An Early Down East Orchard Reborn

I went to a tree planting this morning, a perfect activity for a Spring day Down East.  And no ordinary tree planting was this. It was for the recreation of an early 19th century orchard in its original location.  Nothing is too arcane for this Dilettante.

  The Jonathan Fisher House, built to Fisher's own design in 1814.  In foreground, Tim Seabrook gives a planting lesson

The Jonathan Fisher House in Blue Hill, Maine, is the carefully preserved homestead designed and built in 1814 by the town's first settled minister, a 1793 graduate of Harvard, who remains well known today as a folk artist, diarist, farmer and author, entrepreneur, surveyor, and all around Yankee Renaissance man, a rural answer to Jefferson, a true product of the Age of Reason.

 Self-Portrait by Jonathan Fisher, 1824 (Collection of Jonathan Fisher House)

 A Morning View of Blue Hill Village, 1824, by Jonathan Fisher.  The Fisher Farm is visible at the center horizon. (Collection of Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine)

Although the Fisher House has been open as a Museum for 55 years, , the two acre home grounds that survive of the original 300 acre farm were long neglected, and had overgrown with invasive bittersweet, bracken and swamp maples.   As the board of directors started to take control of this jungle, the remnants of stone walls began to re-appear, and the 19th century lay-out became apparent.  Fortuitously, Fisher's hand-drawn map of those two acres survives in the collection of the Farnsworth Library & Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, complete with a chart of the fruit trees planted there originally.   The board of the Fisher House decided  to bring the agricultural  story of the property to the fore, and to recreate the orchard.

 Jonathan Fisher's c. 1820 map of his home grounds, showing orchard and listing varieties (Collection of the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine)

 Fisher's 4 x great-granddaughter, Louise Fisher Abbot, offered to fund the clearing and restoration of the fields, in memory of her three late sisters. (Jonathan Fisher had also had four daughters)  With this generous gift in hand, the Fisher House board was able to proceed with planning.   Enter at this point, the current Congregational minister, Robert McCall, author of the Awanjanado Almanac, who himself maintains an orchard at his parsonage.   He brought to the committee Leslie Cummins and Tim Seabrook of Five Star Nursery in Brooklin, Maine, who have made their life work the preservation and propagation of early varieties of apples grown in Maine.  

 A page from Jonathan Fisher's Sketchbook, c. 1815, showing two apples, believed to be Golden Russets, on a pewter plate (watercolor, collection of Jonathan Fisher House)

Planning commenced.  Fisher's chart was examined, the space available measured, practical considerations like budget and manpower available weighed, and a plan began to take shape.   It was decided that a reduced scale adaptation of the orchard could be achieved.   Amazingly, one huge tree, labeled on the original plan as a 'St. Germain Pear', survived from 1820, and now anchors the new orchard.  

 Detail from Morning View of Blue Hill Village, showing the Fisher Farm, orchard at right center.

Looking toward the house today.  The 200 year old pear tree partially obscures the ell, with a newly planted section of orchard to the right.

An 1888 view of the Fisher Farm from the street.  The pear tree is at left.

Another fascinating feature of the orchard is that Fisher clearly intended it to be ornamental as well as useful (He often ventured from this post on the Eastern frontier to Boston, where he saw urban schemes and the new country estates then being built around Boston, and visited with relatives, including the landscape painter Alvin Fisher).   Radiating out from the parlor windows of the house, splitting the orchard in two, he indicated a fan allee, widening from the house as it took in the spectacular view from his hilltop of Blue Hill Mountain, Blue Hill Village and Bay, and the mountains of Mt. Desert Island in the distance.   This is probably the earliest known planned landscape feature in Maine.   It was considered essential to duplicate this feature, although the view is long since lost to tree growth (and were the trees to disappear today, would focus directly on the rear of a supermarket a quarter mile away between Fisher House and the Harbor.)  

Rev. Rob McCall, Louise Fisher Abbot, and Leslie Cummins of Five Star Nursery plant a cherry tree, descended from the original planted in this spot

For trees, two of Fisher's original varieties, golden Roxbury Russets and a Pippin could be located.  It was decided to also make the orchard a public home for other known pre 1850 (Fisher died in 1847 )varieties that were known to have been grown locally.  Additionally, cherry trees descended from Fisher's original stock of 'English cherries' still existed, handed down from Farmer to farmer around town, and were donated.  Lastly, scion wood was taken to be grafted from the pear tree to ensure future stock.

A cage is then erected around the trees to protect them from Giant Maine Hooved Rats, a marauding pest sometimes more picturesquely referred to as 'deer' by the tourists.

Which brings us to this morning.   The trees were put up for 'adoption', and all were spoken for, and this morning, with apple trees in bloom, members of the community gathered and planted 'their' trees, in the spots where Jonathan Fisher had planted similar ones nearly 200 years ago.  Rev. McCall spoke a few words to bless the trees, and with that, Fisher's great-great-great-great granddaughter helped to plant one of the cherry trees descended from those first ones, in the very spots where the originals had grown.

 Spring, by Jonathan Fisher, 1820 (Collection of Jonathan Fisher House)

For more about Jonathan Fisher's House and art, visit their website:  www.jonathanfisherhouse.org  Their blog:  http://jonathanfisherhouse.blogspot.com/

An entertaining general biography is Mary Ellen Chase's Jonathan Fisher, Maine Parson (Houghton Mifflin); or Versatile Yankee, the Art of Jonathan Fisher by Alice Winchester, former editor of Antiques Magazine, (Pyne Press, Princeton University).  A new biography, exploring Fisher's art & life,  by Kevin Murphy of CUNY, is to be published in July by University of Massachusetts Press. http://www.umass.edu/umpress/fall_09/murphy.htm

The Jonathan Fisher House is considered one of Maine's most important historic sites, and contains extraordinary collections.  It may be visited July-October, Thur, Fri, Sat. 1-4, and other times by prior arrangement.

This Week's Reads

For the gentle reader hoping for insights to an obscure new novel, check in another time.  The Dilettante is all about picture books this week (as he is most others).

After all the brouhaha that's been going about, including Christopher Petkanas' mean-ish piece in the New York Times (I'm not going to bother link to it, you've all read it), I'm reading Duane Hampton's ode to her late husband, Mark Hampton, An American Decorator (Rizzoli).  And yes, I know I'm late to this party.  I waited for the local library to get it.   I've always been neutral about Mark Hampton---some of his work I like very much, some I find lacking or derivative .  I barely dare say it out loud, because his fans are a loyal lot who, having crowned their God, will not brook any criticism.  Sarah Palin fans are wimps by comparison. Therefore, I am relieved to say that I like the book far better than I expected to.  Mrs. Hampton writes intelligently and lovingly, even objectively ,about her husband's work, and the best is very good indeed---and that is mostly what she has chosen here.

Susan & Carter Burden's first New York apartment, from Mark Hampton.  I like this.  How could I not with that art? (For a post about Carter Burden's uncle's house in Maine, click here)

I'm alternating Mark Hampton with Peabody & Stearns:  Country Houses & Seaside Cottages by Annie Robinson (W.W. Norton).   This book is way overdue, a serious history of the firm that was probably second only to McKim Mead & White in importance in the late 19th and early 20th century.  They were also among the major innovators in what we now call the shingle style, and that development is fully covered here.   The printing is beautiful and crisp with wonderfully reproduced vintage photos supplemented with modern material (take note Acanthus Press, publisher of seriously over-inked illustrations).  My only criticism is that the designer is guilty of one of the Dilettante's biggest annoyances in book design----the dread split gutter illustration.  What looks great on a flat layout rarely works as well once it's on the open pages of a tightly bound book, splitting the image in two and destroying the impact.  But a small quibble.  I'm enjoying the book enormously, and gasp, am even learning a few things.

K

Kragsyde, Manchester-by-the-Sea Massachussets, one of Peabody & Stearns most famous houses.  Many lesser known, but no less wonderful designs are featured in this book

I'm putting both aside now----I'm going to read Claudia Pierpont's The Dignity of Duke Ellington, next up  in this week's New Yorker, and if I'm still awake after, the May issue of World of Interiors is calling me---there's a seriously delicious library in a house in Kensington, and Jorge Pardo's house has me ready to sell up and move to Mexico.  

When I'm through with Hampton and Peabody and Stearns and Ellington, I'm hoping to have in hand the new Beatrix Farrand, Private Gardens, Public Landscapes, by Judith Tankard.  Although Farrand has been excellently covered in a couple of earlier books, this one has the largest format, and draws more heavily on the Farrand archives at Berkeley, as well as the Garden Club of America's amazing lanterns slide collection at the Smithsonian, resulting in much excellent material. I've flipped through it at the local bookstore, and it is gorgeous.  Farrand summered nearby in Bar Harbor, and designed many of the finest landscapes in this region ( a couple of which I will be posting about in weeks to come, now that garden season is here).   The vintage color photograph of the lost Satterlee garden at Great Head in Bar Harbor, a subtle masterpiece of site appropriate design, very different from the grand gardens she is most famous for, is alone worth the price of this book for me.  Another must-own is the collection of Farrand's own writings in The Bulletins of Reef Point Gardens, reprinted several years ago with a new introduction by Paula Dietz.  (Ms. Dietz once kindly wrote a couple of paragraphs about the Dilettante in the New York Times.  Many, many years ago.   I still fondly remember the fact checking department ringing me up before publication, to ask if I was still indeed 36, or had I turned 37?  That's a newspaper with a passion for accuracy.  And for those who care, I am long since past 37.  Way past.)

That's it.  No big intellectual revelations here.  But, if some of my choices this week interest you, let me urge you to think about ordering them from your local independent bookseller, and not from Amazon just so you can save that $10.00 that you'd only waste on something else anyway (unless you're really really really better than most of us).   Amazon is all good and well, but when the independents are gone, something will truly be lost.  One of my favorite commentators told me the other day about a Noel Coward record  he was seeking that was misfiled at Amazon under Christmas (Noel).   I prefer a world where people who know and love the material shelve it, read it, listen to it, recommend it.

And if you aren't lucky enough to have an independent bookseller anymore, I'd be glad to recommend our local bookstore--they couldn't be better.

Sappho and the Amazon Down East

While looking for something else in my overstuffed  files, this old postcard fell out from between two folders, and immediately, I thought about the story it contained.

 Ban-y-Bryn, entrance front

Albert Clifford Barney was from Cincinnati, the heir to a large industrial fortune.  In the late 19th century, he and his artistic wife Alice--who before Mr. Barney had been engaged to the explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley--- and their daughters Natalie and Laura arrived in Bar Harbor to occupy Ban-y-Bryn, their newly built cottage on a craggy hill overlooking Eden Street and Frenchman's Bay. 

Alice Pike Barney

Designed by Sidney Stratton, Ban-y-Bryn was a somewhat unconventional house, of indefinable style, considered 'modern' in style by one writer, but compared to a medieval castle by another. Built on the edge of a steep bluff, with mountains on one side, and the ocean spread out below on the other, the house had 27 rooms on four floors---including  a top floor studio for Mrs. Barney, major rooms fitted with exotic and expensive woods, and kitchen and services on the ground floor.. 

A portrait of young Nathalie Barney painted by her mother, Alice Pike Barney

Rich and charming, the Barneys were an immediate social hit in Bar Harbor, and for the next two decades, the society columns, local and international, covered the Barney's summer entertainments.   Many of these parties took the form of short plays and tableaux vivants, and were often written by the Barney's elder daughter, Natalie, who was soon destined for greater fame as Rene de Goncourt's famed Amazon, and, but for Gertrude Stein, the most famous American Lesbian writer/saloniste in Paris---a surprisingly large demographic in the early 20th century.  Unlike Stein, Barney was young and beautiful, and scandal and excitement attached her every move.

Ban-y-Bryn rose to four stories at the edge of a steep bluff

But, I am ahead of my story.  Already artistically inclined, Alice Barney's ambitions went beyond the usual High Society yearnings.   A chance encounter with Oscar Wilde, on his American  lecture tour, at a New Jersey beach (no, you did not misread that sentence:  Oscar Wilde.  New Jersey.  Beach.) gave Mrs. Barney  encouragement to devote her life to art.

Alice Barney's studio house in Washington, now the Latvian Embassy

The Barneys moved to Washington, not exactly a bohemian enclave, where Mrs. Barney created her famous studio house, as she pursued a career as a painter.  Poor Mr. Barney, a conventional, clubbable sort  of chap, was soon left behind in the melee, as wife and daughters each pursued a different Eastern religion, dabbled in various other exotic pursuits, and generally enjoyed their privileged, self-consciously bohemian lives.
                                        

Nathalie Barney and Renee Vivien in 1900, the year that Vivien visited Bar Harbor with Nathalie

Not the typical late Victorian debutante, young Natalie's every move attracted endless attention in even in the relatively casual environs of Bar Harbor.  Scandalously, she rode horseback western style, rather than sidesaddle, and caused furor for the dashing speeds at which she drove her carriage..  One of her tableaux vivants was a play based on the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, produced,with her family and friends as the cast, as a fundraiser for the local hospital,  The Barney's next door neighbor Walter Damrosch, conductor of the New York Philharmonic, played the Queen, whilst Natalie, in a glimpse of things to come, played the King.

Ban y Bryn is at left in this panorama of the Bar Harbor colony

And how did the Barneys arrive each summer in Bar Harbor?  They would board the Bar Harbor Express, a crack train of the New York Central, originating in Washington, which communicated between several major cities and the fashionable summer resorts.  After a pass through Ellsworth Maine, the train made its final stop a little further Down East at Hancock Point, where passengers would disembark and board a steamer that would glide them across the waters of Frenchman's Bay to Bar Harbor.  And the name of this steamer, that each season took the Barney daughters to their summer playground?   The Sappho.

Maine Central R.R. Steamship 'Sappho' leaving Bar Harbor

As for Ban-y-Bryn, it was one of the seventy large cottage that burned in the Bar Harbor Fire of 1947.

MRS. ASTOR DOWN EAST

Vincent Astor, principal heir to the Astor real estate fortune, publisher of Newsweek,  owner of the Hotel St. Regis, was by all accounts an irascible, difficult, yet generous, man.  He was married three times, each wife famous for her style.   I posted about his first wife, Helen Hull's, marvelous house on the Hudson last year, and An Aesthete's lament posted this picture of his second wife Minnie Cushing's drawing room.   His third wife Brooke Marshall's red library, by Albert Hadley, is one of the most famous rooms of the late 20th century.   Up here in Maine, the last Astor summer home, chintz-cozy 'Cove End' at Northeast Harbor, sits in sharp contrast to the chic of those others.

 Mrs. Astor at Cove End (Vanity Fair)

When widowed Brooke Marshall became the bride of Vincent Astor in 1953, the wedding took place in Bar Harbor, at Beach Croft, the new summer home of his friend Joseph Pulitzer II, who had demolished the family home, Chatwold, a few years earlier.  Vincent Astor had many ties to Bar Harbor--several of his cousins had summered there, his parents were regular visitors on their yacht Nourmahal in the 1890's, and after his father died in the Titanic disaster, his stepmother Madeline Force (whom he despised) first rented La Selva, a chateauesque cottage on the Eden Street shore, and then Islecote Cottage on the George Vanderbilt estate, Pointe d'Acadie.

Cove End, Entrance Front (All black & white photographs, George Davis, House Beautiful, May 1934)

After their marriage, Brooke and Vincent Astor divided their time between his New York apartment, and the former indoor Tennis Pavilion, which Brooke Astor hated, on Ferncliffe, his family estate at Rhinebeck.  Vincent Astor had sold the Astor house, Beechwood, at Newport, and they were temporarily without a summer home.  In 1953, while cruising off Mt. Desert Island they both agreed that they loved Maine, and decided to look at local real estate.   They were shown Cove End, a roomy and understated New England colonial design built in 1931 by Barton Eddison, a millionaire inventor.  Mr. Eddison's architects were Roger Griswold and and Millard Gulick of Little & Russell, and his landscape designer was Beatrix Farrand, who summered in nearby Bar Harbor.

The water front, facing Gilpatrick's Cove, as originally built (HB)

The house, not large by Mt. Desert Island standards, was a carefully studied adaptation of a classic Maine farmhouse.  A huge center chimney dominated the scheme, and a dormitory for the Eddison sons occupied the space over the large living room.  Not shown on the plan is a large suite of servant's rooms over the garage.  Included on the property were two guest cottages and a greenhouse and service garage.

 

The landscape was similarly understated---Beatrix Farrand was a master at the game of contextual design---grand and exotic when grand and exotic were what were needed, and understated and old fashioned, when that was what was appropriate, as here at Cove End.  The plantings were of old fashioned plants, lilacs, viburnum, and ferns, with a large cutting garden of irregular geometric beds near the greenhouses.  Sometime after the original design, a stone terrace was added to the water side of the house.

 

The cutting garden (Vogue)

 

The Astors purchased the house completely furnished with the Eddison's collection of New England country antiques, and added possessions of their own, including huge sofas that had been cut down from those that were originally used in the indoor pool at Ferncliffe.  After Vincent Astor's death, Mrs. Astor had the house freshened up by the ubiquitous Sister Parish.  Further freshening was performed over the years by Mrs. Astor's Northeast Harbor neighbor, Nancy Pierrepont, all in a comfortable chintz-and-hooked rug summer house idiom.  After Sister Parish's death, the living room was re-done by Mark Hampton.  Personally, I prefer the Parish version, less stiff and in colors well suited to the seaside,  but I include photos of both that the reader may decide for himself.  After all, taste is subjective, no?

 

Alcove in hall

The Living Room in its Sister Parish garb (Vogue)

Personal Note:  The unpleasant family squabbles about Mrs. Astor's late years were sparked by the broken promise to gift this house to a grandson.  Of all this I know little, other than I find the behavior of both sides faintly repellent, and shockingly contrary to the way my own family handled my grandmother's late years, but this quick memory of a visit to Cove End when Mrs. Astor was still in residence is what I can offer to the record.

Another view of the living room, looking out to the cove (John Dominus photograph, Architectural Digest, May 1986)

The living room as redecorated by Mark Hampton (Brian Vanden Brink, Architectural Digest, July 1996)

In the early 1980's, a friend, on magazine assignment to photograph the gardens, and I had tea on the terrace with Mrs. Astor.  She was, true to reputation, stunningly charming, kindly of manner, and a real pro, skillfully and quickly processing us before handing us over to the gardener for the garden shoot   The gardener was a terribly nice guy, obviously devoted to Mrs. Astor, and when one of our party gently (read inappropriately) inquired, as Mrs. Astor was then in her 80's, what would happen to the place after she died, the gardener replied that Astor's son, Mr. Marshall, had assured him that everything would go on  exactly as before, and not to worry.   That memory immediately resonated when I read that some 20 years later, after assuming ownership of the property, Mr. Marshall fired that same gardener by telephone.

Mrs. Astor at tea on the terrace with neighbor John Pierrepont (Dominus, AD)

Cove End today, while hardly shabby, no longer has the stunning level of maintenance and grooming that it had during Mrs. Astor's day, and the hundred foot long flower border along the fence between the shore road and the estate no longer groans with summer bounty of seven foot delphinium and bright annuals.

 

Sitting room as decorated by Nancy Pierrepont (Vanden Brink AD)

Mrs. Astor's bedroom, as decorated by Nancy Pierrepont ( Vanden Brink, AD)

Cove End from Shore Road, 2009 (Gabor Degre, Bangor Daily News)

Interesting Architecture: A Delightful Place to Bank

While trawling old architectural magazines in search of Maine material, I came across this delightful little building built in 1922 for the Hincks Brothers Bank in Bridgeport, Connecticut.  I could find  nothing about the building or its current status.  

The architect, John Skinner, received his M.Arch from Harvard in 1921, so this must have been one of his first works, and what an impressive debut.  It is clear that he was following what was going on in England with Lutyens, Blomfield, and the rest of the modern revivalists.   I'd move my banking here just for the pleasure of conducting my financial affairs in such stylish surroundings. (This comes at a moment that the Bar Harbor Banking & Trust company is doing a really, really REALLY  badly designed remodel to their branch in our village, so it especially resonates with me this week.).

I don't know much about Skinner after this building.  He went on to become dean of the Architecture School at Georgia Tech, and there the trail ends.  Here though, it's clear that he knew how to play with traditional forms, and had a feeling for texture and materials, much in the tradition of Delano & Aldrich and Harry T. Lindeberg.

And of course, in case you didn't know, all pictures can be enlarged for better viewing by clicking on them.

Vizcaya in 1917: The Interiors

When I posted early photographs of Vizcaya from the 1917 Architectural Review several weeks ago, I promised a post with the interior views.   I'm undeniably easily distracted, but I always get around to it in the end, lest you thought I'd forgotten   These pictures show the interiors, more plushly furnished than today, as Paul Chalfin first created them for James Deering.   The Deering heirs, in a plan to open the property to the public, removed many excess items to facilitate the flow of visitors, and to emphasize the antique over the modern.  

For my previous posts featuring the early photographs of the gardens and exteriors, click here and here.

For the original article in Architectural Review, written by Vizcaya's presiding genius, Paul Chalfin, about the creation of the house (in which he churlishly does not give credit to landscape designer Diego Suarez), click here.  It provides fascinating insight into the sensibility that led to creation of this most extraordinary place.

 

The entrance loggia, with statue of Bacchus.

The visitor's room, for receiving business associates

The Adam Library, with Roman mosaic above mantel

The beautiful reception room, with grisaille wall mural, and (above) the gate from the courtyard

Shown here is the courtyard before the vandalism perpetrated on it by Vizcaya's then director and board in the 1980's.

As president of the board of a much smaller historic house museum myself, I am painfully aware of  and sympathetic about the hard choices facing museum directors trying to protect their buildings and collections.   The problems facing Vizcaya are huge---a house directly on a saltwater bay in a humid tropical climate, filled with textiles and furnishings created long ago in gentler climates.   Nevertheless, the rule of thumb in these matters is to approach the solution holistically, with as little intervention as possible.  At Vizcaya, one of the greatest houses in America, a perfect storm of ideas and needs resulted in one of the greatest acts of vandalism I have ever seen perpetrated on a protected historic building.   To seal the house for climate control, a decision was made to cover the courtyard with a glass pyramid, supported by huge concrete pylons.   The beautiful courtyard, open to the sky, recorded so beautifully in watercolor by John Singer Sargent, now has the feeling of an upscale shopping center atrium.  The experience of light and air is completely changed. There was no excuse. Many other solutions were possible.

Apparently, many architects and preservation groups banded together in protest at the time, but with visions of the Louvre Pyramid, and the ability to book the courtyard for all-weather events rentals (indeed, events venues are de facto an important factor in the funding of this expensive property) in their heads, Vizcaya's management forged ahead.  I understand that there is talk of undoing this awful construction, and as one who saw Vizcaya before it happened, I can only hope that it is taken down, and the integrity of the house restored. 

The upper loggia

Three views of the living hall in 1917

The living hall in 1950, nearing the end of Deering family occupancy

Two views of the salon, with 18th century Italian boiseries, and grisaille ceiling from an Italian palazzo, and 18th century French silk wallcovering with a palm tree motif, brought together brilliantly by Chalfin

The main staircase from the courtyard

Gate from upper loggia to the breakfast room

The upper dining room.  This room faces the formal gardens.  The first time I visited Vizcaya, the windows, which slide back into the wall were open, making of the room an open loggia.  The effect of garden and bay outside, and mural inside, was unforgettable.

A view of the small dining room in 1950

The sitting room of a guest suite.

The ground, or basement level of Vizcaya originally contained a suite of rooms for recreation including a bowling alley, billiard room and the smoking room seen in these two views, adjoining the swimming pool.  These spaces are  now re-purposed as cafe and gift shop.

The astonishing swimming pool, partially outdoors, and partially covered by this fantastical grotto under the house.  The walls are encrusted with shell motifs, the ceiling mural of underwater scenes is by Robert Chanler.  The details are extraordinary---note the seahorse caps on the railing posts