Walking the Cliffs in Newport

Architecture
October 15, 2013

After posting that photo of the butler’s pantry at The Breakers yesterday, I was inspired to show you a little bit more of the house. If you have not visited The Breakers, and you have an occasion to go to Newport or live in New England, I highly suggest you visit this property. If you do not want to visit the museum, the exterior of the house is visible from Newport’s Cliff Walk. Commissioned by Cornelius Vanderbilt II, and designed by Richard Morris Hunt, The Breakers is by far the grandest of the Newport Mansions. Completed in 1895, the house has 70 rooms, such as a library, great hall, billiard room, music room, dining room – the list goes on. Owned by several generations of the Vanderbilt family until 1972, today The Breakers is owned by the Preservation Society of Newport County and is open to the public. Below, a little taste of the 16th century palazzo inspired manse.

Photos courtesy of Historic Structures

China Tales, Part Deux

Architecture
October 14, 2013

Hello everyone. I’m sorry for the last couple weeks of radio silence, I had been working on something on my end that I will be able to tell you all about very soon! Today I wanted to talk about china storage. You have listened to me talk about china in the post China Tales, see here, but I haven’t discussed where to keep it. This weekend I went on a re-organization binge to determine the best way to store my china, linens, and silver. Let’s just say the project is not finished, and I may have to add some shelves inside my sideboard. While in the midst of this project all I could think about was how lovely it would be to have a large butlers pantry or china room that could store everything in an organized fashion – like Martha Stewart’s butler’s pantry above. A girl can dream, right?

This is a picture of Bunny Williams china room in her house in the Dominican Republic. Now let’s be honest, the amount of china, silver, and linens that I have would not even fill a single cabinet in this room, but what a dream to walk in and have everything on display providing instant table setting inspiration. And finally, this is the butler’s pantry at The Breakers, in Newport Rhode Island. Completed in 1895 for Cornelius Vanderbilt II and designed by Richard Morris Hunt, The Breakers is one of the more famous Newport mansions where entertaining was part of everyday life. This butlers pantry has a mezzanine, meaning it offers two stories of storage for china. Note the single pane glass fronted cabinets that would allow staff to locate china quickly and easily. It is also interesting to recognize that the cabinetry in the butler’s pantry goes all the way to the floor, which was very common at the turn of the century. Today, most kitchen cabinetry has a recessed kick plate at its base. We don’t have a need for a china room such as this one anymore, as we no longer have the number of staff to manage storage such as this. However, these rooms still exist in historic homes throughout the world, and offer a glimpse into another time. All I need is a couple extra shelves.

Photos courtesy of House Beautiful, Martha Stewart, and Historic Structures.

Discovery at the MET

Architecture
September 23, 2013

I was in NYC last week, so I went to the MET.When we lived in NYC, our apartment was only 4 blocks away, and I would often find myself in the museum discovering something new. Despite my frequent visits to this extraordinary building, and my background in preservation, my focus has never been on the architecture. I am always looking at the collections. This time, I decided I would pay a little bit of attention to the building itself.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened in its current location at 82nd and Fifth Avenues in 1880. The originally building, seen here, was designed by Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould. If the name Calvert Vaux seems familiar to you, it should be. He is the architect who, along with Frederick Law Olmsted, designed Central Park. As the MET Museum’s collections grew, additions were added to this building. Today, this entire original structure is encased by later additions.

The building’s early Vaux-designed facade can be seen when the visitor is standing in the Robert Lehman Wing.

The facade of the MET that we are all familiar with today was designed by Richard Morris Hunt, and opened to the public in 1902. Hunt, who was a Trustee of the Museum, was also the founder of the Municipal Arts Society and the American Institute of Architects. So if you live in New York, stroll on over to the MET, go the Robert Lehman Wing, and go check out the building’s original facade.