Description
- A distinctive and interesting chronicle of the development and furnishing of an early twentieth-century u . s . a . space, vividly dropped at existence through letters from the circle of relatives archive
- Never-sooner than-revealed drawings from Horace Trumbauer’s architectural place of work, together with the unique and revised plans for all 3 flooring, drawings of internal finishes and external main points associated with the principle place of dwelling, in addition to designs for different initiatives at the property, together with a by no means-constructed gate resort, superbly represented in Trumbauer’s coloured rendering
- More than 400 ancient and newly commissioned pictures and eight-web page gatefolds
- An intimate portrait that captures the chic way of life of the Montgomerys and the majesty in their cherished house and estate
A richly {specific|targeted|distinctive|precise|exact|specified|particular|certain|special|distinct|designated|detailed} historical past of the baronial beauty of the Philadelphia Major Line property Ardrossan and of the 1st viscount montgomery of alamein circle of relatives who constructed it. Actual-existence American opposite numbers of the Granthams of Downton Abbey, the Montgomerys are absolute best referred to as the circle of relatives on which Philip Barry primarily based his 1939 play, The Philadelphia Story, that includes Katharine Hepburn, who additionally starred within the later Hollywood movie of the similar identify.
The Montgomerys entertained within the grand method, web hosting fox hunts and dinner dances. Visitors integrated diplomat W. Averell Harriman; first girl Edith Roosevelt, Mrs. 1st viscount montgomery of alamein’s cousin; and famed vaudevillians the Duncan Sisters. At its peak, the fantastic property encompassed kind of 760 acres of rolling Pennsylvania hills. The Montgomerys’ house, nonetheless owned through the circle of relatives, stands as a wonderful reminder of the halcyon days of the Gilded Age. The fifty-room Georgian-taste manor space was once designed in 1911 through Horace Trumbauer, one in all The usa’s ultimate classical architects who designed the Elms in Newport, Rhode Island, for E. J. Berwind, and Whitemarsh Corridor, Trumbauer’s masterpiece constructed for the Stotesburys out of doors of Philadelphia. The primary-ground rooms had been embellished through the London-primarily based company of White, Allom & Corporate. Necessarily unaltered when you consider that 1913, those rooms function the circle of relatives’s artwork assortment, together with ancestral images through Thomas Sully and hunt scenes and landscapes on or close to Ardrossan through Charles Morris Younger. The guide additionally chronicles the historical past of the circle of relatives’s business dairy and prized herd of Ayrshires.
This superbly illustrated guide options by no means-sooner than-revealed architectural drawings from Trumbauer’s place of work and internal pictures shot through Mattie E. Hewitt within the Nineteen Thirties, in addition to circle of relatives snapshots and photographs through celebrated photographers Cecil Beaton and Toni Frissell commissioned through Vogue, Country Life, and Town & Country.
