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

SOLON MAINE, VIA CHINA AND ROME

On the first Sunday in November, the weather was gray and indifferent, not pleasant enough to encourage outside chores, not bad enough to stay inside with a book.   Even as I was contemplating this dilemma, knowing that outdoor chores were really the correct answer, the phone rang.   It was Sidekick, in much the same mood, wondering if I might be interested in a road trip 'up' to the Colby College Art Museum in Waterville (although actually due west a couple of hours, like all trips inland in Maine, it feels 'up').  Road trip with a favorite partner in crime or chores?  The decision took about 1.3 seconds.

On the outskirts of China, a Greek Revival farmhouse with beautiful Ionic columns

 

Further down the road, this handsome whitewashed brick Federal was once the summer home of Ellerton Jette, who was the chairman of the Hathaway Shirt Company, whose long defunct factory was once Waterville's major employer.  Here was housed much of the collection of American art that Jette later donated to  the Colby Art Museum.

For those too young to remember, 'The Man in The Hathaway Shirt' was one of the most successful ad campaigns of all time.  Hathaway was a small regional manufacturer when Ellerton Jette went to David Ogilvy, then arguably the most powerful man in advertising, with a tiny budget and convinced him to take on the Hathaway account.  The rest is history.  When the Dilettante was little, Dunham's of Waterville, with its rows of pastel oxford button downs was where we all got supplied with our Hathaway shirts and Bass Weejun loafers.

Not quite two hours later, after a drive through China, we arrived at Colby. The  campus is a handsome one, created in the 1930's.  It is a classic of its era, the creation of one Dr. Bixler, then the ambitious president of what the then small regional college.  Sitting on  Mayflower Hill, its Georgian buildings and quadrangles were inspired by the great early Universities, including Harvard and the University of Virginia.

The original 19th century Colby College Campu

The centerpiece is the Miller Library, a  Colonial Revival building with a whiff of Independence Hall in its architecture.  191 feet high, it was, until the 1970s the tallest building in Maine.  (Since you ask, the current tallest building is an apartment building in Portland.  At 203 feet, it ranks 46th or 47th---depending on how you interpret the Wikipedia information---among each State's tallest buildings.  Only Vermont, North Dakota, and Wyoming rank higher, I mean, lower.)

The Miller Library on the 'new' campus at Colby College, for years the tallest building in Maine.

We parked and strode to the museum entrance,  only to be confronted with a chain link fence with a sign that said 'Closed for Renovation until November 8th'.  We had checked the schedule online before leaving home, and on the museum's schedule page found no evidence that the museum was anything but open.  As it turned out, the closure was mentioned on the home page, but we had googled 'schedule', thus by-passing that page.  You'd think those smart people at the museum would have troubled to mention it on their schedule page also, wouldn't you?  Thank-you.  So would I.  Especially on the schedule page.  Really.

The museum was closed to prepare for the construction of the new Lunder Pavilion, to house a collection of artworks donated by the Lunder family, heirs to the Dexter Shoe fortune.  While I find it a handsome design, I question the agressive way in which it breaks scale with the surrounding buildings.

Colby's collection is well worth the visit.  Among the works we didn't see that day are:

John Singleton Copley
Mrs. Metcalf Bowler (Anne Fairchild), 1758-1759
Oil on canvas
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ellerton M. Jetté

Winslow Homer
The Trapper, 1870
Oil on canvas
Gift of Mrs. Harold T. Pulsifer

John Marin
Stonington, Maine, 1923
Watercolor and charcoal on paper
21 3/4 in. x 26 1/4 in.
Gift of John Marin, Jr. and Norma B. Marin

Fairfield Porter
Stephen and Kathy, 1963
Oil on canvas
Museum purchase from the Jere Abbott Acquisitions Fund

Regrouping, we decided to save the day by going through Rome---and then continuing on to South Solon and visit the South Solon meeting house, with its amazing frescoed walls, for our dose of art.  

In Norridgewock, on the banks of the Kennebec, this 18th century tavern hangs on, barely....

Hungry, we stopped for lunch in Skowhegan, an old mill town on the Kennebec,  where a few years ago HBO filmed 'Empire Falls', based on the novel of the same name by Richard Russo, about...an old mill town.  The first time I went to Skowhegan, decades ago, the last log drive was taking place on the Kennebec---millions of logs being floated downriver for processing.  Not environmentally sound, but a stirring sight nevertheless.

The last log drive on the Kennebec.  In places, one sees the Kennebec as it appeared 240 years earlier, when Benedict Arnold led his troops upriver to Quebec during the American Revolution

The 'Empire Grill',  the old diner from the movie, had closed, and a sports bar offered no sustenance.  On the strip heading out of town, we found a family restaurant, in what appeared to be a converted Pizza Hut---the architecture is unmistakeable.  Perhaps here I should mention that a friend refers to the road out of Skowhegan as 'the driveway to Quebec', and one definitely senses the French Canadian influence in the area culture. 

For these two hungry tourists, the defining moment was when we spotted Poutine on the menu.   Somehow, in a lifetime of trying all foods bad for me, this one had eluded me, a Canadian logger favorite of French Fries covered with brown gravy (ever the effete elitist, I was about to type 'sauce', but in fact, it was gravy) and melted cheese curd, and in our case, crumbled bacon.  Appalling in concept, delicious in execution.

Poutine.  Okay, so it wasn't Lutece, but trust me, we licked the plate clean.

We reached Solon in the mid-afternoon bellies full, arteries clogged (did I mention that we also had the restaurant's home-made meatloaf sandwich, well prepared and delicious---comfort food on a crisp fall day,on the largest slices of bread I have ever, ever, ever seen?  It was a sandwich for Brobdinagians).  Solon is an old town, its streets lined with handsome buildings that have see better days.  In this part of Maine, the way of life is often hard, employment scarce, and the smug pleasures of the coast, romanticized and ordered to the satisfaction of the well to do, are far behind.

Up in the middle of nowhere:  the Solon hotel anchors the town.  A friend said 'Oh yeah, the Solon hotel.  R.E.M. played there'.  One learns to expect the unexpected in rural Maine.

As in most of early 19th century Maine villages in more prosperous times, the evidence of talented builders using Asher Benjamin's pattern books for inspiration can be found.  This lovely little Greek Revival doorway, complete with triglyphs and metopes (however oddly spaced in the apex of the pediment) can be found on a Cape on Solon's Main Street.  In this part of Maine, tin roofs are the norm

Across the street, this oddly shallow 19th century house, not even 12 feet deep,  is irresistable.

The road to South Solon

A handful of early 19th century farmhouses survive on this high ridge--this example has escaped modernization, and has yet another lovely pattern book door surround.   It sometimes seems that the early builders could do no wrong.

At the meeting house, we spent a happy hour marveling at the 1950's frescoes in the late afternoon fall light.  While there, we were charmed by the appearance of a young man who had grown up in the neighborhood and had brought his son to see the murals and the pew where his father had sat when he was a boy.   For a full account of the Meeting House and its frescoes, please click HERE

We decided to go home by way of Athens, and mapped out our trip, only to find that the road petered out to a single dirt lane.   With the light waning, we decided this was not the day to be lost driving about the woods of Maine, and turned around and head down to I-95.   All was not lost, though, for we were rewarded on that back road by this view of Saddleback Mountain and the Rangeley hills an hour distant.

Leaving the Meeting House, a rainbow illuminated a sky that echoed that of the frescoes within

The view from a field near Athens. 

(Skowhegan was also the home town of Maine's estimable Senator, Margaret Chase Smith. In this season of really silly presidential hopefuls, here story is worth recounting.  Click HERE for the Dilettante on Mrs. Chase)

Going, going.....

I snapped these pictures of a graceful early 19th century house with my phone camera on a rainy day last year.   I know nothing about it, but have admired it for years.  It sits across the Route 2  from the Deerfield River in Charlemont, Massachusetts.  This is Asher Benjamin territory, near his hometown of Greenfield, and as all over New England, many houses in the region bear his mark.

 Nothing more than is needed:  Good proportions, spare planes, and few, but beautifully wrought details.

In recent years, Charlemont Academy has sprung up in its grounds, and as the Academy has grown, the beautiful house has grown ever more ghostly, apparently unused and unloved, its maintenance not the highest priority.  It's condition is so  unsullied by attempts at prettifying, or the modern curse of plastic shutters and replacement windows, that I can't but but admire its purity.   On this visit, I noticed that there were broken panes in the arched windows in the gables, never a good sign.

Less is more.  Sometimes these houses look best with minimal plantings, allowing the house to speak for itself.

It's hard to absorb.   I grew up admiring these pre-industrial age houses, graceful and spare, often built by untrained carpenter architects using nothing more than their good eyes and handbooks like Asher Benjamin's American Builder's Companion to create these buildings. They are potent symbols of the country whose birth and early years paralleled their own.   Almost since they were new, they've been admired and coveted, and suddenly, a decade ago, tastes changed, what people want changed (thank-you, HGTV, for all the destruction you've wrought), and  across New England, one increasingly sees forlorn examples---too old, too big, too small, too close to the road, no great room----the reasons are many, but what I do know is that they are disappearing, or being tamed into McMansion-Easy-Maintenance submission, and we are poorer for it.

In Search of Alfred

1.  The Dilettante Can't Take the Heat
The Dilettante, living the dream of his good friend Helen Bass, decided to get lost last Thursday.

 Turning off the main road to Hamilton House, the pace slows immediately, crossing the falls past this old mill.  At the next turn, one is on a narrow country lane between hedgrows, feeling rather like Toad on a summer drive.

On the way home on a business trip, with work left to do, driving in staggering heat and traffic ('traffic' being a euphemism for almost endless interstate highway road construction slow-downs through Massachusetts and New Hampshire), I cracked, and rather than continue responsibly on my way to the day's final destination, at 3:49 PM I veered left, off  I-95 at exit 2 and up Rte. 127 to South Berwick and Hamilton House, one of the loveliest destinations in Maine.

At the end of a narrow country lane, the grassy drive to Hamilton House. 

So, you thought this was going to be a post about Hamilton House?  Fooled ya.  I took lots of pictures, but that will be another day.  After leaving Hamilton House, considerably refreshed, and too late to resume my business schedule, I decided to take a long route to Portland, and detour through Alfred, Maine, in search of a distinctive house I saw on a family outing forty years ago and had never forgotten.

The gate to a Friends cemetary in North Berwick on the way to Alfred

 A classic early 19th century Federal in North Berwick village, based on Asher Benjamin designs, in need of some tlc and shrubbery removal, but blessedly spared the plastic shutter/replacement window curse---so far.  Notice the elegant globe tracery of the fan over the door.

 

2. Finding Alfred
The road running northeast from South Berwick to Sanford is a mostly lovely one, with only a blessedly brief incidence of strip malls, winding through an old landscape of farms, and the charming village of North Berwick.  After North Berwick, signs became confusing, and obviously I misread them, because rather than arriving in Alfred, I wound up in the city of Sanford, an interesting old company town, prosperous and neat, still bearing the name of its industrial patron, Mr. Goodall, on most of its public buildings and former factories.

Downtown Alfred, Maine, arranged around its tidy village green, the horse watering trough now used as a planter for flowers.

Eventually, I was headed straight again, and in the waning afternoon light at last arrived in Alfred, a neat little town arranged around a village green surrounded by mostly 19th century buildings in good repair, and a few small businesses.  I was surprised to find that this rural little town, on Bungamut Lake, and site of a former Shaker settlement, is also the Shiretown of York County.

Seen in the early evening light, everything about 'downtown' Alfred speaks of friendliness and pride in the village. Not too polished, not too gritty, but just right, and friendly.  How can one not fall in love with a village whose library sports a 'Summer Reading Party, Tuesday Evening' sign on its lawn?

This unusually long 18th century house was once the village tavern

 The inscription on the war memorial on the village green charmingly troubles to mention that it is made from locally quarried granite

I particularly liked this early 19th century Federal with 1850's Italianate enhancements, maintained with pitch perfect understatement

A Barn at the edge of the Shaker village on the outskirts of town is now a museum.  The rest of the Shaker village, for many years a Catholic retreat, has been so thoroughly vinyl sided and cinder block dormitoried as to be un-photographable

At  first I couldn't find the house that had sparked my drive to this lovely place, and finally it emerged, hidden in semi-desuetude behind overgrown Hemlocks (when young, Hemlock trees are among my favorites, yet when mature, nothing spells 'gloom' better).   And missing from the house was the distinctive feature that had captured my imagination as a teenager.

 The Holmes house

3.  Missing parts

The house in question is the Holmes House, built in 1802 by John Holmes, the first senator from what was then the District of Maine, still part of Massachussets.   It is a most unusual house for the time and place, with a portico of 14 columns, each turned from a single pine trunk.  Such porticos made very rare appearances in New England before the Greek Revival style took hold in the second quarter of the 19th century.   A few such houses were built in suburban Boston, then countryside, in the late 18th century by a group of Boston merchants with connections in the Barbadian rum and sugar trade, where they picked up the ideas for columned porches.   One is tempted to wonder whether seeing these, or perhaps images of America's most famous portico, Mt. Vernon, inspired Holmes to build his, certainly the first in Maine. Oddly proportioned, folky and naive, it is undeniably more interesting as an anomaly than  it is beautiful, but lovely in its details.

Depression-era photographs of the front & rear elevations of the Holmes house, from the Historic American Buildings Survey.  The rear view demonstrates the 19th century custom, still in evidence in my childhood in the 1960's, of painting the rear elevations in a cheaper color, with the front elevations in more expensive white.  Modern paint manufacture has leveled the playing field, and this charming detail is rarely seen anymore.

 The Adamesque parlor mantel, with applied composition ornament likely imported from Boston or England, a rare refinement in rural Maine in the early 19th century.

The legend surrounding the bow and arrow panels in the roof balustrade is that Holmes was believed by racist political enemies to have Indian blood, and though he did not, his response was to have the local blacksmith fashion the bows and arrows as his response.   As sad as this sort of story makes the modern listener, the fact is that they are beautiful examples of early American ironwork, and a most distinctive design feature.

Drawings of the Holmes House from the Historic American Buildings Survey.  The tightly curved stair has a shallow dome at the second floor level.  A singular blend of sophisticated ideas and naive design execution, the Holmes house is a one-off in the story of Maine architecture, and it is sad in the extreme that it is not surviving well in the 21st century.

The house was originally built around a small courtyard, although demolition of the original kitchen long ago has changed the shape to an 'L'.  Inside was a curving staircase, and a mantel decorated with imported composition ornament, a relative rarity in rural Maine in this era. (for the ultimate example in Maine, visit the Ruggles House, here).

4.  An Arrow Through My Heart
 And now for the shock:  The balustrade is gone.  The house, neither well maintained nor totally neglected, lacks its signature feature, the balustrade, unique in Maine.  And while the Dilettante understands all too well the economics of such things, and has not been able to determine its fate (although I have a sinking feeling that the extraordinary  iron bow & arrow that I saw at an Antiques show last year, reminding me strongly of the ones at the Holmes house, may well have been one from the Holmes house.

The entrance of the Holmes House.  Gone from the entry are the shutters and louvered overdoor fan that echoed the upstairs door to the balcony.  Seeing painting in progress, and repaired clapboards, one hopes that it is merely in storage for painting, and not lost also.

One can't save everything, and of course one man's treasure is another man's trash, but to see one of the important early architectural features of Maine possibly lost is a sad thing.  Preservation is an iffy thing in America, and too much goes unappreciated.   One can only hope that the balustrade is stored and waiting to be replaced....but if even Samuel Yellin's studio cannot be preserved, and is raped for salvage and profit,  what hope for the work of an anonymous Maine blacksmith of the early 19th century?

Postscript:  Coincidence

 Senator John Holmes, anonymous 19th century portrait

As I was typing the first draft of this post earlier today, the estimable and ever entertaining architectural historian Christopher Monkhouse happened to pay a call.  When I told him what I was writing, he replied how funny it was that I should mention it, as he had recently thought about a Gilbert Stuart-ish portrait of the same John Holmes, painted in the early 19th century, that he had once owned.