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A Tudor Revival house, probably circa 1910, with a river stone ground floor exterior, on South Highland Street in West Hartford, Conn. I grew up in a small Cape Cod across the street from this house. By Skip Moskey I grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut, during the 1960s. We lived in an area of […]
Lansdowne House, by Edith Mary Garner Gilded Age mansions were never designed without regard for their commissioners’ tastes in architecture and interior decoration. Indeed, architects worked closely with their clients to make sure that the finished product met their every whim and expectation. One of the themes I explore in my book Larz and Isabel Anderson: […]
By Skip Moskey The Dining Hall at Biltmore. Why did George Washington Vanderbilt want his dining hall to look like this? What influenced his vision? (Photo, Library of Congress) One of the many things that interests me most about the Gilded Age is understanding what factors influenced the location and design of mansions that helped […]
By Skip Moskey The Levi Z. Leiter House, 1500 New Hampshire Avenue at Dupont Circle, Washington, DC., under construction 1891. The house was torn down in 1947. (Architect: Theophilus P. Chandler, Philadelphia.) When I was writing my book about Larz and Isabel Anderson, I got to know many of the great Gilded Age mansions the […]
By Skip Moskey Edith Wharton, ca. 1889 Edith Wharton is known in American cultural history primarily as the author of Gilded Age novels that for a century have captivated and entertained readers. Her works The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, and Ethan Frome have been adapted as films that have brought her work to even larger […]
Larz Kilgour Anderson was born 149 years ago today, on August 15th, 1866, in his parents’ apartment at what is now No. 38 rue Marbeuf in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, just off of the Champs Élysées. Nick and Elizabeth Anderson were on their year-long wedding trip through Europe when Larz was conceived. They decided to stay in Europe […]
By Skip Moskey Twin Memorials to Commodore G.H. Perkins by Daniel Chester French. Left: New Hampshire State House (1902); right: U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis (1911). After the death of her father Commodore George Hamilton Perkins in 1899, Isabel Anderson began plans for a memorial to him on the grounds of the New Hampshire State House in […]
Nicholas Longworth Anderson Bridge, Boston July 17, 1920 In 1913, after he returned from his ambassadorship in Tokyo, Larz Anderson commissioned a memorial to his father, a bridge across the Charles River in Boston that would connect Harvard’s Cambridge campus to its stadium in Boston. Designed by Boston city architect Edmund Wheelwright, it was known in […]
In June 1907, while cruising along the mid-Atlantic coast aboard their houseboat the Roxana, Larz and Isabel Anderson invited several friends to join them for a dinner party at sea. The cook prepared a mouth-watering menu that proved the Roxana’s catering standards equal to those of an Anderson kitchen on terra firma. The summery menu included a frothy cold consommé, […]
by Skip Moskey Pierre Lorillard’s houseboat “Caiman”, pictured here in a watercolor published in 1893 in The Illustrated American. (Source: Google Books.) We often associate yachts and steamships with Gilded Age vacations and recreation, but did you know that houseboats were also once the “in” thing for wealthy boaters like Pierre Lorillard, Alfred Gwynn Vanderbilt, […]
On Easter Monday, March 28, 1910, Larz and Isabel Anderson attended a field day for children at Randle Highlands in the District of Columbia. Known now as Washington Highlands, the area was first developed by Col. Arthur E. Randle (1859-1829), a prominent Washingtonian. The children of Randle Highlands petitioned Isabel to attend their festivities and help give […]
Anderson House, 2118 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC., 1905, designed by the Boston architectural firm of Arthur Little & Herbert Brown. (Photo by Skip Moskey.) Did you know that, like people, buildings have their own “genealogy”? I’m not talking about the style of a house (such as Gothic Revival, Art Deco, or International), nor am […]
A Gorinto is the Japanese interpretation of a type of Buddhist pagoda used as a memorial or burial marker. Larz and Isabel Anderson saw many of these on their trips to Japan and purchased one for their estate in Brookline, MA. Their estate is now the Larz Anderson Park. A Gorinto has five levels, each with […]
By Skip Moskey “Puddingstone” as it looked in 1948, about 20 years after its construction. (Source: Leslie Jones Collection, Boston Public Library, via Digital Commonwealth.) In 1925, in response to a real estate development boom that was then spreading throughout the Boston suburbs in the wake of the nation’s burgeoning economy, Larz Anderson, who had […]
