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, […]

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 […]

After Larz Anderson’s death in 1937, Isabel Anderson started finding new ways to socialize and entertain herself on a much smaller and simpler scale than she had when her husband was alive. Giving large parties, wearing fancy clothes, hobnobbing with high society, and traveling to the four corners of the earth had been Larz’s lifestyle, not hers. After her […]

https://gildedage.us/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Wagner_Bridal_Chorus-2.ogg Isabel Weld Perkins and Larz Anderson were married in Boston’s Arlington Street Church (Unitarian) on June 10, 1897.  This is the church that Isabel attended as a child growing up in Boston’s Back Back in the late 19th century. More than 330 people were invited to attend the nuptials in one of Boston’s most distinguished and […]

Bertha Honoré Palmer (1849-1918) was one of the greatest celebrities of the Gilded Age. She entertained her guests – including Larz and Isabel Anderson – lavishly at her homes in Chicago, Rome, and Florida.  Her husband, Potter Palmer, was a wealthy businessman who made his fortune in real estate and retail department stores.  One of his commercial real estate ventures, […]

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 […]

One of the major features of the Larz and Isabel Anderson estate, now the Larz Anderson Park, in Brookline, Mass., was a large garden complex that included an elaborate greenhouse designed by the New York firm of Lord & Burnham.  The greenhouse included a round atrium, rumored to be the venue for wintertime tea parties, and […]

By Skip Moskey The N.L. Anderson House, Washington, D.C., designed by Henry Hobson Richardson. Built 1881; razed 1925. (Source: Library of Congress) The American bon vivant and sometime diplomat Larz Anderson spent his teen years in Washington, DC, where his father, General Nicholas Longworth Anderson, had retired in 1880 after receiving an inheritance from his father’s […]

Two of my friends recently published a major new book on the historic homes of Washington, D.C., Capital Houses: Historic Residences of Washington D.C. and Its Environs, 1735-1965 (Acanthus Press). The noted Washington architectural historian James M. Goode and the internationally-renowned art and architecture photographer Bruce M. White collaborated on this book, which was eight years in the making. The […]

Guest Blog From Boyd Lugenbehl in Tokyo:  When Skip Moskey wrote to me about the Anderson Gorinto in Brookline (Massachusetts, U.S.A.), I was intrigued and wanted to know more about it. With the able assistance of Japanese friends, I am happy to share further information with readers of Skip’s Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 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 […]