"THIS GARDEN WAS MADE IN 1901 AND NAMED WELD"

So reads an inscription on a garden wall at the subject of today's post.  I warn the reader, that though the text runs under 700 words, there are over 20 pictures, so lush the material available to illustrate this story--and what point a blog if not to be able to well illustrate a point?

One who read the January 19th post about Faulkner Farm, the Sprague/Brandegee estate and garden at Brookline, Massachussets, may experience a sense of deja vu, for the outlines of the two stories are more than a little similar:  An heiress granddaughter of Boston shipping magnate William Fletcher Weld marries, buys a hilltop estate on ancestral land in Brookline from a cousin, hires Charles Adams Platt to design a garden that becomes one of the most famous of its time, and has architect Herbert Browne enlarge the already large house. It does all have a rather familiar ring, doesn't it?  Now for the ways in which the story is different...

Isabel and Larz Anderson, by Philip de Lazlo (collection of Society of the Cincinnati)

Isabel Weld Perkins was born in 1877, and was the first cousin of Mary Pratt Sprague of Faulkner Farm, born 6 years earlier.  In 1897 Miss Perkins married Paris-born diplomat Larz Anderson, a grandson of Nicholas Longworth of Cinncinnati (as was the husband of Alice Roosevelt).  In 1899, the Andersons purchased the 64 acre estate of her cousin, William Weld.  In 1901, casting an admiring, or perhaps envious (history doesn't record which) eye on the famous garden that Charles Adams Platt had designed for her cousin on the next hilltop, a mere half-mile away, she hired the now famous architect to design a garden for her estate, which she named 'Weld' after her grandfather.  This garden, more elaborate than the garden at Faulkner Farm, was no less a sensation, and joined it as one of the most published and influential landscapes of the early 20th century---the formal gardens by which all others would be judged.

A photograph of Charles Adams Platt's model of a preliminary design  for the new garden at Weld (Architectural Record)

The plan of the garden as executed.  The house was at bottom of this plan

The completed garden

His commissions for the Weld cousins were unusual in the Platt oeuvre, as both involved pre-existing houses.  In most of his work, Platt designed both house and garden, with perfect integration between outdoors and indoors.  The Anderson garden at Weld was further unusual in that it was not visible from the house, unlike the garden at Faulkner Farm, but rather accessed across the bowling green that fronted the house, and thence by paths that approached the garden from the side.  The main garden was built on a terrace pushed out from the hillside, and featured a center panel of grass, flanked by parterres, and surrounded by terraces that effected changes in levels and vistas.  As at Faulkner Farm, a king's ransom in antique Italian sarcophagi, urns and columns ornamented the garden.  Accompanying the main garden were the usual complement of cutting garden, a rock garden, greenhouses, nursery gardens, wild gardens, and an allee.   At the base of the hill lay a private polo field, and between it and the main gate on Newton Street, was  an ornamental lake, with bridges and a domed temple at its head.  In a generous civic gesture, the high stucco wall that sheiled the estate from the road was pierced with an elegant wrought iron screen to give passers by a vista of this Arcadian scene

 Two views of the lake as it appears today

The Andersons now turned their eye briefly toward Washington, where they intended to spend half the year for Mr. Anderson's diplomatic career.  They hired Herbert Browne, the architect of the main house at Faulkner Farm, to design a large townhouse based on early 18th century London precedents.  As with  many of Browne's works, it displayed the same bold juxtapositions of scale and liberty with details that characterized his style.

The entrance court of the Anderson's Washington town house (HABS)

Garden front of the Washington house (HABS)

The Washington house completed, the Andersons dispatched Browne back to Brookline, where a new brick wing in Baroque style was added, becoming the main facade on the garden side.  Supposedly, the new wing was modeled after Lulworth Castle.  This viewer does not see the resemblance. At any rate, not yet 30, Isabel Anderson was mistress of two of the grandest establishments in America.

 The main house at Weld as it appeared when purchased by the Andersons (Digital Commonwealth)

The same view after addition of the new wing fronting the bowling green (Smithsonian Library of American Gardens)

The new wing from the bowling green (Museum of Transportatioin)

 Two views of the library (Museum of Transportation collection)

The Brighton Pavilion and 18th century Dresden have an uneasy meeting in the ballroom.

A garden room overlooking the library had murals likely by George Porter Fernald, a frequent collaborator with the architect.

Larz Anderson was appointed Ambassador to Japan in 1912.  Their time there was to have a profound effect on the Andersons, and upon their return to America, Weld was to receive a layer of Japanese art and gardening to add to its Beaux Arts splendors.   A large bronze eagle that had been in their garden in Tokyo was installed in a new Japanese garden built adjacent to the cutting gardens.  A room in the house was sheathed in simple Japanese style (although retaining its baroque mantel), and a superb collection of Bonsai was housed in one of the conservatories (this collection is now at the Arnold Arboretum in neighboring Jamaica Plain).

The Japanese Garden, top, and Bonsai collection, bottom

Life continued along pleasantly, glamorously, for the Andersons.  Isabel published memoirs of their world travels, Larz retired in 1913 from Diplomatic service, and they devoted their time to philanthopic affairs.  The Depression seems to have been little felt by them.  Larz Anderson died in 1937, and Isabel in 1948.  They were childless, and with no children to carry on their estates (or even sell and subdivide them), Mrs. Anderson left the Washington house to the Society of the Cincinnati, which maintains it in superb condition as a house museum and headquarters.  With equally good intentions, she left Weld, and all its contents, from personal papers and furnishings to the 16 cars  in the garage, to the Town of Brookline, for the enjoyment of the public.

 The carriage house and garage at Weld, now the Museum of Transportation

It is likely that Isabel Anderson's concept of public enjoyment was a more genteel one than the one that emerged.  She doubtless pictured the house and its collections open to public view, and the lovely grounds available for public strolls and picnics.  The 1950's were a bad time for great houses and gardens, however, and the Powers That Be in Brookline had a few ideas of their own.  The polo field was replaced by a baseball diamond--no harm there, and doubtless more democratic.  The huge carriage barn and garage, with the Anderson's 45 year's worth of elegant cars became an auto museum.  The ornamental lake remained much the same.  The house did not fare so well.  Totally neglected by the early 50's, it's collections were dispersed, and the house demolished.  Next to go were the gardens, also neglected.  In a spectacularly ignominious act, they were partially demolished in favor of the most elegantly sited ice rink in America.  It is hard to begrudge the happy citizenry their hockey rink, clearly much loved and muh used, but equally it is undeniable that to build it there can only be construed as a wanton act of vandalism.  There were other flat spots on the property, and no doubt other flat spots in public ownership elsewhere in Brookline.  One can only imagine the planning meetings----'man, that sunken garden sure would make a great ice rink---we'll just get rid of some of that old statuary, bring in a bulldozer, and Bob's your uncle!.'

Plan of the estate.  House and main garden at center (Museum of Transportation)

And approximately the same view today, with skating rink in formal garden, and steel maintenance sheds in cutting and kitchen gardens.

And in case you missed it, the hockey rink

Sad, very sad. Following are pictures of the garden in its heyday.

Entrance to the Bowling green

Exedra bench on the Bowling green

 Views of the main garden, now ice rink.

 Cutting garden

THE END

For the companion post about Faulkner Farm, click HERE

FAULKNER FARM

One thinks of late 19th century Boston as the most traditional of American cities, and cedes grandeur to New York, and innovation to Chicago.  Yet, in Brookline, a fashionable inner suburb, could be found two of the giants of American architecture and landscape, H. H. Richardson and Frederick Law Olmsted, living  next door to each other.  Across the street was Charles Sprague Sargent, whose influence on landscape design was nearly as great as that of Olmsted himself, and around the corner could be found the country house of art collector Isabella Stewart Gardner.  And near century's end, down the road another mile or so,  one of Boston's greatest heiresses and her husband were about to create a garden that would have a profound effect on landscape design for the next three decades.

 John Singer Sargent, Mrs. Edward Deshon Brandegee (Mary Pratt Sprague) 1907

Mary Bryant Pratt was the granddaughter of William Fletcher Weld, a shipping magnate who owned one of America's largest fleets in the mid-19th century.  Her family had owned land in Brookline since the 17th century.  Following her 1891 marriage to former Park Commissioner and future Congressman Charles Sprague, they acquired the Faulkner farm and surrounding lands from her cousin, and proceeded to develop it as their country estate.  For their architect, they chose Herbert Browne of Little and Browne, a firm that pioneered the Colonial Revival.  Browne was an architect with  an eccentric flair, and his designs combined traditional form and detail with often loopy Baroque flourishes.   The Sprague house, started in 1896,  was no exception.  Sited just below the crest of a hill, the house was an enlarged version of the Federal style country estates that dotted the region a hundred years before.  The entrance front was another matter:  here proportions and scale mixed it up with a baroque arcade, and a giant curved pediment.  An elaborate fence and wall, 12 feet high, surrounded the forecourt.

 

The garden front as originally built, as enlarged in 1903, and as it appears today.

The upper terrace, above, and the middle terrace, below

 The lake, farm and greenhouses seen across the service drive

 Concurrent with the development of the house, the Spragues almost inevitably turned to the Olmstead firm, less than two miles away, for their landscape plan.  Charles Eliot was the associate in charge.  From the first, the landscape project was fraught with tensions.  Naturally, the clients had strong opinions of their own---Mrs. Sprague that she wanted a farm, as a picturesque foreground to the view from the house---Mr. Sprague wanted the landscape terraced, not merely planted with shrubbery as in a public park.  It seemed that nothing Eliot came up with pleased the clients or the architect, although the trio pushed on.  Finally, a large formal terrace was created south of the house, drives were laid out, and relaid.  The main drive came in from stone gates on Allandale Street in the neighboring town of Jamaica Plain, and travelled uphill in a straight, impressive line, past the elegant stables and carriage house, for a quarter mile until one passed through an enormous and elaborate iron gate to the forecourt of the house.

The forecourt gates.  The giant statue of Juno in the distance required twelve oxen to haul into place after it arrived from Italy.

The entrance front and forecourt, as originally built, top, and as enlarged in 1903, center and bottom

The situation soon became untenable, and the Olmstead firm was dismissed.  On the recommendation of the their family physician, for whom he had completed a house and garden, the Spragues hired Charles Adams Platt, a relatively unknown artist turned amateur architect who had been making waves in Cornish New Hampshire with a series of small country houses and gardens that merged Italian and New England sensibilities. Half a dozen years before, after spending time in Italy, Platt, then known as an etcher and painter, published a volume about Italian gardens, which had been well received, and was well positioned to an audience ready for a shift in taste at the end of the century.

 A comparison of the plans of Villa Gamberaia, above, and Faulkner Farm, below, shows how well Platt utilized what he had learned in his studies of Italian gardens.

For his first large scale project, Platt turned again to his beloved Italian models, in particular the Villa Gamberaia in Tuscany, whose siting on a terrace at the edge of a hill was so similar to that of Faulkner Farm.  It is hard today, so familiar are we with gardens inspired by this one, to understand how radically fresh the design was to late 19th century eyes, used to either the studied naturalness of Olmstead or the stiff grandeur of the French Beaux Arts..  For the garden, Platt built a  1/2 acre terrace east and below the main terrace, on axis with a drawing room window in the house.  Here he built a garden whose shape an siting were inspired by Gamberaia, with beds filled with flowers, loosely planted in a new painterly style, the whole framed by a peristyle centered on a casino based on one at the Villa Lante,  A pool in front of the casino reflected the architecture, and splashing fountains gave sound and dimension.   Antique sculptures found on travels to Italy gave the appropriate accents.  Long sight lines gave a constant sense of vista. At the hill summit, reached by stairs, was a natural bosquet, formally layed out, centered on a temple.

Top, stairs to bosquet from forecourt, and Bottom, the temple and Bosquet as they appear today.

The completed garden was a national sensation.  The first pictures of Faulkner Farm were published in Harper's Monthly in 1899, to universal acclaim, and it became possibly the most published in the world for the next 20 years, featured in practically every major design and gardening magazine, and at least two dozen books.  Platt's reputation was secured, and for the next 20 years he was to become America's premier country house architect, repeating and refining his formula for many of the finest designs of his day.

The Spragues were generous with their creation, permitting the public to visit on Wednesdays through the summer months, in a time less concerned with security and privacy than today.  In keeping with one of America's greatest gardens, their head gardener, H. W. Craig, was for many years the president of the Gardener's Association of America.

The Casino, top, in the main garden was inspired by one at the Villa Lante, bottom

The main cross axis of the garden, seen from the driveway, top, and looking from garden across drive to steps to bosquet, bottom

Two Views of the casino and pool.

The main garden and casino.  Top, an early 20th century handcolored slide, Center, as it appeared after simplification of plantings, an the lowering of the casino roof, 1920's, and Bottom, as it appears today.

Interior of the casino, with Pompeiian style frescoes

In 1902, while his wife was in Egypt with the children, Charles F. Sprague died of a brain disease.  For the next two years, Mrs. Sprague threw herself into renovations and improvements on the estate.  The house was clad in brick, and a third floor, taller than the original second floor, was added.   A ballroom wing replaced the marble pergola on the upper terrace.  The neoclassical ballroom was one of the grandest private rooms in the Boston area, with allegorical ceiling murals by Allan Schwartz, Gobelins tapestries on the walls, and ending in a domed rotunda that would have done Pavlosk palace proud.  On the south wall, six tall French doors opened into a huge conservatory, in turn opening onto the terrace.  With ground floor and mezzanine, the house now had five floor levels.

View of the house from the casino, c. 1900, and today.  The view from the casino was compromised by the greatly enlarged house and the intrusion of the ballroom wing.

A pergola on the upper terrace was sacrificed for the addition of a ballroom wing, a necessity lacking in the original house.

In 1905, Mrs. Sprague remarried, to a friend of her husband's, Utica clothing manufacturer Edward S. Brandegee, and life continued much as before.  In the 1920's, the main flower garden was simplified, and the casino inexplicably remodeled, the arch removed and the roof lowered.  Stone paths replaced gravel, the parterres were replaced by simpler borders around an open expanse of lawn to accomodate large gatherings.  The statuary collection was reduced, and the garden took on the form it has today.

Handcolored slides of the garden in the late 1920's. (Smithsonian Institution)

Mr. Brandegee died in 1942, Mrs. Brandegee in 1953.  Amazingly, Faulkner Farm, now know as the Brandegee estate, or as Allandale Farm, is still in the hands of her descendants.  150 acres remain of the original 192, and are still operated as a working farm, complete with seasonal farm stand, the last remaining farm in greater Boston.  The main house has not been occupied as a residence for many years.  After being leased for many years to the Academy of Arts & Sciences, it is now offices, and occasionally used for private functions, including last year's wedding of John Kerry's daughter Vanessa.  The stables and carriage house are leased to the Boston police department, and house the department's Mounted and K-9 training units. 

The carriage house

Much of this story is a well known chapter in design history, but I have been mesmerized since childhood by Platt's artistic creation, and offer it here for my readers pleasure.  Unbelievably, on a neighboring hilltop, the entire program was to be performed again, by the same team of designers, for Mrs. Brandegee's cousin.  Stay tuned for that story.

For an in-depth account of the creation of Faulkner Farm, I recommend Alan Emmet's wonderful book, So Fine a Prospect, Historic New England Gardens, which also includes the story of Hamilton House, remodeled by Herbert Browne, featured in a previous Dilettante post.  (Click HERE for that post)

And, being the Down East Dilettante, how do I bring this story back to my part of Maine?  With this photo of Birnam, a cottage at Bar Harbor, designed by Rotch & Tilden, where the Brandegees held forth summers.