house, it was a sensation, and was to inspire a generation of similar houses. Pictured below is just one random example, the home of a Mr. Parker  in Detroit, designed by Rogers & McFarlane, published in American Architect in 1897

Here in Maine, there are several spiritual design descendants of the Taylor house--among them is 'York Hall', built for  the Sewalls, owners of the Bath Iron Works shipbuilding firm.  Another great square 'Colonial' house, it has more than a whiff of both the Taylor house and the iconic 18th century home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in Cambridge, itself one of the most copied of early American houses.

'York Hall', the Sewall mansion in Bath,  1897. (Photo via Swan Agency)

But  my favorites among the offspring of the Taylor house is 'The Yellow House' also known as 'Rock End Colonial', in Northeast Harbor.  It is a bijou homage to the Taylor house, designed by Savage in 1892 for his brother Herman as a rental cottage in the grounds of the family's Rock End hotel.  Its precise and formal form, a decorated square on a raised foundation and high pitched roof contrasts effectively with the shingled cottages that surround it.

'The Yellow House'

 Savage referenced many details of the Taylor house in 'The Yellow House', including the broken arch pediment of the central dormer of the garden front, and the 'Salem' portico of the entrance, but made themfinished work his  own, with a Palladian window in the highly decorated dormer opening onto the balcony of the portico.  The white trim contrasting with yellow clapboards perfectly reference a traditional old Maine color scheme, as on the Kavanaugh house below.

Kavanaugh House at Damariscotta, Maine, an early 19th century Federal, with many of the sorts of elements  (and traditional New England color scheme) that inspired the later revivalist houses above

In later years, the 'The Yellow House' achieved footnote in architectural history, when it was owned by portraitist Betsy Flagg (Mrs. John) Melcher, who occupied it for many summers with her mother, Mrs. Ernest Flagg, widow of the famed Beaux Arts architect whose own portfolio included the Singer Building, one of the early great skyscrapers.