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 […]
A compendium of short, illustrated essays about the people, buildings, gardens, art, books and more that define the long 19th-century in the U.S.
Educating Competent, Responsible and Generous-minded Women in 1895 | The Gilded Age in America
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, […]
A Visit with the Pope | The Gilded Age in America
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 […]
France
The former residence of U.S. minister to France, Whitelaw Reid (35, avenue Hoche, Paris; photo 2013) In the fall of 1891, during the first months of his first diplomatic assignment as second secretary of the American legation in London, Larz Anderson took a short vacation in Paris. His boss, the U.S. minister to the Court of […]
The Gilded Age in America | An eclectic compendium of short, illustrated essays about the celebrities, buildings, gardens, art, books and more that help define America's Gilded Age. | Page 4
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 […]
In Grandfather’s Garden | The Gilded Age in America
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 […]
A Boudoir in Brussels | The Gilded Age in America
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 […]
Larz Anderson | The Gilded Age in America | Page 3
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 […]
Travel & Entertainment | The Gilded Age in America | Page 26
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 […]
Friends & Family | The Gilded Age in America | Page 8
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 […]
Friends & Family | The Gilded Age in America | Page 7
One of the people who moves in and out of my biography of Larz and Isabel Anderson is Chandler Hale (1873-1951), a U.S. diplomat who began his career in 1892 and by some time around 1920, had retired. Little is known about his life after he left the state department. During his retirement, he lived in his parents’ […]
Isabel Anderson | The Gilded Age in America | Page 9
When Larz and Isabel Anderson acquired a summer home in Brookline (MA) in 1899, Larz had a vision for the estate’s gardens and landscapes. It was no accident that their first major project was an Italian garden. Larz had an extensive knowledge of and deep appreciation for classic Italian architecture and decorative arts, and that interest shaped the design and decoration of the […]
A Gilded Age Children’s Best-Seller | The Gilded Age in America
Isabel Anderson started her career as an author with the publication in 1909 of The Great Sea Horse, a large and complex project that took several years to complete. The 25 short stories in Sea Horse are populated with mermaids and “merboys,” seashells, fairies, flowers, gnomes, and human-like creatures called “brownies and pinkies.” The stories […]
skipmoskey | The Gilded Age in America | Page 3
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 […]