A ROLLING MANTEL GATHERS NO MOSS

Moss covered mantel in the DC Design showhouse.  Move over Martha.

Before.  The Eisenhower administration called, and they want their curtains back.

Photos from Washington Post, Lynda Cutler, Top, John McDonnell, bottom.  

OBELISKS, REGRETS, DEBTS, SWANS, BULFINCH & A LITTLE OGDEN CODMAN

I often tell my customers, when they clearly love something but are wavering in their decision, that I never regret what I buy nearly as much as what I don't buy.  And it's not a sales pitch.  I mean it, and learned the truth of it from bitter experience.

I won't list all of my many regrets here, but remembering one in particular this afternoon gave me the impetus for today's post.  Years ago, I was vacationing with a few of my very favorite people in Key West.  Anyone familiar with the snowy weather and below normal temperatures here in Maine over the past week might think that not being there now is cause enough for regret, but stick with me.  There used to be, on a corner of Fleming St., an antiques shop, I forget the name, run by a man who had once had a shop on Madison Avenue.  His extraordinarily refined and entertaining taste was reflected in his wares.  I bought quite a few things there over the years----a set of black and white 18th century Creil faience plates with elegant black transfer scenes of French Chateaux comes immediately to mind---and wish I'd bought more.  One winter, while looking in his dusty window, I saw something quite thrilling.  It was a large gray and white marble obelisk, probably a model for a cenotaph, and it bore the engraved legend 'James Swan, An Honest Man'.  I assumed that it referred to James Swan, a colorful 18th century Boston financier who had been a major player in the affairs of the early Republic, and is now best remembered for spending the last 22 years of his life in a French Debtor's prison.  The obelisk, about 18" high, was $700.00, not out of reason, but I had a moment of irrational thrift (ask me how much was probably spent on martinis all over Key West in that same ten day period. Actually, don't), and I didn't buy it.   As soon as I had returned to Maine, I  realized my mistake, and immediately called the shop, only to find that the obelisk had been sold a few days before to a committee seeking a present for the outgoing director of the Key West Art Museum.  I was stricken.  Can anyone say 'Rosebud'?

James Swan, by Gilbert Stuart, 1795.  Collection of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

But enough of my material regrets.  James Swan was born in Scotland, and emigrated to the U.S. in 1765, where he went to work in a counting house.  When Revolution came, he was a member of the Sons of Liberty and participated in the Boston Tea Party.  Married to heiress Hepzibah Clarke, one of Boston's most fashionable women, he succeeded in a variety of business enterprises, from privateering during the Revolution to real estate and finance.  Mrs. Swan was a founder of the exclusive Sans Souci Club, Mr. Swan a member of the wartime assembly, and of the Scots Charitable Society.  In 1786, he purchased what is now Swan's Island in Blue Hill Bay near here, with an eye to its settlement and development ( two centuries later, it remains a fishing community of a few hundred souls, with a small summer colony).

Hepzibah Clarke Swan by Gilbert Stuart, 1808  (MFA)

In 1787, over-extended and in debt from his many ventures, Swan went to France for the first time, where he successfully conducted much business, including the structuring of millions of dollars in debt owed France by the United States.  His entree was impeccable, with letters of introduction to the Marquis de LaFayette.  Swan formed Swan, Gallarde et cie, a firm that supplied the new French Government after the Revolution.  While there, he purchased elegant French furniture that had been made for a French Musketeer, Marc-Antoine Thierry de Ville d'Avray general administrator of furniture for the French Crown, whose great misfortune it had been to order the pieces before the Revolution, and when he was imprisoned, it was seized and auctioned by the new government.  Back home in Boston, Mrs. Swan's elegant modern French wares were the talk of local society.

Pieces from the collection of French furniture and accessories purchased in France by James Swan.  For a Boston Globe article about the restoration of the furniture and re-creation of the silk lampas upholstery, click HERE

 James Swan returned to America in 1794.  After traveling to Philadelphia, where he sat for Gilbert Stuart, he returned to Boston in 1796 and commenced construction of a country house in Dorchester quite unlike any other in the area, its design clearly informed by the stylish neoclassical pavilions he had seen in France, with the extraordinary feature of a two story circular drawing room, 32 feet in diameter, with a domed ceiling.  Though the architect is unknown, it is widely assumed to be Charles Bulfinch, who had recently completed a country house just down the road for his cousin, Mrs. Perez Morton. Whomever the designer, it is clear that Col. Swan's architectural taste, like that of another American, Thomas Jefferson, had been much informed and inspired by his sojourn in France.

The James Swan House in Dorchester.  The central drum originally had a balustrade also, and without it, the oddity of the house is further emphasized.

A rear view of the Swan House shows the tall windows of the two story dining hall on axis with the domed drawing room on the front, as well as the high basement with kitchen and service areas

First floor plan of the Swan house, drawn by Ogden Codman (Codman Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Cross section of the Swan House, drawn by Ogden Codman (Codman Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art)

In addition to her French furnishings, Mrs. Swan commissioned pieces, such as this games table, from Boston's finest cabinetmakers.

Still in debt, and in trouble with his business partner, Swan returned to France in 1798.  This stay was not as successful as his first, and in 1808, he was taken to debtor's prison, where, contradictorily, he lived in some luxury until just before his death in 1830.

A detail of the drawing room mantel of the Swan House.  The mantel appears to be of the type imported to America from Leghorn Italy

Meanwhile, back at home, Mrs. Swan, with some business head of her own, was apparently not left destitute.  She was one of the original Mt. Vernon Proprietors, developers of Beacon Hill, where on Chestnut St. she built a row of three elegant brick townhouses as dowry for her daughters.  Famously included in the deed for those houses was a height restriction for the houses backing up to them on Mt. Vernon St., which to this day are but one story high. In Dorchester, surrounded by her elegant French furnishings, she played hostess to Marquis de LaFayette when he visited America in 1824.

The three houses on Chestnut St. on Beacon Hill, built in 1806, 1807 and 1817 by Mrs. Swan for her daughters (AIA Guide to Boston)

The former stable to the Swan houses, restricted by deed to 13 feet in height

I have always been captivated by the Swan house, New England Federal style clapboard in its details and execution, French neoclassical in its inspiration. To my eye it had much in common with the elegant small pavilions of late 18th century Sweden, similarly inspired, with similarly humble materials and scale.  It was one of a group of country houses that appeared in the Boston area after the Revolution, in the new style with circular or oval rooms centering their facades, and radical new plans, so different from the center hall and square rooms of pre-Revolutionary America.  Concurrent with these houses, General Henry Knox, whose youngest daughter Caroline was married to the Swan's son, was building what was then the most palatial house in the Province of Maine, Montpelier at Thomaston, featuring the first oval room in the new style, inspired, perhaps, by the bow front on the White House, under construction at the same time.

19th century stereoptican view of Montpelier, the General Henry Knox mansion in Thomaston, Maine.

Mrs. Swan died in 1825, and as the neighborhood continued to be developed and subdivided, and fell out of fashion, the house declined, and was demolished in the late 1880s. It was not far from the site of the present Dudley St. station of the Boston subway. 

Fortunately, the young Ogden Codman, who was as passionately interested in the architecture of early America as he was that of France, measure and drew the house, thus recording its details for posterity.  The Swan drawing room, with its false dome hidden within the volume of the house obviously made an impression on him, for just a few years later, when he designed the very French neoclassical Rollins Morse cottage in Newport, he used the same feature for the ballroom of that house.  It was far more elaborately decorated than the original, with treillage walls and ceiling, but it would seem, at least to me, inspired by the example at the Swan House.

Pavillon du Bagatelle (Architectural Notecards.com)

The Pavillon du Bagatelle, outside Paris,seen here in an 18th century engraving, was designed by Belanger, was  likely familiar to Swan, and may  have served as inspiration in the design of his country house.  Equally clear is its influence on Codman's design for Villa Rosa, below.  Six degrees of architectural separation

Villa Rosa, the Rollins Morse cottage at Newport, designed by Ogden Codman.  Now demolished, this house was immediately south of the Elms on Bellevue Avenue

The Ballroom at Villa Rosa, like the drawing room at the Swan House, is domed within the volume of the house.

The French furniture was divided amongst Mrs. Swan's heirs, and several pieces, including what was known in the family as the Marie Antoinette bed, are now in the collection of the museum of fine arts.  

As for the obelisk, I never saw it again, but I read that the Swan monument in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston is an obelisk of sandstone, and intend to find out if it resembles the one I didn't buy in Key West all those many years ago.

In other news:  Speaking of Charles Bulfinch, who also designed our State House here in Maine, TPR has brought to my attention this video, a comment on our Governor's unilateral removal of a mural that offended him at the Department of Labor.  Click HERE for the video (and enjoy the sight of the snow that has delayed Spring up here), and HERE for my post on the subject.  Unfortunately, as the Governor is vacationing in Jamaica after three months at his new job,  he missed the 'bombing'.

DREAMING OF SUMMER GARDENS

Yesterday, Maine was treated to the cruelest April Fool's joke imaginable. Winter weary already, we were treated to a Nor'easter dumping almost another foot of wet, heavy snow up on us.  A large cedar beside the house fell, taking down the phone and electrical lines.  I won't whine---much, but staring out at the dirty melting white stuff, I've made a decision.  Nothing but gardens in the blog for the next few days.

Ashdale Farm, the Stevens-Coolidge estate in North Andover Massachusetts, is one of the loveliest, and most perfectly maintained public estate gardens in New England---everything about it looks as it should, the highest praise the Dilettante can give---and too seldom do I get to these days. 

The property had been in the Stevens family since 1729.  After Helen Stevens' marriage to Joseph Coolidge, a great-great grandson of Thomas Jefferson and nephew of Isabella Stewart Gardner,  the farm became their country estate, from 1914 to 1962.  They had architect Joseph Everett Chandler remodel the house, which comprised two Federal era structures, simultaneously making it more comfortable for modern life---combining smaller rooms into larger, adding a bow front bay to the rear of the drawing room on axis with the gardens, also designed by Chandler---yet making the house even more 'Colonial' in spirit than it had been before.

Plan of grounds (Trustees of Public Reservations)

Porches and French doors added by Chandler help open the house to the gardens.

An old fashioned mixed perennial garden is on axis with the drawing room bow

A walled garden adjoining the perennial the old fashioned garden is cleverly designed to appear sunken, the gentle splashing of fountains enhances the sense of seclusion

Across the back drive from the gardens, huge fields flank an orchard leading to a potager added in the 1920s.

At the rear of the potager, serpentine brick walls echo those designed at the University of Virginia by Mr. Coolidge's great-great-grandfather, Thomas Jefferson

The level and quality of  maintenance at Ashdale Farm are superb.  Eye and technique are both at play here.

 

 Mrs. Coolidge willed the estate to the Massachusetts Trustees of Public Reservations at her death in 1962.  Additional land was donated by her daughter, Mrs. Walter Muir Whitehill, whose husband was director of the Boston Athenaeum, and author of the fascinating Boston, a Topographical History.   The gardens are open daily 8 AM to sunset, and the house may be visited on Wednesdays in season.

APRIL FOOD DAY

I mostly write about the homes and the lives of the comfortable.  Today I take a break to join my fellow bloggers, led by Meg Fairfax Fielding of Pigtown Design and Chris Cox of Easy and Elegant Life, with a reminder that in these times there are too many people in our own country who go hungry each night and to urge those who can to make donations to combat hunger, either to your local food bank, or through Feeding America, by clicking HERE

My mother grew up in a household hard hit by the Depression.  She has rarely talked about hunger, but when she does speak of it, it is quietly and without drama, but the raw pain of many nights going to bed without food as a child shows through even some 70 far more comfortable years since.  No child or adult should have to experience this, and most of us cannot even imagine it.  Here in Maine, playground for some of the nation's wealthiest, we are also home to some of the nation's poorest, and our food insecurity rate is one of the ten highest in America.  I have only to look to my right to see people living lives of luxury unimaginable to most Americans, and then turn to my left to see poverty even more unimaginable.  Our local food pantry is staffed by volunteers who work tirelessly to make certain that no one goes to bed hungry, and our local government, even in these hard times, does its best to make certain those least fortunate are warm and fed, quietly and with dignity.  Over the last three years, need has risen dramatically each year, and even in our town, one of Maine's wealthiest, resources are strained to the limit. The story is repeated across the nation.

If all of us even gave up lunch out for a week in favor of brown bags, we could each feed a family for that week.  It's that simple.  We're lucky, many are not.  Please help.

MR. BUSH'S NEIGHBORHOOD

Two weeks ago, in the process of research for a project that you will be hearing about later, I wandered through the heart stoppingly beautiful town of Kennebunkport in Southern Maine.  I was on a tight schedule, and the day was cold, so I didn't take many pictures.  As I left the picture-perfect village on the way out to the Cape Arundel neighborhood, I passed the River Club, an iconic shingle style structure at the edge of town, and meant to come back and photograph it, but once on Cape Arundel, I got diverted.  

The clubhouse at the Kennebunk River Club

The Casino building at the Kennebunk River Club

 A friend who had been there a couple of weeks before mentioned how disconcertingly huge some new houses were on that rocky headland, and so right she was.  Big old shingle style summer cottages, by no means tiny themselves, had been displaced by jaw-dropping----and I do not mean this in a nice way----new odes to 90's style wealth, destroying the scale and effect of this most charming neighborhood in several places.  

Most of the 50-odd summer colonies on the Maine coast grew up around the huge old summer hotels put up by speculators and developers, in Cape Arundel's case, the Sea Shore Development Company.  The Colony Hotel at Kennebunkport is the largest and grandest of the dozen or so that survive up and down the coast.

On this day, The Colony looked over a cold winter sea. 

The older cottages of the Cape Arundel colony are very much of a piece, large, yet compact, poised on relatively small lots on picturesque lanes overlooking the ocean.

One of many picturesque carriage houses, this one with an ocean view

This cottage on Ocean Avenue is for sale. 8br, 3fp, ocean, bush and shrub views in season

During the various interminable Bush presidencies, the house saw many protests

After WWII, big summer houses on the coast of Maine could be purchased for a song, and many went begging, eventually being torn down, or converted to motels or institutional use before becoming popular again in the market in the 1980s.  This one became a motel, and is an odd note amidst its neighbors.  One presumes the Bush view is included in the rates.

Boarded up, waiting for summer, this house nicely composed cottage is overwhelmed by its new neighbor

Lost on the way to the Hamptons.  By far the best of the new houses on Cape Arundel, it nevertheless spawls assertively in a way that even the largest of the old cottages do not

As I rounded the bend, I was confronted with the number one tourist attraction in Kennebunkport, the Walker's point estate of George Bush.  At that exact moment, a ray of bright sun burst out from the clouds on what had been a cloudy afternoon, and shone directly over the house.  Go figure. 

The sun always shines over Walker Point

It was positively allegorical, but as I still haven't forgiven the perfectly decent elder Bushes for their devil spawn son, I preferred not to think too hard about it and continued driving.  Although the neighborhood has always discouraged parking on its winding shore road, the town long ago had to give in and create a scenic turnout overlooking the Bush property.  And to my amazement, even on this out of season cold March afternoon, there was considerable traffic---a steady stream of mostly elderly people snapping photographs.  I took advantage of the rare bit of sun and parked and took a walk along the shore, where most of these photographs were snapped in the waning light. 

The D.D. Walker cottage on Walker's Point, now demolished

 Walker's Point was once known as Point Vesuvius.  The ongoing tug of war between summer residents and locals over problem of disappearing shore access was strongly felt here, as a local newspaper lamented the loss of paths traditionally used by fishermen on the point, as it was shut off for the construction of a new summer cottage by George Bush's namesake maternal grandfather George Herbert Walker of St. Louis in 1903.  The next year, Bush's uncle, D.D. Walker, built a much larger cottage adjacent to his father's, which has since been demolished.  The architects for both were Chapman & Frazer of Boston.

From 1973, until 1981 when he inherited Walker's Point, Bush I owned this cottage on Ocean Avenue