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Bread Upon the Hudson
This arch - and to modern eyes, perhaps a little silly - looking fellow is Paul Ernest Boniface Marquis de Castellane (1867-1932), to friends and family simply "Boni." He is remembered as one of...
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Society Types on East 93rd Street
I read in the Times last week that a "mystery European buyer" plonked down $47,782,186 (and 53 cents) for the 58th floor at One57, that suavely anonymous glass tower across the street from Carnegie...
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A Consummation of Earthly Bliss
In 1818, a poetic teenager from North Carolina named Robert Donaldson (1800-1872) stood at the rail of a Hudson River steamer in the moonlight, bound from Albany to New York. "Passed the celebrated...
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Where Are They Now?
If you're a regular reader of Big Old Houses (and I sincerely hope that you are), you'll immediately recognize Lyndhurst (seen above), the astonishing "American Gothic" castle located in Tarrytown, New...
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Edith and Ogden
"We asked him to alter and decorate the house," Edith Wharton wrote in her 1934 memoir, "A Backward Glance.""(It was)...a somewhat new departure, since the architects of that day looked down on...
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Know Your Roosevelts
It's as well known that FDR and his wife were cousins, as it is that Geico can save you 15% on car insurance. But "cousins?" How did that work? Claes Martenszan van Rosenwelt (1626-1659) looks to me...
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The Elegant Republic
This is Mt. Airy Plantation, a Palladian outpost in rustic America built in 1764 near the northern Virginia village of Warsaw. Although closely related, it is not the subject of today's post. By 1799,...
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A Private Kingdom
This innocent (let's pretend it's unstaged) candid captures a watershed event in the history of a grand American family. John Ridgely Jr. (1882-1959) and his second wife Jane (d. 1978), having...
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East Seventies Sophistication
I sound like "Architectural Digest" which, with all due respect, I am not. The view above shows 78th Street east of Park Avenue, a block transformed in the decade following the Civil War from flat...
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A Park Avenue Story
Before explaining this rare shot of Park Avenue in the 1890s, taken when the street SOUTH of Grand Central was the fancy part, I want to alert my (many?) readers that I am speaking this coming Monday,...
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Persia on the Mountaintop
Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900) painted "Twilight in the Wilderness" in 1860, when he was 34 years old. I finally "saw" it (like Jake 'saw' Neytiri in 'Avatar') when I was in my middle 40s. I'd been...
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The Marquesa de Who?
It is the archetypal preservationist's dream - the beautiful historic house snatched from the clutches of a cold-hearted developer, while the wrecking ball is actually swinging. And it happened right...
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A Visit to Rumson
It is a fact of life: Republicans live well. In defense of this assertion, I submit to you the Monmouth County, New Jersey Borough of Rumson, population 7,122, where registered Republicans outnumber...
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The Public Won't Believe It
In 1940, when Philadelphia businessman Edgar Scott offered George Cukor the use of his wife's family home to film "The Philadelphia Story," Cukor declined. "The public," the director explained, "would...
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Westbury House
There's a great temptation to wallow in superlatives when describing Westbury House, the perfectly exquisite (there I go) Long Island country place completed in 1906 for John ('Jay') Shaffer Phipps...
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French Cosmetics and Lutheran Charity
Chances are slim to negligible that you've heard of Harriet Hubbard Ayer (1849-1903), a woman who had nothing at all to do with Harriet Hubbard Ayer Inc., once the world's largest purveyor of ladies'...
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I've Wondered for Years - Part 1 of 3 - 1028 Fifth Ave
Many readers will immediately recognize the three noble houses on the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 84th St. across the street from New York's Metropolitan Museum. I have admired them for decades...
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I've Wondered for Years - Part 2 of 3 - 1027 Fifth Ave
Some pretty fancy houses have been rising in America of late, not just "purpose built" either, but often simply "on spec." I doubt any is as profoundly luxurious as 1027 Fifth Avenue, a white marble,...
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And Now I Know - Part 3 of 3 - 1026 Fifth Ave.
Today, I am visiting 1026 Fifth Avenue (the one on the right), the last of The Three Fifth Avenue Graces of the Marymount School. 1026 was a fancy contractor house, built on spec by the same guy...
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The One Constant in Life
This is where I live in Dutchess County, on an estate called Daheim. The early postcard view above, taken in about 1900, shows a maintenance monster of the High Victorian persuasion, still smelling of...
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Our Reticent Upper Class
Last week I visited Montclair, New Jersey, a venerable suburb eleven miles from the Lincoln Tunnel. I'll bet you've never heard of South Mountain or Upper Mountain Avenues in Montclair, two amazing...
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A Whole Lot of Crazy
Talk about getting kicked around, here is an "old house" story that, while not exactly an indictment of any one individual, remains profoundly depressing. The image above shows the corner of Fifth...
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Old Westbury Redux
I've been patting myself on the back for weeks now, ever since my late March posting of a series of snowy misty late winter photos (the sort nobody else takes) of Old Westbury Gardens, the former...
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Playing Detective on North Broadway
The thing about hypotheses, specifically my own, is that they're usually right. On that immodest note, let me report to you on a most pleasurable afternoon I spent last week crawling around a battered...
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