As someone who researches a wide variety of topics related to the intersection of art, architecture, and society during America’s Gilded Age, I have come across something that has confused and perplexed the small community of people who read, write, and think about such things. And that is whether the Bar Harbor “cottage” of George […]

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 brownstone house at the southwest corner of Arlington and Beacon Streets across from Boston Garden contains a poignant memorial to two of Isabel Anderson’s maternal aunts who died young. Designed by Boston architects Gridley J.F. Bryant and Arthur D. Gilman, and built around 1860, the large town house at No. 1 Arlington Street was first purchased […]

Old Madison Pike in East Walnut Hills, near Cincinnati (2012) Though born in Paris, Larz Anderson spent most of his childhood and early teen years in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Until 1878, the Col. Nicholas Longworth Anderson family lived in downtown Cincinnati in a simple red brick town house at 120 East Fourth Street that had been built […]

After Larz Anderson’s death in 1937, Isabel Anderson simplified her life, divesting herself of real estate and other assets that she no longer wanted, and focusing her life on her home in Massachusetts and her simple camp in New Hampshire.  In Boston, she took an active part in the cultural life of the city, not […]

Larz Anderson’s “Field Marshall” Portrait, by DeWitt Lockman (1914). Anderson House, Washington, DC When we think of Larz Anderson, our mental image of him is one that has in large measure been defined by the portraiture in oils, photographs, and sculpture that he commissioned during his lifetime. In these artistic works, he memorialized his sense of himself […]

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 […]

In the late 1930s, Larz and Isabel Anderson made arrangements to donate an Italian baptismal font to the Washington National Cathedral in memory of Larz’s sister, Elsie Anderson McMillan (1874-1921).  The font had been in the private chapel of a villa near Farrara, Italy, and is said to represent the virtues of prudence and chastity.  The font […]

By Skip Moskey The Ben Grosvenor Inn, Pomfret, Conn. (Undated, but likely prior to 1894; author’s collection) One of the most enjoyable aspects of writing a biography of Larz and Isabel Anderson was discovering what their childhoods and young adult years were like.  Whatever had been written about them before my book’s publication in 2016, […]

[Click on the map for a closer look!] In 2014 I purchased a second copy of Isabel Anderson’s book, Under the Black Horse Flag (1926), for my collection of Anderson materials.  My copy of this important reference work by one of the subjects of my forthcoming dual biography, Larz and Isabel Anderson: Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age, had become […]

The audio (podcast) of my February 16,2017, lecture at the Boston Athenaeum on “Isabel Anderson as Writer, Editor, and Impresario” is now available by clicking here: SoundCloud.com. The powerpoint (in PDF format) that accompanies the lecture may be downloaded here.  Click on this link: Isabel Anderson as Writer… (Powerpoint) and then click on the photograph of Isabel to […]

Wherever he went in the world, with or without Isabel, Larz Anderson sent Isabel cards and notes, many of which had a local flavor. He once annotated a color picture postcard of Prague (probably around 1908) adding a silhouette of himself with the bubble caption “That’s a pretty girl: reminds me of Isabel!” He was especially […]

[Click on the map for a closer look!] In 2014 I purchased a second copy of Isabel Anderson’s book, Under the Black Horse Flag (1926), for my collection of Anderson materials.  My copy of this important reference work by one of the subjects of my forthcoming dual biography, Larz and Isabel Anderson: Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age, had become […]

The Tesla is currently one of the hottest passenger vehicles in the world, yet the idea behind it – an automobile that runs on electricity – is hardly new.  Over a hundred years ago, Larz Anderson purchased the electric automobile shown here.  The engine and mechanical core of the 1905 vehicle were manufactured in England by the Electromobile […]