History

By Skip Moskey People often ask me what books I’ve most enjoyed reading about the Gilded Age.  Here are three favorites from my biography shelf. Click on the book image for more information; these are all available as very low-cost used copies on Amazon.com.  Happy reading!   Henry James: A Life, by Leon Edel.  This […]

Larz and Isabel Anderson: Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age by Stephen T. (Skip) Moskey has been in development since January 2010.  Now, after almost six years of research, writing, and editing, the book is with its publisher, iUniverse LLC of Bloomington, Indiana.  You can view a short book trailer by Clicking Here. One of the key […]

Larz and Isabel Anderson were an elegant Gilded Age couple with two impressive homes: Anderson House in Washington, D.C., and Weld, their summer estate in Brookline, just outside of Boston, Mass.  Weld was more than a fascinating Gilded Age mansion filled with treasures from around the world, however.  It was also a working “gentleman’s farm” […]

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 […]

By Skip Moskey Ambassador and Mrs. Larz Anderson, 1924, by Philip de László. The Andersons were among Washington’s most glamorous couples. Everything about them was glamorous: their homes, their clothing, their art, and their style. (Photo by Skip Moskey.) In Part 1 of this two-part series, I reviewed the relationship between the architectural form and […]

One hundred and twenty years ago this month, in June 1895, Isabel Weld Perkins graduated from Miss Winsor’s School in Boston, now called The Winsor School.  She was in the school’s first graduating class of young Boston women prepared by Mary Pickard Winsor for a life in society and the world at large. During the earliest years, […]

In the fall of 1898, a year and a half after their marriage, Larz and Isabel Anderson took a trip of several months to India by way of Europe and the Suez Canal.  Along the way, they stopped to visit old friends in Rome, where Larz had served as first secretary of the American Embassy […]

By Skip Moskey Ambassador and Mrs. Larz Anderson, 1924, by Philip de László. The Andersons were among Washington’s most glamorous couples. Everything about them was glamorous: their homes, their clothing, their art, and their style. (Photo by Skip Moskey.) In Part 1 of this two-part series, I reviewed the relationship between the architectural form and […]

Though Larz Anderson never knew his great-grandfather, the Cincinnati wine merchant Nicholas Longworth (1783-1863), he was very familiar with his imposing mansion in downtown Cincinnati. Longworth’s Greek Revival mansion and famous formal garden distinguished it from all other properties in the city. Larz visited the property often. His grandparents, Larz and Catherine Longworth Anderson, lived […]

In the fall of 1911, President William Howard Taft named Larz Anderson to be American Minister Plenipotentiary to the Kingdom of Belgium.  Larz arranged to lease the Palais d’Assche, in the heart of old Brussels, as his legation and residence.  Though the large and elegant hôtel particulier was exactly what he had hoped for, it was in much […]

By Skip Moskey Larz Anderson in 1911. Press photo taken at the time of his first diplomatic assignment under President Taft. By Skip Moskey From early November 1911 until the early fall of 1912, Larz Anderson served as American minister plenipotentiary to the Kingdom of Belgium. He and his wife Isabel, who was the official […]

Larz Anderson was a collector of many things, including several dozen fine old motor cars  – from an 1899 Winton Phaeton that he named ‘Pioneer’ (motto: It Will Go!) to a 1926 Lincoln Seven Limousine, ‘The Emancipator’ (motto: Son Courage Fait sa Force/His Courage is his Might).  Larz was, however, as avid a collector of horse-drawn carriages as he […]

Street scene in downtown Washington, DC, February 1899 On February 13, 1899, Elizabeth Anderson, Larz’s mother, wrote to her son: “This extraordinary weather keeps me prisoner in my room, and we are in fact house-bound today.”  The Great Blizzard of 1899 had begun striking Washington two days earlier with a severe cold wave that extended from Florida to […]