ANNALS OF RESEARCH: MAKING EVIDENCE LINE UP

As one sifts through material in search of interesting houses for the book, looking for interesting houses  that will interest and delight the reader, one is distracted by many other bits along the way.

For example, I've had this illustration, from American Architect & Building News, on file for years,  Designed by James Brown Lord for one Mrs. S.K. Henning. Not much evidence that it was ever built, but curious, I persevered.  Even in the age of Google, one has trouble finding much about Mrs. Henning.  Her first name was Sarah, neither husband nor source of fortune are mentioned, and her social life seems to have been led mostly  Tuxedo Park-Bar Harbor over a brief few years before and after 1900.  

I pursued a few leads.  I found Mrs. Henning in the Bar Harbor cottage directory as a guest at one of the hotels in 1893.  Then I found this house, built for James Henning in 1895 in Tuxedo Park, James Brown Lord, architect.  Not the same design, but certainly similar.  

At that point, one assumed that perhaps Mrs. Henning was married to James Henning, and that they decided to build in Tuxedo instead?  At any rate, nowhere in available collections did any larger amount of material appear to exist that would fast-track the Henning cottage into the book, and I moved on.

Since then, the old Bar Harbor newspapers have become available digitally, and a few weeks ago, in pursuit of other information, I came across a mention in the Bar Harbor Record of June 1894 which announced that Mrs. J.H. Henning of Louisville, Kentucky and her two children were guests at the St. Sauveur Hotel while their new cottage on Cleftstone Road was being completed.  Hmmm.  But where on Cleftstone Road, and was it the house shown in American Architect?  This of course, is where your completely undisciplined Uncle Dilettante strays off the path he's supposed to be following, and true to form, I wandered off to find more.  A quick search turned up an article about Mrs. Henning's new cottage, describing a house nothing like the one designed by James Brown Lord, which obviously hadn't been built.

A few days later, again while not looking, I ambled across a longer article about the new Henning Cottage, whose architect was Sidney Stratton (the actual subject of that particular search), who shared office space and occasionally worked with, McKim, Mead & White, and designed a house that will be in the book.

The article was accompanied by a crude wood engraving showing the new house, called 'Air Castle', into which Mrs. Henning and children moved on August 01, 1894.  A further search finds the family in residence for the 1895 season, and then they disappear from the face of Bar Harbor, consistent with the 1896 completeion date of the house in Tuxedo Park, completed in 1896.  One has no idea why they departed Bar Harbor so quickly, after having tried it out for a couple of seasons then having built a large cottage only to sell it two years later but there you have it.  On the 1896 Bar Harbor map, the cottage appears, renamed 'Hillhurst' and owned by one Helen Seely (for those of you who protest that the shape pictured is not consistent with the house pictured, let me assure you that on the more accurately delineated 1904 map, it does appear correctly).

And there this post would end, except that a few weeks later, I was flipping through an old Bar Harbor guildebook, with pictures of cottages, when what should appear but the engraving below:

The problem?  In the guidebook, the picture was captioned as 'Cottage at Bar Harbor, designed by Andrews Jaques and Rantoul".  

I'm resisting further research.  I have a book to complete.

P.S., 

Speaking of Tuxedo Park, after finishing research at the wonderful Walsh History Center at Camden Public Library, I wandered around looking at buildings (I still haven't put the final nail in my Camden selections. (Sssh, don't tell the publisher), and while wandering around town, I spotted this new little shingle style cottage, which reminded me of something...(and yes, that picture was taken yesterday March 23, the 3rd day of Spring, or as we call it up here, 'February II, the Nightmare Continues')

But enough about the weather---certainly we've had enough---the reason that the house looked so familiar is that it was clearly inspired by one of the original houses in Tuxedo Park, Bruce Price's Travis Van Buren cottage, below.

HURRY, SPRING

We are embarking on Week III of not particularly cold (for March), but very gray and dreary weather---rain, drizzle, freezing rain, freezing drizzle, dry snow, wet snow, snow mixed with rain and drizzle, rain and drizzle mixed with snow You get the idea.  And the mud!  Oh the mud!  Maine practically depopulates from mid-March to mid-April, and with good reason.  The winter won't kill you, but the spring damn well might.

In the interest of public health, I declare this to be Garden Week at the Down East Dilettante, and in denial, will post nothing but pictures of gardens until this ends.

The Asticou Azeala Garden at Northeast Harbor is one of May's reward for the penances of April 

As are the lilacs that cloud the landscape, for an all too-brief  week at the end of the month (Damariscotta Mills)

Roadsides and sidewalks that had been covered in gravel and winter debris only weeks before come into bloom. (top to bottom: Castine, Damariscotta Mills, Wiscasset)

Along with  flowering trees and shrubs (Castine)

And then as if Winter had never happened, things start to get really serious in June, as with the iris and peonies here in my friend Ellen's garden

Wild roses  beside my back drive, ephemeral & sweet, climbing six feet through the hedgerow

 And summer goes on, and suddenly, almost without noticing the change, what looked like this in June

Looks like this by August (Thuya Gardens, Northeast Harbor, two views of central allee toward pool)

For a few weeks, the Maine climate is as conducive to gardening as any in the world.  Here, a path in the Beatrix Farrand  designed garden on the Rockefeller estate at Seal Harbor.

Hawk-weed by the side of the road (Castine)

INTERMISSION: "IN LIKE A LION.."

Tomorrow is the first day of March.

In case any of our far flung readers wonder why Maine is more popular as a summer destination than winter, we bring you this public service announcement:

Three weeks from today is the first day of Spring.  Riiiight.

REAL ESTATE

That darn Dilettante has been publishing again.  For my latest piece, about a wonderful mid-century house for sale, in a drop-dead location, please click HERE.  (Click on pdf. link for full article).  For vintage photos of the house, and the tale of when I was in the soup, click HERE

THREE LITTLE BUILDINGS

Today class, we're going to consider the importance of thinking small, but in a big way.

Edmund Beaman Gilchrist (1885-1953), was a gentleman architect, Philadelphia born and bred  His  specialty was residential design, although he also created some notable smaller public structures..  He was part of that distinct group practicing in Philadelphia---the firms Mellor, Meigs and Howe,  Duhring, Oakie and Ziegler; and Tilden, Register and Pepper---who were leading the pack in the design of beautiful houses that somehow managed to be picturesque and vernacular, and at the same time, imaginative, modern and new.  These architects were among the most imaginative, and most influential of the era in residential design.

In the first half of the last century, this stretch of the Maine Coast, and Northeast Harbor in particular, was known as 'Philadelphia on the Rocks', and indeed it sometimes seemed in this Dilettante's youth that there was a Philadelphian behind every tree in the summertime.   Thus it was only natural that Gilchrist and his peers would receive many commissions for summer houses in the region.  Collectively those cottages constitute some of the best architecture produced up here during the 1920's and 1930's and five of those houses have been chosen for inclusion in my book.  (For those, the faithful reader will have to wait.  And it will be worth it) .

For my entire life, I've enjoyed looking at--and learning from--Gilchrist's work here in Maine.  Picturesque as his buildings are, they are also at home in their surroundings, precise, elegant, understated,  but never under designed, and not without surprises and mystery, and in that eclectic age, he proved himself an adept player of the game, always creating something fresh from traditional idiom.  Here are three  buildings whose small size belies the vast quality of their design, making mockery of so many of the overblown structures of today.

Eleanor Denniston, like Gilchrist from was from Germantown.  She summered on remote Petit Manan Point, far from the social whirl of Mt. Desert Island.  In 1911, she commissioned Gilchrist to design a chapel for her property at Petit Manan.  It is a simple, almost miniature building, in the English tradition, but nearly reductionist in its design. A tower was built of stones hauled up from the beach, the slab siding was cut from trees on the property, and the interior was left unfinished, dependant entirely on simplicity, light and proportion for effect.  Click HERE for an evocative series of photographs which give a far better idea of this building.

  As one approaches Islesford on Little Cranberry Island off Mt. Desert, if one can take one's eyes off the spectacular scenery for a moment, a little cluster of buildings comes into focus on shore,  Most are vernacular structure of clapboard or shingle--boathouses, sheds, small cottages--but soon one spots this sophisticated little brick building sitting tactfully in their midst, different from them yet, fitting in.  This is the Islesford Museum, built again for a Philadelphian, Dr. William Otis Sawtelle, an Islesford summer resident strongly interested both in local history and cultures, as well as the ancient history of the Mt. Desert region.  He commissioned Gilchrist to design this elegant reductionist structure for his collection in 1927.  It is now the museum for Acadia National Park.  I could happily live there, should the Park ever tire of it..

The view from Little Cranberry Island.  We may not have a Barneys up here, but there are compensations

Outside, it is as reductionist and as imaginative as a Delano & Aldrich design, beautifully detailed, its unusual hooded fanlight echoed by another, this time antique, over a  door within. The brick is handmade, the details no more and no less than are needed for effect.  Inside, a hall connects three rooms on a 'T' plan with brick walls and gray painted floors, a fireplace in each room.  It is spartan, quiet, and cool, and for all its city airs, feels exactly right for its island location.  Sadly, I have no interior photos available.

The spring house at Sieur de Monts

At the other extreme, Bar Harbor in the 1920's was at the height of fashion.  Through much of the early 20th century, the Italian styles were popular there, being thought appropriate to the scenery and as a backdrop for summer gaiety, and many of the large cottages there were veritable replicas of Tuscan villas.  Even new  Lafayette (now Acadia) National Park, designed to keep the landscape forever wild, did not escape.  At the Park's Sieur de Monts Springs, local architect Fred Savage was commissioned to design a protective structure over the spring, based on a design by summer resident Egisto Fabbri, that would not look out of place in the countryside near Florence.

Dr. Abbe's sketch for his museum (National Park Service)

Thus in 1926, when Robert Abbe, a pioneering radiologist who was also an amateur archaeologist made plans to create a small museum for his collection of Stone Age antiquities, it did not seem incongruous that he would commission Edmund Gilchrist to design the museum in the style of a Florentine chapel at Sieur de Monts. (Okay, it is incongruous, an Italian chapel in the middle of the forest, housing ancient Native American artifacts.  But it works.)  Dr. Abbe died before his museum was completed in 1928

Even with Savage's spring house as introduction, it is a surprise to walk up a gentle wooded trail and suddenly be faced this exquisite little echo of the Renaissance in the forest.  Yet, it is a tribute to Gilchrist's skill that the building also seems inevitable and appropriate, even right in its surroundings, against all logic. A critic once wrote of the unexplainable alchemy and mystery of Gilchrist's architecture.  All of those qualities are present in this cool, understated building.

Are those signs flanking the entrance really necessary?  Really?  I've barely forgiven the park for the asphalt path

The domed main room maintains its period museum charm, with original display cases, dioramas, and relief maps created by Dr. Abbe.  These maps were in great demand among his friends and were decorative features of several Bar Harbor cottages.

VARIATIONS ON A THEME: ROUNDING A CORNER

From early 19th century America, when builders and designers were almost incapable of designing an ugly building, a little riff on how design ideas traveled, in this case from the urban centers to the little seaport of Portsmouth New Hampshire.  I sometimes just enjoy pondering these things out loud--and find that even 200 years ago in Federalist America, with travel primitive and distances remote, the degrees of separation rarely added up to six.

Octagon House in Washington, not really an octagon, designed for John Tayloe by William Thornton, architect of the Capitol and constructed 1798-1800.  This was something new in American domestic architecture when first completed.  When the White House was burned in the War of 1812, it was to this house that James & Dolley Madison retreated.  It is now a museum operated by the American Institute of Architects, whose headquarters behind it so sadly demonstrates how many lessons have been forgotten.

Rear Facade of Octagon House, which originally overlooked a brick stable building far more elegant that the AIA

The Thomas Haven house, Portsmouth New Hampsire, built in 1813 on  the corner of  Middle St. & Richards Avenue in  Porsmouth, New Hampshire.  It was later owned by Admiral George Washington Storer, who as a five month old baby had sat in George Washington's lap in 1783.  Apparently the designer, whose name is lost to history, was familiar with  Octagon house.  Storer's daughter Mabel married the grandson of Stephan Decatur, a hero of the War of 1812, whose Washington house was designed by Benjamin Latrobe.  Sadly the Haven house was long ago demolished by another Storer daughter in favor of a ponderous Second Empire mansion.

The old Custom House, built 1813 on the corner of  Penhallow and Daniel Streets in Portsmouth, a building delicate and provincial in its details, and of almost infinite charm 

The Samuel Larkin house, Portsmouth NH, begun in 1815 nearly across the street from the Haven house, architect unknown.  Mr. Larkin was an auctioneer who had greatly enhanced his fortune on commissions from the sale of booty seized by privateers during the War of 1812.  By 1829, reverses caused him to leave this house for his original smaller frame house next door.  The design is a refinement of the Burd mansion in Philadelphia

The Burd Mansion, on Chestnut St. in Philadelphia is thought to have inspired the Larkin house in Portsmouth.  It was designed in 1801 by Benjamin Latrobe.  This daguerreotype by Frederic deBourg Richards in the collection of the Library  Company of Philadelphia, bears this description: "Mansion of Joseph Sims, Esq. On Southwest corner of Chestnut and Ninth street-the grounds extending to George, now Sansom street, on which latter it has a frontage, with stables, equal to that on Chestnut Street. After the failure in business of Mr. Sims, it was occupied for many years, until his decease, by Mr. Sims' son-in-law, and family, Edward P. Burd, Esq. Mrs. Burd, his widow, still resides there."  The Burd mansion is long lost.

In 1803, Thomas Jefferson appointed Latrobe, America's first professional architect, as Surveyor of Public Buildings in the United States.  As such, he took over the construction and design of the Capitol, with some irritation at being instructed by Jefferson to follow the designs made by William Thornton, which he found faulty.  Despite their aesthetic and engineering differences on the Capitol, Thornton's rear elevation at Octagon House and the facade of the Burd house have more than a whiff of common themes.

BEDTIME STORY, PART II

Where would a Dilettante be without his readers?  Tracing design sources is a great interest of mine, but sometimes the answers elude me.  When I mentioned in last week's post that the remarkable bed of former Red Sox owner Thomas Yawkey rang a faint bell, but I couldn't remember why, Toby Worthington stepped up to the plate, as it were, with the answer:

The Yawkey bed was based on plate 41 in Thomas Sheraton's The Cabinet Maker's and Upholsterer's Drawing Book, published in 1791---"A Summer Bed in Two Compartments". (above)

Thomas Yawkey's bedroom at 992 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, photographed in 1935 (MCNY)

Sheraton, along with his near contemporary Thomas Hepplewhite, and the earlier Thomas Chippendale, was one of the three great furniture designers (four, if one counts the architect Robert Adam, who often had Chippendale execute his designs), and like the others, spread his style and fame by publishing pattern books that could be used by other cabinetmakers.   

Designs for bed posts from Thomas Chippendale's  The Cabinet-Maker's  Directory

Just as with the architectural pattern books of the era, like Asher Benjamin's American Builder's Companion, these books provided suggested designs, often with mix or match options, along with rules for achieving correct proportions, that helped many a provincial cabinetmaker turn out pieces of compelling beauty, rarely making a wrong move.

Two bed designs, with suggestions for hangings, by Thomas Chippendale

 The Yawkey bed does not appear to be antique in the photos, but rather a decorator's inspiration carried out by a talented cabinetmaker.   Rather than the neo-classical design of Sheraton's bed, the rococco cornice details are earlier, and more Chippendale in inspiration. as seen in the plates above from Thomas Chippendales The Cabinetmaker's Directory.

Cornice designs by Chippendale

Readers may remember the Chinoiserie bedroom in 'Huntland', the Joseph Thomas house in Virginia, with its dramatic bed later owned by Doris Duke, the design taken directly from plates in Chippendale's Directory.

The bedroom at 'Huntland', and  design sources for the bed, below

Plates from Chippendale's Director from Metropolitan Museum website