GILDED AGE MANHATTAN DOWN EAST

Whenever I pass this townhouse at 9 East 68th St. in Manhattan, I stop in my tracks, enchanted by the odd arrangement of the balustrade sitting on the columns of the facade, which are evocative of Palladio's Vicenza, yet break all the rules.  Despite its attention getting style, I've only recently  learned more about it and connected a few dots in the process. Sometimes these things are in the air:  two weeks ago, even as the facts were filtering into my consciousness, 'Daytonian in Manhattan' blogged about the house.  Then, as I began writing this post a week ago---before a Fairpoint 'upgrade' undid my internet service for three days, a friend, not knowing of my recent interest, rang to mention that he had been to a party that evening in one of the apartments that now occupy the house, and his surprise that the elegant rooms lacked original woodwork.  Well, for those who don't already know, here's the rest of the story---and the answer to Monday's quiz.

A photograph of the Bliss house under construction, 1907, underscores its inspiration from Palladian buildings in Vicenza (courtesy Bowdoin College Archives)

Loggia del Capitano, Vicenza

Palazzo Schio

 The house was designed by Heins and LaFarge in 1907 for Jeanette Dwight Bliss, the daughter of a wealthy cotton merchant, and widow of George T. Bliss, the namesake son of  the partner of former Vice-President Levi P. Morton in the banking house of Morton, Bliss & Co.   Bliss Jr., who died of appendicitis in 1901, was a collector of  rare books, and his wife continued his collecting, in addition to her own fine collection of French decorative arts.  For her new house, Mrs. Bliss and her architects collected, in the manner of the day, an assortment of antique European interiors and architectural elements to provide the proper atmosphere for her collections.  Mrs. Bliss attended the 1906 sale of Stanford White's collections, including architectural elements, it is certain that some of her purchases were made there.

The dining room of Stanford White's New York townhouse, showing mantel sold at the sale of White's effects..

Stanford White's dining room mantel as used in the reception room of the Bliss house with 17th century French painted paneling (Courtesy Bowdoin College Archives)

Catalog entry for dining room mantelpiece from the catalog of the Stanford White estate sale

One wonders where these doors are today

The music room occupied the entire frontage on the piano nobile, overlooking  East 68th  St.  an alley between  the Bliss House and the neighboring J.J. Emery-Anson house allowed two exposures a rare commodity in townhouse interiors.

Above one of the two fireplaces in the music room hung  a self -portrait of  Rose-Adelaide Ducreaux, attributed in the Bliss's time to Vigeé-le Brun

Among the glories of the house were a small boudoir originally designed by Pierre-Adrian Paris for the Hôtel de Crillon on the Place de la Concorde in Paris, a sixteenth century Neapolitan ceiling for the library, and early 18th century boiserie designed by Lasurrance for the music room of the medieval Hôtel de Sens in the Marais.

Boudoir from Hôtel de Crillon, as installed in the Bliss House (courtesy Bowdoin College Archives)

Two views of the library, with woodwork designed by C. Grant LaFarge, and 16th century Italian ceiling and antique Istrian  marble fireplace (courtesy Bowdoin College Archives)

The Bliss salon, with boiserie originally designed for the Hôtel de Sens (courtesy Bowdoin College Archives)

Hôtel de Sens, Paris

Not all the interior decoration was antique.  Mrs. Bliss's architect, Christopher Grant LaFarge, was the son of the stained glass artist John LaFarge, who created the 'Welcome' window for the stair landing, with Mrs. Bliss's daughter, Susan posing for the central figure.

"Welcome" by John LaFarge (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Susan Dwight Bliss never married, and lived with her mother at East 68th Street. When they left town for the summer, they apparently preferred to lease, and they varied resorts from season to season, sometimes Newport, sometimes the Hamptons or the New Jersey shore, and sometimes here in Maine, at Bar Harbor, where their quarters ranged from 'Cornersmeet', a modest cottage on the Malvern Hotel grounds, to the more opulent surroundings of George Vanderbilt's 'Pointe d'Acadie' in 1910 (the Vanderbilts were economizing in Paris after financial reverses, all things being relative)  By 1912, they were in Seabright in New Jersey, and the New York times reported, with some consternation, that thier houseguest of the previous season, Count Eugene de Villa-Franca Soissons, a grandson of Prince Eugene of Savoy-Carignan, was 'noncommital' about reports that he was engaged to Susan Bliss, and speculated that his family did not approve of marriage to a commoner, no matter how rich.

17th century painted reception room from the Bliss house.  Location unknown
(Courtesy  of Bowdoin College Archives)

In 1924, Mrs. Bliss died, and Susan Dwight Bliss continued on at 9 East 68th, through the Depression and World War II, caring for and adding to her parent's collections, quietly supporting her many charities.

By 1945, it was thought that the age of the great town houses was over forever--the neighboring Marquand house by Richard Morris Hunt, on the corner of Madison Avenue and 68th St., had been demolished years before and replaced by an apartment house.  Many other houses in the neighborhood had fallen to institutional uses or been divided into apartments.  Rather than leave her house for an apartment, as many of her set had done, Susan Bliss decided to remain, but divided the house into several apartments, creating for herself in a 20 room duplex on the 3rd and 4th floors.   Her mother's grand interiors were gutted and dismantled, and Miss Bliss dispatched several of them to new homes.  

The Crillon boudoir, and many art objects, including the Harpsichord and self-portrait of Mme. Ducreaux, went around the corner to the Metropolitan Museum, where the boudoir is one of the delights of the Wrightsman Rooms .  

The Crillon Boudoir as installed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, decorated by Jansen  for the
Wrightsmans.

The library paneling designed by Christopher Grant LaFarge, supporting the antique Italian ceiling, was offered, along with a collection of her father's books and fine bindings and light fixtures and furniture, to Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.  Bowdoin, although surprised---Miss Bliss had never before had direct involvement with the college--accepted the gift with alacrity.  Other portions of the rare book collection went to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.

As originally installed in Hubbard Hall at Bowdoin, the Bliss Library, with modifications designed by McKim, Mead & White, perfectly evoked the luxe of Gilded Age Manhattan, transplanted to the coast of Maine. (courtesy Bowdoin College Archives)

The library ceiling (Bowdoin)

The Bliss Room as it appears today.

Also to Bowdoin went the boiserie from l'Hotel de Sens, where it was installed in Harvey Dow Gibson Hall, also by McKim, Mead & White, which houses the music department.

A contemporary photograph of the music room is not available---it may be viewed here in a Quicktime movie on the Bowdoin website. (The modern bookcase on one wall is undeniably regrettable.)

Portrait of a Lady, attributed to Alonso Sanchez Coello
(Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Gift of Miss Susan Dwight Bliss)

 And that, children, is the long answer to Monday's quiz question.  Congratulations to Anonymous, who answered it correctly (and in several hundred fewer words)

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

A Few Links:

For more about the Bliss House, click HERE.  More about the Bliss Room at Bowdoin, HERE .  For the complete set of Bliss House photographs in the Bowdoin Archives, several of which are reproduced here with permission, HERE.  For a plan of the piano nobile of the Bliss house, click HERE

PS.  As I continue to research for my book (Acanthus Press, early 2014, start saving your pennies), I keep passing the clothes of former owners of the houses, mostly in the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum.  Here is one of Miss Bliss's boots, from that collection

I RISKED MY LIFE TO TAKE THIS PHOTOGRAPH

No, seriously, I really did, although undeniably the bar lowers for what can be considered dangerous risk in late middle age.  No derring-do on ocean sailing boats, no climbing of sheer cliffs.  No, what I did was merely park illegally for five minutes and stand in a narrow traffic island in the middle of speeding commuter traffic (those suburbanites do love to drive their Audis at inappropriate speed in inappropriate locations) on Rte. 9 in Scarborough New York, all in order to photograph this amazing gate, which I've admired for years.  No false modesty about the builder of this Brobdingnagian construction.

I spent three days last week in the Tarrytown region of the Hudson Valley, researching various Maine homes of a certain family who,  after striking it rich in oil, loaded up their truck and moved to the Hills of Pocantico.  The Hudson valley has always been one of my favorite outings, combining as it does world class scenic grandeur, a romantic history and one of the country's great and varied collections of domestic architecture.   Despite the steady march of Dry-Vit and office parks, the Sleepy Hollow neighborhood around Tarrytown and Scarborough in the lower valley still offers much to see, not the least of which is this dramatic gate on Broadway, as the confusing network of routes 9 are often known on their run up the valley.

It is the former entrance to Beechwood, an estate originally dating to the 18th century.  The gates were commissioned in the early 20th century by the estate's then owner, Frank Vanderlip, one of the powers behind First National City Bank.  His architect was Rockefeller family favorite William Welles Bosworth, a Beaux Arts trained designer with a special talent for cold, cerebral evocations of the drama of ancient Rome and Greece.   For the reader who has never passed these gates, it should be mentioned that the scale is imperial.  Although the beautiful Grecian inspired iron gate is kept low to increase the dramatic effect, low in the case is actually around eight feet high at the crest, and the superb columns, rescued from a great demolished 19th century New York building---I once knew which, the answer now eludes me---are well over twenty feet.  Mr. Vanderlip must have felt like an emperor, or more aptly, Croesus, when he arrived home after a hard day of counting piles of money.

Although the gate is abandoned, the estate itself is condominums, and kept in good order, including the Roman gardens and pool added by Vanderlip, also designed by Bosworth.  The house, originally a relatively simple structure built in the 18th century, was repeatedly enlarged through the 19th and 20th centuries, is one of those places where degrees of separation abound.   The estate was purchased in the late 19th century by H. Walter Webb, a vice president of the New York central, whose brother, Seward, married the boss's daughter Lila, whose sister Margaret Vanderbilt Shepard owned the estate across the street by McKim, Mead & White, now the Sleepy Hollow Country Club.  Webb's widow, Leila Griswold, married Edith Wharton's partner in decorating crime, the confirmed bachelor Ogden Codman, whose first big  job had been for Margaret Shepard's and Lila Webb's brother Cornelius in Newport.  And so it goes.  

 The early Vanderlip years in the 20th century were the estate's most most glamorous era.  Intellectually inclined, Narcisse and Frank Vanderlip built a Montessori school and private theater (above) also designed by Bosworth, on the grounds for their and the neighborhood children.  The students later came to include those of John Cheever, who rented a charming studio house on the estate in the mid-20th century (Susan Cheever would return there briefly as a teacher).  

By the 1970's, semi-abandoned, the mansion itself became the setting for Merchant-Ivory's first production, Savages.  As with all their movies, the set is the star, and James Ivory's memory of that shoot (click HERE, pg.7) is worth a read.

Present day views of Beechwood, and the rotunda library and ballroom added by Bosworth, via Zillow

UPDATE 1:  An esteemed and ancient reader with sharp eyes sends THIS LINK to a Gant commercial filmed at Beechwood.  Would that I looked so lean and fit in my seersucker jacket :-(

UPDATE 2:   One of the pleasures of blogging is that if I don't know it, surely a commenter will (thank-goodness).   The columns, whose origin I couldn't remember, were salvaged from the old New York Customs House designed by Isiah Rogers at 55 Wall Street in 1836-42.  After the Customs house removed to Bowling Green, the building was taken over by Vanderlip's National City Bank, remodeled by McKim Mead & White.  Vanderlip had two of the columns, four stories high and turned from single blocks of Quincy granite  Think about what I just wrote.  Single pieces of granite.  Not the pyramids, perhaps, but a fairly huge engineering feat for the time..   No less amazing is that two stories of the columns' height is buried below ground in their current location.

Intermission: Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun, With Double Porticos

Typical Dilettante, I've got half a dozen posts in some stage of completion, but am very busy for the next few days, so until I get there here is quick post from the files.

A few months ago, this architectural rendering, of a proposed house by Daniel Romualdez for fashion designer Tory Burch, to be built in one or another of the many Hamptons, was doing the internet rounds.  I saved it because I was interested in the design, of two wings terminated by porticos, forming a courtyard.  It was a popular motif in houses many years ago.  The plan offered plenty of light and air, with  3 exposures possible in many rooms, many balconies and porches for a summer afternoon, and worked well for hierarchical separation of public, family, and service areas.   Here are  a few other examples:

The granddaddy of them all appears to be 'Beacon Rock' in Newport, RI, designed in 1887 by McKim Mead & White for E.D. Morgan.  A very large house, with 3 floors, it was designed to appear as a one story ancient Roman villa, and was quite radical for an era still in thrall to turrets and verandas.

 Beacon Rock, Newport Watercolor by Vernon Howe Bailey, 1887 (Vareika Fine Arts, Newport)

 (Dilettante Tangent: Even great architecture can extract a cost.  Before its top was blasted to provide a site for the house, Beacon Rock was one of the most beloved subjects for 19th century painters visiting Newport, including luminist John Frederick Kensett who painted this sublime view in 1857)

This house on the Down East coast of Maine seems to be next up in the chronology.  It was designed in 1911 as a summer cottage (seen here on an early postcard) for F.B. Richards, vice president of the M.A. Hanna Company in Cleveland, by Frank Chouteau Brown, one of the leaders of the Colonial Revival.  Here the porticos have grown to two stories, with square columns inspired by Mt. Vernon, on a house otherwise inspired, on blown-up scale, by classic New England Federals. The courtyard formed by the two wings contained a 'colonial' garden designed by Beatrix Farrand

Architect Howard Major, later known for his suave tropical houses in Palm Beach, designed this Glen Cove, Long Island house in 1918 for William Beard.  Looking at this picture, one is tempted to speculate that Major had seen at least the postcard published of the Richards cottage, as his design includes not only the double porticoes with square columns, but nearly identical fretwork railings at second floor level.

In 1919, Tobacco and Utilities magnate James B. Duke, wishing his daughter Doris to be better acquainted with her home state, as well as the Newport whirl that her mother preferred, purchased a Colonial Revival house in Charlotte, North Carolina.  He had local architect C.C. Hook triple it in size, to the present configuration.   He named the place Lynnewood, and here Doris sometimes attended local schools.  Not a man to do things by halves, Duke took the design idea to the limit, with two facades featuring the twin porticos, as it also appears does Burch's proposed house, where this ramble started.  Despite his hope that the house would foster an affection for North Carolina in young Doris, the house was sold upon his death, the only one of his four homes not retained by his widow and daughter.

Last up, below, is a country house in Minnesota designed by the great David Adler in the 1920's for the Egil Boeckmans, she the daughter of railroad tycoon James J. Hill.  The house is pleasant, although lacking in the usual elan of Adler's work