maximios

Books, Gardens & Horticulture, Italy August 25, 2017 skipmoskey

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 audiences.  In recent years, her letters have been published, so if you’ve read all her novels and short stories and are hankering for more Wharton, try The Letters of Edith Wharton, edited by R.W.B. Lewis, and My Dear Governess: The Letters of Edith Wharton to Anna Bahlmann (both of which are on my nightstand!).

But Mrs. Wharton wrote two other important nonfiction books that made lasting contributions to defining good taste in American domestic architecture, interior design, and landscape architecture: Italian Villas and their Gardens (1905), illustrated by Maxfield Parrish; and The Decoration of Houses (1898), co-authored with Ogden Codman, Jr.  If you are an aficionado of Gilded Age design, furniture, and gardens – and are looking for new Wharton material to read – both of these books are widely available from internet booksellers in original and reprint editions. (A future post will address The Decoration of Houses.)

The Boboli Gardens (Florence) by Maxfield Parrish, one of the many beautiful illustrations in Italian Villas and their Gardens.

In my view, Italian Villas and their Gardens is Mrs. Wharton’s most beautiful book, not only because of the wonderful illustrations of Italian villas, gardens, and garden architecture, but also because of the book’s elegant typography and Mrs. Wharton’s elegant prose.  For example, in introducing her readers to the Boboli garden, pictured above, she writes:

The plan of the Boboli garden is not only magnificent in itself, but interesting as one of the rare examples, in Tuscany of a Renaissance garden still undisturbed in its main outlines. (Italian Villas, p. 25)

The Villa Medici, shown below, is perhaps one of my own favorite Renaissance Italian villas, and though I have not visited it (yet), reading Mrs. Wharton’s description of one’s first experience of the villa makes me feel as though I have been there.  “It is safe to say,” she writes, “that no one enters the grounds of the Villa Medici without being soothed and charmed by that garden-magic which is the peculiar quality of some of the old Italian pleasances.” (p. 93)

The Villa Medici (Rome), now the Académie de France à Rome (Academy of France in Rome), painting by Maxfield Parrish, from Italian Villas and their Gardens.  Click on Académie de France for a splendid aerial tour of the villa and its gardens.

Larz and Isabel Anderson’s summer estate “Weld” in Brookline, Massachusetts, was a horticultural paradise. Though not particularly noted for its architecture and interior design the way Anderson House in Washington was during their lifetime (and still is), the Brookline estate was famous throughout the world for the beauty of its gardens and landscapes.

There were also whimsical elements to the estate’s gardens: topiaries – shrubs trimmed into geometric and fantastic shapes to delight visitors.  Topiaries existed in the ancient cultures of Rome and China, and English monks kept the art form alive for many centuries.  During the second half of the 19th century, topiaries again became popular in Europe and the U.S.

Larz acquired his topiaries from nurseries in Holland on trips there in the early 1900s. These rare photographs from the archives of the Larz Anderson Auto Museum in Brookline, Massachusetts (housed in the Andersons’ former carriage house) provide a glimpse of a Gilded Age couple’s devotion to the beauty of their summer estate.

These and many more details about the agricultural and horticultural operations at “Weld” are presented in the Andersons’ new biography, Larz and Isabel Anderson: Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age (iUniverse.com; available on Amazon Prime). 

Photos: Anderson topiaries (circa 1905). Used by kind permission of the Larz Anderson Auto Museum, Brookline, Mass. Scanned and edited by Skip Moskey. All rights reserved.

(Digimarc® Guardian for Images)

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 I talking about who has owned the house over time, though both of those things are important to fully understanding and appreciating the historical context of a building.

When I talk about the genealogy of a building, I’m interested in what its architectural antecedents were: what historical edifices might have served as models or ideas for the architect, or what historic homes might have inspired the owner to build a house of a particular style with particular features? Indeed, that was a question I asked myself almost ten years ago when I first visited a prominent historic house in Washington, DC — and ultimately became the biographer of both the house and its occupants.

The building I visited a decade ago is the Isabel and Larz Anderson House (known locally in Washington as Anderson House), built between 1902 and 1905 as the winter “party palace” of Boston author and philanthropist Isabel Weld Perkins Anderson (1876-1948), and her socialite husband Larz Kilgour Anderson (1866-1937). The construction cost of the mansion in 1905 was $750,000 (approximately $20 million today), with another $100,000 ($2.5 million) being spent on interior decoration and furnishings. The money to fund this construction project came entirely from Isabel’s trust fund of approximately $5.5 million ($141 million) which suggests that “The Isabel Anderson House” would be a more appropriate moniker for the residence. But I digress…

The question of which historical antecedents inspired Larz Anderson and his architects has been complicated by confusion in the literature on the actual architectural style of the house. When the house was completed in 1905, the Washington Post reported its architectural style as Florentine Villa, a mistake that continued well into the 20th century, when the 1994 (third) edition of The AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C. labeled it an Italianate Palace. The AIA later changed their classification to neo-English Baroque [=early English Baroque] in its 2012 (5th) edition of the AIA Guide, an ornate style of architecture that is definitely not applicable to Anderson House. This error by the AIA is remarkable, because architectural historians Pamela Scott and Antoinette Lee had gotten it right almost two decades earlier in their 1993 encyclopedic survey Buildings of the District of Columbia, where they correctly classified Anderson House as English late Baroque.

Lansdowne House, Westminster. Print by E. William Brayley, ca. 1820.

Around 1900 or 1901, when Larz Anderson started a conversation with the Boston architects Arthur Little and Herbert Browne about building a house in Washington, he almost certainly had London’s Lansdowne House in mind as an inspiration for the winter residence he wanted to build in the nation’s capital. The London townhouse was built in 1765 according to designs by Robert Adam, and Larz knew it well. He had visited it often a decade earlier, during the years that he was a junior diplomat at the American legation in London in the 1890s. Lansdowne House was the London town home of Mr. and Mrs. William Waldorf Astor during the time that Mr. Astor lived in self-imposed exile in England after a run-in with THE Mrs. Astor over who should be the “official” Mrs. Astor in New York. (His aunt, Mrs. William Backhouse Astor, Jr. (née Schermerhorn), won the battle.)

A drawing room in Lansdowne House, ca. 1915. The room must have looked something like this around the time that Larz Anderson was visiting the Astors here in the 1890s. A contemporary photo of this room, which was saved from destruction in 1931, follows. In 1931, the wings of Lansdowne House were demolished. Fortunately, some of the rooms were saved. The drawing room (shown above in a contemporary photograph) was acquired by the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Note that the 19th century flocked wallpaper shown in the 1915 photo has been removed, and the room returned to its original color scheme. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York city acquired the dining room, and it is now on display there.

Lansdowne’s exterior and interior design, and its connection to one of the most powerful American families of the 19th century, the Astors, clearly made an impression on the young American diplomat, who had dreams of his own future greatness as an American ambassador. (The story of Larz’s checkered career in American diplomacy is told for the first time in Larz and Isabel Anderson: Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age.) In his diaries, Larz recorded his visits with the Astors at Lansdowne House, during a period of his life when he was making frequent visits to other great houses of London and the English countryside. Since those other homes go largely un-mentioned in his diaries, it’s clear that for Larz, Lansdowne House had a particular appeal, perhaps as much for its “American royalty” occupants as for the architecture of the house itself. [1]

Lansdowne House, ca. 1920.

When one compares Anderson and Lansdowne houses, there are many similarities in massing and arrangement of structural and decorative elements, including an impressive pediment, pilasters, hipped roofs, and even the placement of chimneys. But the subsidiary wings of Lansdowne (seen more clearly in the illustration above) are not articulated forward as they are in Anderson House. There are, however, many examples of such articulation in other English houses; for example, Clarendon House in London (1664-1667) and Belton House in Lincolnshire (1685).

Clarendon House, London, 1664-1667 (Destroyed 1683) Belton House, Grantham, Lincolnshire, 1685 Anderson House, 2010 (Photo by Greg Tinius)

Though Larz had extensive exposure to English architecture and landscape design as a consequence of his long residence in England during his years as a diplomat there, he had an even more significant exposure to French and Italian culture. Larz’s almost accidental birth in Paris in 1866 during his parents’ 18-month wedding trip was the source of his life-long interest in all things French, though (unlike Isabel) he was not particularly fluent in the language. [2] Though a late English Baroque style of country home provided Larz with the size and stature that he wanted for his in-town residence in Washington, it’s almost certain that he looked to Paris for decorative touches that would reflect his “French connection.”

There are several important architectural elements of Anderson House that were inspired by Parisian townhomes. To understand this more clearly, start by comparing the Greg Tinius photo of Anderson House with the photo of Belton House just above it. All of the significant differences between Belton and Anderson houses can be traced to French antecedents: the entryway, pediment, and portico (See below). Indeed, it is the French influence on Anderson House that ultimately creates a truly artistic effect and gives the house a unique architectural personality. Were it not for these very French elements, Anderson House as a pure example of late English Baroque architecture (i.e., without French accents) might seem more pedestrian and more predictable. The French touches in the exterior of the house create texture and depth that would otherwise be missing from a purely-English structure such as Belton House.

If Anderson House were a person, I think it would be fair to say that though English is its native language, it speaks the language of Shakespeare with a slight Parisian accent and a vocabulary chosen from the language of Molière.

Entryway

Entryway to the forecourt of Anderson House (1902-1905). Larz wanted a forecourt that could be closed off from the street to accommodate the privacy and security needs of visiting heads of state and royalty. In fact, the house was used only once for such a visit, when the King and Queen of Siam stayed at Anderson House in 1931. The twin entryways of Anderson House could be closed with massive wooden doors that recently (2018) were restored. Entryway to the forecourt of the Hôtel Libéral Bruant (1685), 1 Rue de la Perle, Paris 3ème. The gated forecourt of the Bruant provided security and privacy at a time when there were no public police services. Wealthy residents of the city relied on the design of their home to shield it from activity in the street.
The pediment of Anderson House, seen from a third-floor bedroom window. The pediment incorporates the eagle crest designed by Pierre L’Enfant as the emblem of the Society of the Cincinnati. The eagle is set against a mantling of war symbols: spears, battle-axes, fasces with axes, and Roman military ensigns mounted by eagles. If Larz wanted to imply that he, like his ancestors, saw battle in defense of the Republic, this hawkish pediment certainly did so. (Photo by Skip Moskey 2013.) The Bruant again provides a historical antecedent for the exterior decoration of Anderson House. Note the similarities: a highly decorated pediment, a round niche containing classically-inspired sculpture, and gracefully elongaged French windows. At Anderson House, the windows functioned as access to the balcony above the portico. The Portico of Anderson House. The obvious architectural antecedent here is the White House, perhaps reflecting Larz’s own political ambitions. In 1916, Larz was briefly considered as a possible vice presidential running mate for Charles Evans Hughes Sr. Larz either declined or the offer was withdrawn. Hughes ran with Charles W. Fairbanks as his running mate, and lost to Woodrow Wilson. The South Portico of the White House, added in 1824, was photographed in 1848 by James Plumbe. The design of the portico, however, was not without precedent. The White House portico is an almost exact copy of one in France, the Château de Rastignac. The portico of the Château de Rastignac (ca. 1789, completed 1812-1817 during the waning years of the Napoleonic era, just before the Bourbon Restoration.) Thomas Jefferson is said to have traveled in the Dordogne-Bordeaux region where the Rastignac is located and may have brought back the idea for the portico. In any event, even if Larz had the White House in mind when he directed his architects to include a portico in the design of Anderson House, the antecedent is decidedly French!

This essay was adapted from “A Tale of Two Houses: The Architecture and Interior Decoration of Washington’s Townsend and Anderson Residences,” a lecture that I and art historian Dr. Isabel Taube of New York City co-presented to the Cosmos Club Historical Preservation Foundation in Washington, DC, on November 12, 2018. Though the views and analysis presented here are my own, I want to acknowledge Dr. Taube’s important contribution to my thinking on these issues.  

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Notes

[1] In January 1892, Larz made the first of several visits to Hardwick House in Oxfordshire, the country home of the Anglo-Canadian businessman, racehorse breeder, yachtsman, and British Liberal Party politician, Sir Charles Day Rose (1847-1913). Author Kenneth Grahame used Sir Charles as the inspiration for the Wind in the Willows character, Mr. Toad, and set the story at Hardwick House.

[2] Larz’s knowledge of and appreciation for Italian art, architecture, and garden design far exceeded his interest in either English or French culture. Indeed, his deep appreciation of Italian culture was a theme throughout the course of his adult life, as documented in my full-length biography of the Andersons, Larz and Isabel Anderson: Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age.

Book Trailer (en français), France, Publication Updates September 27, 2015 skipmoskey

Cliquer ici s.v.p. pour l’en commander sur Amazon.FR (site français, en anglais)

Et ici pour l’en commander sur Amazon.com (site USA) en anglais

Larz Kilgour Anderson (1866-1937) et Isabel Weld Perkins Anderson (1876-1948) étaient un couple américain de la haute société. Ils avaient un niveau de vie élevé et vécurent des vies remarquablement intéressantes qui couvrirent presque un siècle d’histoire américaine. Descendant de grandes familles, ils atteignirent la majorité durant la reconstruction et l’expansion de l’économie américaine postérieures à la guerre de Sécession. Par leur grand-père respectif, ils bénéficièrent de la célébrité et des privilèges qui découlent des fortunes transmises par héritage.

Les Anderson et les membres de leur entourage vivaient dans le monde dépeint dans les romans d’Edith Wharton et les portraits de John Singer Sargent. Le couple construisit de grandes et impressionnantes résidences à Boston et à Washington, où il divertissait des membres de familles royales, des politiciens, des aristocrates, des diplomates et les personnalités importantes du moment. Son ancien hôtel particulier à Washington, maintenant siège de la Société des Cincinnati, est considéré comme l’un des meilleurs exemples de l’architecture néoclassique de style Beaux-Arts aux États-Unis.

Larz Anderson – qui naquit à Paris et étudia à Harvard – aima avec passion le faste et le protocole de la société américaine et européenne du XIXe siècle, en particulier dans les années 1890 quand il exerça les fonctions de diplomate américain à Londres et à Rome. Ultérieurement, il occupa brièvement les postes d’émissaire des États-Unis en Belgique et d’ambassadeur au Japon sous la présidence de William Howard Taft. Lars s’adonnait à de nombreux loisirs et passe-temps. Il tenait des journaux détaillés, était un illustrateur accompli, collectionnait l’art asiatique et les bonsaïs japonais, et mit en œuvre sa connaissance d’amateur en matière d’architecture pour la conception de six maisons et de plusieurs jardins de divers styles, notamment italien, anglais et japonais. Il aimait voyager et organisa de nombreux périples dans son pays et à l’étranger afin d’explorer des contrées exotiques et de découvrir des cultures étranges.

Isabel Anderson fit son entrée dans le XXe siècle avec un grand enthousiasme. Elle ne chercha jamais à fuir ses devoirs d’épouse ou de femme de la société, mais sa capacité à trouver un sens à son existence la distingua des autres femmes de son rang. En 1917-1918, Isabel s’engagea comme infirmière volontaire dans les zones de combat en France et en Belgique. Parlant couramment le français, elle était très aimée par les poilus, qui l’appelaient Marraine. Son expérience de la guerre la changea et elle développa une conscience aiguë de l’évolution de l’ordre social du nouveau siècle. Elle se mit à défendre la possibilité pour les femmes d’accéder à l’enseignement universitaire. Elle s’intéressa à la réforme des prisons. Quand elle apprit un jour qu’un immigrant italien était emprisonné à tort pour meurtre, elle fit appel à son réseau politique et diplomatique pour qu’il soit gracié et rapatrié en Italie dans sa famille. À une époque où le divorce était un anathème social, Isabel croyait que tous les mariages n’étaient pas nécessairement de bonnes unions et que le divorce donnait aux hommes et aux femmes la chance de prendre un nouveau départ dans la vie. Elle se demandait même pourquoi les femmes ne pouvaient pas servir leur pays dans l’armée. Pour toutes ces raisons, elle était vraiment une femme moderne.

Après la mort de Larz en 1937, Isabel mena une vie plus simple et fit don des maisons et des biens dont elle n’avait plus besoin ou dont elle ne voulait plus. Elle pleura beaucoup la perte de son mari, mais continua à trouver des manières d’exercer son indépendance. Elle se consacra à l’écriture de mémoires et de poèmes qui racontaient l’histoire des familles Anderson, Weld et Perkins, notamment la vie et les moments qu’elle avait partagés avec son époux. Ses livres de cette période de sa vie restent des sources importantes et précieuses pour les historiens qui cherchent à comprendre l’Âge doré.

S’appuyant sur six ans de recherche d’archives aux États-Unis et en Europe, ce livre offre un regard neuf sur l’Âge doré de l’Amérique. Le fait qu’il mette l’accent sur la richesse, la célébrité, la politique, les rôles de l’homme et de la femme, et les relations entre les races intéressera particulièrement les lecteurs qui, en Europe et partout ailleurs, cherchent à comprendre les origines de la culture américaine contemporaine. Isabel Anderson se dessine de ces pages sous un nouveau jour : comme une femme du début du XXe siècle dont les paroles et les actes ont anticipé le rôle des femmes dans la culture et la société d’aujourd’hui. Ici, Isabel Anderson s’adresse directement aux lecteurs et prend sa place méritée parmi les grandes figures féminines de l’époque moderne.

Larz and Isabel Anderson : Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age par Stephen T. Moskey.  Paru chez l'éditeur iUniverse.com en anglais. 340 pages, illustré, indice, bibliographie. ISBN-10: 1491788747 ISBN-13: 978-1491788745 

“Open the Door of Your Heart”
from Isabel Anderson’s operetta Marina (1932)
Words and music by Grace Warner Gulesian
Performed by Antoine Palloc (Paris, France)

[Sheet music for “Open the Door of Your Heart” is linked below.]

Open the door of your heart dear, For love stands waiting outside. Pray leave the portals ajar dear, Love will come in and abide. Love will come back to the home nest. Love will be love as of old. Open your heart and let love rest. Love that will never grow old. Ah! Ah! Waiting a kind word from you. Ah! Ah! Love will forever be true. Deep in your eyes Love is reading Hope that will never depart. Though you delay, Love finds a way,

Open the door of your heart.

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 served briefly as a U.S. Ambassador in 1913 and was one of the era’s most visible bon vivants, decided to try to increase the value of some unused land his wife Isabel Perkins Anderson owned near their estate in Brookline, Mass.  Larz wrote in his diary that they built the houses to “keep up with the Joneses.”  Indeed, only a spendthrift could build three extravagant houses that no one would ever live in.

These houses were among Larz’s most treasured pet projects. He had more than a passing knowledge of architecture, landscape design, and interior decoration, and had the circumstances of his life been otherwise, he would almost certainly have ended up one of the most celebrated Beaux-Arts architects of the early 20th century.

Larz enjoyed designing or commissioning many architectural projects over the course of his lifetime, including a small Japanese garden in Brookline, a classic Japanese pavilion at his wife’s rustic camp in New Hampshire, the Anderson Memorial Bridge in Boston, and even the St. Mary Chapel of the Washington National Cathedral, which he paid for and became very involved with, working directly with the architects and designers on the layout and decoration of the chapel. Thus, as he approached the development of new dwellings, much thought and planning went into their design and construction. “A small house requires almost more study than a large one,” Larz said, “and so there was a lot of talk and discussion about this little plan.”

Larz Anderson’s Japanese pavilion in a remote wooded area of New Hampshire. (Photo by Skip Moskey.)

The Andersons hired the Boston firm of Thomas A. Fox and Edwards J. Gale to design three small but perfectly-designed homes on Brookline’s Goddard Avenue, then a bucolic country lane that ran along the edge of the Anderson estate. The buildings were intended as souvenirs of some of their travels, recalling houses and construction materials that they found appealing.

“Blue Top,” built in 1929 by Larz Anderson at 275 Goddard Avenue in Brookline. (Photo by Skip Moskey, 2011.)

The inspiration for the first of these, Blue Top (1925), was a house with a blue tile roof they had seen in Cadiz, Spain.  Located at what is now 275 Goddard Avenue, the frame house had exterior walls of white stucco and a blue-glazed terra cotta tile roof.

“Puddingstone,” built in 1927 by Larz Anderson at 325 Goddard Avenue, Brookline. Compare this modern view to the 1948 photo above.  (Photo by Skip Moskey, 2016)

The second, Puddingstone (1927), was named for a nearby outcropping of puddingstone on the Anderson estate (see photo at the end of this blog), was modeled after one they had seen in Santa Monica, California.  Built in a Spanish Colonial style, it also used red terra cotta roof tiles and adobe-colored stucco walls, but this house has a more decorative exterior. Its current house number is 325 Goddard Avenue.

“Stellenbosch,” built in 1929 by Larz Anderson at 285 Goddard Avenue in Brookline, Mass. (Photo by Skip Moskey, 2016)

The third house, Stellenbosch (1929), at 285 Goddard Avenue, was built in the Cape Dutch Colonial style found in South Africa, which the Andersons had visited the previous year.  Of the three houses, this is my favorite.

After the houses were completed, Larz complained that the Town of Brookline would not allow the names he had given to the new structures to be used as their postal addresses.  “The authorities require deadly numbers as an address,” he wrote in his journal, accepting the reality that the identity of his little architectural gems would be reduced to a number.

The Andersons used the buildings occasionally as guesthouses for relatives or friends who came for long stays at Weld, especially when Larz and Isabel were not in residence there.  But for the most part, the houses remained empty and it was only after Larz’s death in 1937 that Isabel disposed of them.  She donated them to Boston University for use as the Brookline Campus of what was then known as the College of Practical Arts and Letters, a two-year program that trained women for jobs as art teachers, medical secretaries, and similar fields.  The university used them for this purpose for only a few years, and later sold the properties for use as private dwellings.

An outcropping of puddingstone in Larz Anderson Park, the former summer home of Larz and Isabel Anderson. (Photo by Skip Moskey, 2011.)

Text adapted from Larz and Isabel Anderson: Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age, by Stephen T. Moskey, available on Amazon Prime.  Copyright (c) 2016 by Stephen T. Moskey.  All rights reserved.

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 I talking about who has owned the house over time, though both of those things are important to fully understanding and appreciating the historical context of a building.

When I talk about the genealogy of a building, I’m interested in what its architectural antecedents were: what historical edifices might have served as models or ideas for the architect, or what historic homes might have inspired the owner to build a house of a particular style with particular features? Indeed, that was a question I asked myself almost ten years ago when I first visited a prominent historic house in Washington, DC — and ultimately became the biographer of both the house and its occupants.

The building I visited a decade ago is the Isabel and Larz Anderson House (known locally in Washington as Anderson House), built between 1902 and 1905 as the winter “party palace” of Boston author and philanthropist Isabel Weld Perkins Anderson (1876-1948), and her socialite husband Larz Kilgour Anderson (1866-1937). The construction cost of the mansion in 1905 was $750,000 (approximately $20 million today), with another $100,000 ($2.5 million) being spent on interior decoration and furnishings. The money to fund this construction project came entirely from Isabel’s trust fund of approximately $5.5 million ($141 million) which suggests that “The Isabel Anderson House” would be a more appropriate moniker for the residence. But I digress…

The question of which historical antecedents inspired Larz Anderson and his architects has been complicated by confusion in the literature on the actual architectural style of the house. When the house was completed in 1905, the Washington Post reported its architectural style as Florentine Villa, a mistake that continued well into the 20th century, when the 1994 (third) edition of The AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C. labeled it an Italianate Palace. The AIA later changed their classification to neo-English Baroque [=early English Baroque] in its 2012 (5th) edition of the AIA Guide, an ornate style of architecture that is definitely not applicable to Anderson House. This error by the AIA is remarkable, because architectural historians Pamela Scott and Antoinette Lee had gotten it right almost two decades earlier in their 1993 encyclopedic survey Buildings of the District of Columbia, where they correctly classified Anderson House as English late Baroque.

Lansdowne House, Westminster. Print by E. William Brayley, ca. 1820.

Around 1900 or 1901, when Larz Anderson started a conversation with the Boston architects Arthur Little and Herbert Browne about building a house in Washington, he almost certainly had London’s Lansdowne House in mind as an inspiration for the winter residence he wanted to build in the nation’s capital. The London townhouse was built in 1765 according to designs by Robert Adam, and Larz knew it well. He had visited it often a decade earlier, during the years that he was a junior diplomat at the American legation in London in the 1890s. Lansdowne House was the London town home of Mr. and Mrs. William Waldorf Astor during the time that Mr. Astor lived in self-imposed exile in England after a run-in with THE Mrs. Astor over who should be the “official” Mrs. Astor in New York. (His aunt, Mrs. William Backhouse Astor, Jr. (née Schermerhorn), won the battle.)

A drawing room in Lansdowne House, ca. 1915. The room must have looked something like this around the time that Larz Anderson was visiting the Astors here in the 1890s. A contemporary photo of this room, which was saved from destruction in 1931, follows. In 1931, the wings of Lansdowne House were demolished. Fortunately, some of the rooms were saved. The drawing room (shown above in a contemporary photograph) was acquired by the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Note that the 19th century flocked wallpaper shown in the 1915 photo has been removed, and the room returned to its original color scheme. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York city acquired the dining room, and it is now on display there.

Lansdowne’s exterior and interior design, and its connection to one of the most powerful American families of the 19th century, the Astors, clearly made an impression on the young American diplomat, who had dreams of his own future greatness as an American ambassador. (The story of Larz’s checkered career in American diplomacy is told for the first time in Larz and Isabel Anderson: Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age.) In his diaries, Larz recorded his visits with the Astors at Lansdowne House, during a period of his life when he was making frequent visits to other great houses of London and the English countryside. Since those other homes go largely un-mentioned in his diaries, it’s clear that for Larz, Lansdowne House had a particular appeal, perhaps as much for its “American royalty” occupants as for the architecture of the house itself. [1]

Lansdowne House, ca. 1920.

When one compares Anderson and Lansdowne houses, there are many similarities in massing and arrangement of structural and decorative elements, including an impressive pediment, pilasters, hipped roofs, and even the placement of chimneys. But the subsidiary wings of Lansdowne (seen more clearly in the illustration above) are not articulated forward as they are in Anderson House. There are, however, many examples of such articulation in other English houses; for example, Clarendon House in London (1664-1667) and Belton House in Lincolnshire (1685).

Clarendon House, London, 1664-1667 (Destroyed 1683) Belton House, Grantham, Lincolnshire, 1685 Anderson House, 2010 (Photo by Greg Tinius)

Though Larz had extensive exposure to English architecture and landscape design as a consequence of his long residence in England during his years as a diplomat there, he had an even more significant exposure to French and Italian culture. Larz’s almost accidental birth in Paris in 1866 during his parents’ 18-month wedding trip was the source of his life-long interest in all things French, though (unlike Isabel) he was not particularly fluent in the language. [2] Though a late English Baroque style of country home provided Larz with the size and stature that he wanted for his in-town residence in Washington, it’s almost certain that he looked to Paris for decorative touches that would reflect his “French connection.”

There are several important architectural elements of Anderson House that were inspired by Parisian townhomes. To understand this more clearly, start by comparing the Greg Tinius photo of Anderson House with the photo of Belton House just above it. All of the significant differences between Belton and Anderson houses can be traced to French antecedents: the entryway, pediment, and portico (See below). Indeed, it is the French influence on Anderson House that ultimately creates a truly artistic effect and gives the house a unique architectural personality. Were it not for these very French elements, Anderson House as a pure example of late English Baroque architecture (i.e., without French accents) might seem more pedestrian and more predictable. The French touches in the exterior of the house create texture and depth that would otherwise be missing from a purely-English structure such as Belton House.

If Anderson House were a person, I think it would be fair to say that though English is its native language, it speaks the language of Shakespeare with a slight Parisian accent and a vocabulary chosen from the language of Molière.

Entryway

Entryway to the forecourt of Anderson House (1902-1905). Larz wanted a forecourt that could be closed off from the street to accommodate the privacy and security needs of visiting heads of state and royalty. In fact, the house was used only once for such a visit, when the King and Queen of Siam stayed at Anderson House in 1931. The twin entryways of Anderson House could be closed with massive wooden doors that recently (2018) were restored. Entryway to the forecourt of the Hôtel Libéral Bruant (1685), 1 Rue de la Perle, Paris 3ème. The gated forecourt of the Bruant provided security and privacy at a time when there were no public police services. Wealthy residents of the city relied on the design of their home to shield it from activity in the street.
The pediment of Anderson House, seen from a third-floor bedroom window. The pediment incorporates the eagle crest designed by Pierre L’Enfant as the emblem of the Society of the Cincinnati. The eagle is set against a mantling of war symbols: spears, battle-axes, fasces with axes, and Roman military ensigns mounted by eagles. If Larz wanted to imply that he, like his ancestors, saw battle in defense of the Republic, this hawkish pediment certainly did so. (Photo by Skip Moskey 2013.) The Bruant again provides a historical antecedent for the exterior decoration of Anderson House. Note the similarities: a highly decorated pediment, a round niche containing classically-inspired sculpture, and gracefully elongaged French windows. At Anderson House, the windows functioned as access to the balcony above the portico. The Portico of Anderson House. The obvious architectural antecedent here is the White House, perhaps reflecting Larz’s own political ambitions. In 1916, Larz was briefly considered as a possible vice presidential running mate for Charles Evans Hughes Sr. Larz either declined or the offer was withdrawn. Hughes ran with Charles W. Fairbanks as his running mate, and lost to Woodrow Wilson. The South Portico of the White House, added in 1824, was photographed in 1848 by James Plumbe. The design of the portico, however, was not without precedent. The White House portico is an almost exact copy of one in France, the Château de Rastignac. The portico of the Château de Rastignac (ca. 1789, completed 1812-1817 during the waning years of the Napoleonic era, just before the Bourbon Restoration.) Thomas Jefferson is said to have traveled in the Dordogne-Bordeaux region where the Rastignac is located and may have brought back the idea for the portico. In any event, even if Larz had the White House in mind when he directed his architects to include a portico in the design of Anderson House, the antecedent is decidedly French!

This essay was adapted from “A Tale of Two Houses: The Architecture and Interior Decoration of Washington’s Townsend and Anderson Residences,” a lecture that I and art historian Dr. Isabel Taube of New York City co-presented to the Cosmos Club Historical Preservation Foundation in Washington, DC, on November 12, 2018. Though the views and analysis presented here are my own, I want to acknowledge Dr. Taube’s important contribution to my thinking on these issues.  

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Notes

[1] In January 1892, Larz made the first of several visits to Hardwick House in Oxfordshire, the country home of the Anglo-Canadian businessman, racehorse breeder, yachtsman, and British Liberal Party politician, Sir Charles Day Rose (1847-1913). Author Kenneth Grahame used Sir Charles as the inspiration for the Wind in the Willows character, Mr. Toad, and set the story at Hardwick House.

[2] Larz’s knowledge of and appreciation for Italian art, architecture, and garden design far exceeded his interest in either English or French culture. Indeed, his deep appreciation of Italian culture was a theme throughout the course of his adult life, as documented in my full-length biography of the Andersons, Larz and Isabel Anderson: Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age.

Antonio Scali, 1931

The cultural and political connections between Italy and the United States during the Gilded Age emerged as a constant theme in the research for my book, Larz and Isabel Anderson: Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age. In the 1890s, Larz served as first secretary and later chargé d’affaires of the American Embassy in Rome. His mother Elizabeth was a prominent member of the Anglo-American community in Rome at the end of the 19th century. She gave lavish parties and dinners at her home in the Villa de Renzi. And then the most important connection of all: Larz and Isabel met in Rome in 1896 when Isabel was the guest for several months of the American writer Maud Howe Elliott and her Scottish artist husband John Elliott at their home in the Eternal City, the Palazzo Rusticucci on the Via della Conciliazione.

There were other ways in which connections between the Andersons and the people of Italy emerged as I wrote my book. In 1896, Larz was involved in a delicate diplomatic negotiation with the Kingdom of Italy after three Italian-born Americans had been lynched in Louisiana in the wake of anti-immigrant sentiment. Then I came across an amazing discovery about Isabel’s own Italian connection: in 1931, she singlehandedly fought for the freedom of an Italian immigrant who had been condemned to life in prison in Boston for a murder he did not commit. I was overcome by emotion when I first read Larz’s account of the story of Antonio Scali, and I knew I had to include it in my book, verbatim.  (The story appears as the epilogue to my book.)

For many years, I searched for Mr. Scali’s descendants in Italy. I was eager to know what happened to Antonio after he returned to Italy in 1931. Every lead I followed ended without any luck. Then, in October 2015, as my book was already in production with the publisher, I received a phone call from Antonio’s grandson in Italy, and learned about the wonderful life Antonio enjoyed for more than 45 years after his return to Italy.

I have now prepared a bilingual edition of “The Story of Antonio Scali/La storia di Antonio Scali” that I hope will bring this man’s wonderful story to a wider audience.

Please click below to download the bilingual edition of this story.
(Click on the image of the PDF to download the file when the next page opens.)

Story of Antonio Scali (PDF)

By Skip Moskey

Larz Anderson, ca. 1888. Probably taken around the time of his graduation from Harvard College. (Source: Anderson Collection, Society of the Cincinnati)

[For almost three years after his 1888 graduation from Harvard, Larz Anderson (1866-1937) did all that he could to avoid the issue of work and career.  Between the summer of 1888 and the fall of 1889, he traveled around the world on his father’s dime.  When he returned, he resisted his father’s attempts to get him started in a business career in New York City, and then when he agreed to his father’s suggestion that he pursue a career in the law, he dropped out of Harvard Law School in spring 1891 after only two semesters. His father again stepped in and this time used his government connections to obtain a job for Larz as a junior diplomat at the American Legation in London.  What follows is based on Larz’s own account of this first Thanksgiving abroad, in 1891, which he celebrated with the noted American historian Henry Adams.  When this excerpt from Larz and Isabel Anderson: Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age opens, Larz and Henry had just seen each other in Paris the previous month, and were reunited when Henry unexpectedly came to London.] 

A few weeks after Larz returned to his post from Paris, Adams arrived in London, and the two men again spent time together. Larz’s duties at the legation included entertaining American dignitaries in London, but the fifty-three-year-old Adams was not just anyone to Larz. Henry was one of his father’s best friends and had known both his grandfather Larz Anderson I and his great-uncle Major Robert Anderson. The twenty-five-year-old Larz had more than an official obligation to Adams. He also had a profoundly personal duty to be as hospitable and helpful to his family’s famous friend as he could be.

38 Clarges Street, London, as it appears today. When Larz lived here from 1891-1894, it was a private home that rented rooms to gentlemen. Larz occupied the rooms on the second floor at the front of the house. Henry Adams also lived here in January 1892.

Larz wrote home about many of his engagements with Adams. The first report was about their dinner together on Thanksgiving night at the Bristol Hotel, and old, family-style hotel that had been established in 1866 when two townhouses were conjoined.  The hotel’s manager Ignacio Lersundi, a Spaniard, gave “one of the best, if not the best, table-d’hôte dinners obtainable in the English capital,” as one Gilded Age travel guidebook put it.

Larz reciprocated by inviting Adams to a private Thanksgiving dinner-for-two the next evening in his rooms on Clarges Street. Larz wrote excitedly to his parents about both dinners: “Mr. Henry Adams is coming to dine with me. Now I am anticipating this with much pleasure—for last evening Mr. Adams and I had a night of it; he was just as anxious to go to it and have a good time as any young man, and infinitely more amusing and interesting—I dined with him well at the Bristol and it was one o’clock before I got home.”

“A little fat Norfolk turkey.” Larz specified this kind of turkey for his little Thanksgiving dinner with Henry Adams in his rooms on Clarges Street,  November 27, 1891. (Photo via cornwallturkeys.com)

The dinner on Clarges Street was not impromptu. Larz went to great lengths to make the dinner as authentically American as possible. He purchased a “little fat Norfolk turkey” that his landlady, Mrs. Mace, roasted, stuffed with chestnuts, and served with cranberry sauce, along with “some other courses.” The Thanksgiving plans had obviously been in play for at least a few days, with enough time for Larz to make arrangements for the special meal.

[After Thanksgiving, Henry Adams returned to Paris, where he spent Christmas with his “BFF” Elizabeth Sherman Cameron before returning to London in early January 1892.  On this visit, he took his own set of rooms at 38 Clarges Street, where he lived in domestic happiness with Larz Anderson for the next month.] 

Henry Adams (1838-1918) ca. 1880. Adams was a classmate of Nicholas L. Anderson, Larz’s father, and had known Larz as a teenager and young adult.

After returning to London, Adams was more than delighted to now be rooming with his young diplomat friend. Henry’s letters to Elizabeth Cameron were filled with effusive expressions of affection for Larz. On his first day back in London, January 11, 1892, he wrote to her, “I am here at last, in Clarges St., and Larz Anderson for companion. After my long solitude I love him like the sun and moon and planets and Sirius on top of all.”

Henry and Larz quickly developed an easy domesticity that included having breakfast together every day and Henry seeing Larz off to work. One morning Larz directed his landlady to bake American-style cornbread for their breakfast as a special treat for Henry. On January 15, Adams wrote to Lizzie, “Now that breakfast is finished and Larz gone to see how his chief is, I sit down to read your news,” and on January 21, “A lovely dark day, black as night, and full of refined feeling. Larz and I have breakfasted, and he has gone to his diplomatic duties.”

[Eventually, Henry slipped out of London while Larz was on a vacation in southern France that had been planned for him by his bosses at the American legation. It is possible they were uncomfortable with Henry’s cohabitation with Larz, and the amount of time the two spent together. After Henry left London, Larz and Henry would never see each other again. Indeed, Larz may have eventually become uncomfortable with Henry’s attentions.] 

If Adams was infatuated with Larz in London, years later Larz was infuriated with Adams. When The Education of Henry Adams was commercially published after Adams’s death in 1918, Larz wrote angrily on the flyleaf of his own copy: “The insincerity of the man and his work is proved by the fact that he doesn’t mention his wife or his marriage both of which meant much in his life!” Larz almost certainly figured out Henry Adams was in some way in love with him in London in 1891–1892 and could find no way to express his chagrin other than to excoriate Adams for excising his marriage and his wife from his autobiography.

[For more about “The Henry Adams Interlude” and the rest of the story of the fascinating lives and lifestyle of Larz and Isabel Anderson, please click here.]

“The insincerity of the man and his work is proved by the fact that he doesn’t mention his wife or his marriage both of which meant much in his life!” Larz Anderson’s inscription on the flyleaf of his personal copy of “The Education of Henry Adams,” ca. 1918. (Source: Photo by Skip Moskey.)

Art & Architecture, England, France September 30, 2017 skipmoskey

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 define the era’s architecture and interior decoration. Indeed, it was my curiosity about one of Washington’s greatest Gilded Age mansions, Anderson House (1905), that eventually led to my writing a full biography of its commissioners Larz and Isabel Anderson in order to answer that question!

George Washington Vanderbilt (1862-1914). (Library of Congress)

Another commissioner of grand Gilded Age architecture who has always fascinated me was George Washington Vanderbilt, a close friend of Larz and Isabel Anderson who makes several appearances in their biography.  As a child and young adult, George was a bookish dilettante who loved art and literature.  He also spent lots of time in some of the most fabulous Gilded Age mansions of all times: the New York City homes of his parents, aunts and uncles, and family friends.

When I first visited George Vanderbilt’s mansion “Biltmore” in Asheville, N.C., the largest private residence in the U.S., I saw evidence of French Châteaux, especially the famous staircase on the forecourt side of the mansion.  As a lifelong francophile and frequent visitor to France, I became curious about the buildings, gardens, and art that George might have been familiar with and that influenced his tastes in architecture, interior decoration, and landscape and garden architecture.

I was able to satisfy my curiosity about George’s artistic and architectural antecedents when I purchased a copy of Professor John Bryan’s book, G.W. Vanderbilt’s Biltmore Estate: The Most Distinguished Private Place (Rizzoli, 1994, and still in print!) several years ago.  This scholarly, yet highly readable, and lavishly illustrated book is the closest we have to a full account of the how and why of Biltmore’s design and construction.  Professor Bryan, who I once interviewed about his experiences writing the book, had access to the archives of Biltmore as he worked on it.  He was thus able to present in his book many detailed observations and insights about George, drawing directly on Vanderbilt and Biltmore papers in order to explain what influenced G.W. Vanderbilt’s artistic vision for his home.

Bryan’s book provides an analysis of the many places that George visited when he traveled to England and France in the early summer of 1889 with his architect, Richard Morris Hunt.  While the list of homes that they visited in England is well documented, there is no known list of the buildings they saw in France.  Professor Bryan could only assume, based on Hunt’s other trips to France, which châteaux and parks he might have shown his client in order to spark George’s imagination and help him make final decisions on the design and appearance of his new home.  Here are some of the places they visited, or may have visited, in England and France.

England

Waddesdon Manor, England Hatfield House, England

Click on the following links to learn more about these and other English manor houses that may have inspired the design of Biltmore:
Waddesdon Manor
Knole
Haddon Hall
Hatfield

France

Vanderbilt and his architect Richard Morris Hunt spent about two weeks in Paris and the Loire valley.  Some of the places they may have visited include:

Chateau de Blois, France. Take a very close look! Chateau de Chantilly, France Which French château or English manor house might have inspired the forecourt (with its friendly lion) of Biltmore…. (Photo, Library of Congress)

Chantilly
Blois
Parc de Saint-Cloud
Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Gaillon
Chambord
Vaux le Vicomte (Where the TV mini-series “Versailles” was partially filmed)
Versailles

…or this beautiful Biltmore fireplace!? (Photo, Library of Congress)