Home

Our first stop is the Charles McKim-designed Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park (1895), a little bit of Gilded Age Newport on the Hudson. While not as opulent as some of the grandest Vanderbilt country houses, these palatial interiors still have the grandeur of the Italian Renaissance. This house also has the distinction of being only one of three McKim Mead and White houses with its original furnishings. They are by designers Stanford White, Ogden Codman, Jr., and George Glaenzer. Next, we visit the Mills Mansion , a few miles away in Staatsburgh. A Stanford White design (1894-6), the house incorporates much of a pre-existing Greek Revival house already on the site, with the addition of two large wings and an Ionic portico on the entrance front. With its oak paneled walls, ceiling and staircase, the L-shaped living hall at the entrance has a more restrained feeling than the marble entrance of the Vanderbilt Mansion. White retained the Paris based Jules Allard to design the dining room with its Flemish tapestries, marble walls, and late-eighteenth century reproductions of eighteenth century French furniture. The library is more English in style with gilt and oak paneling. Many of the original furnishings are still here: family portraits, tea sets, extravagant fabrics in various states of repair. We get a sense of the Old Money Ruth Livingston married to the New Money Ogden Mills, whose father had made a fortune in the California Gold Rush of 1849. We are told that this house was the inspiration for the great Hudson River country house described by Edith Wharton in We visit the basement where Geoffrey shows us how he has been milling all the trimwork for the deceptively spacious, three-story interior. He and his young family have been living on the third floor, which is mostly finished, while the second and first floors and stairway are in various states of completion. Stephen Falatko, AIA, has helped with design...

Read more...