The owner of this house was Mrs. G. B. Bowler, about whom information is scarce. A contemporary source referred to those who lived here as “the ladies who make this house their home.” “Chatwold,” as it was called, was designed by the Boston firm of Arthur Rotch and George Thomas Tilden in a spirited though awkward combination of half-timber work, stone and shingles. For its time and, particularly, for its location, the house was expensive and self-consciously historical. Sheldon tried to explain this when he discussed “Chatwold” in Artistic Country-Seats of 1886–87: “The effort has been to combine the solid attractions of a city home with the less solid attractions of a typical home by the seaside, although, as at Newport, the tendency toward long sojourns grows, and with it the disposition to make the seaside abode as comfortable as urban tastes demand.”
Illustrations of the Bowler house were published in the United States and in Europe during the 1880s. The leading American architectural journal, American Architect and Building News, featured it on March 3, 1883, and two excellent photographs of its exterior appeared in L’Architecture Américaine, published in Paris in 1886 (reprinted by Dover Publications as American Victorian Architecture, 23177-1). On September 10, 1887, the Deutsche Bauzeitung included a sketch of it to point out that the house was dependent on English prototypes and not really representative of the simplicity and verve of recent American domestic design that had attracted the attention of its editors. Writing in The Century in July 1886, American critic Mariana Van Rensselaer praised its combination of exterior colors—the gray stones of the tower, gray granite walls with red granite trim, the dark red framing between panels of light plaster dashed with red pebbles and the dark stained shingles of the roof.
44. Hall, G. B. Bowler house, Scooner Head Road, Bar Harbor, Maine; Rotch and Tilden, architects, 1882–83; demolished 1945. Despite its debts to English architecture, the exterior of “Chatwold” was unmistakably an American house of the early 1880s. The plan was, furthermore, a fine example of the “internal vista” made possible by central heating. Four rooms, a hall (34′ × 24′) with a dining room on the right and drawing room and library on the left, could be opened to each other to form a spatial corridor 80′ long. This major axis intersected a shorter one—shown in this photograph—that connected the main entrance with the rear terrace. From the terrace the view across the tree-lined lawn to the ocean below was spectacular.
Rotch and Tilden created an exceptionally large landing, the near side defined by a barrier of stained ash and the far by windows offering an excellent view of the ocean. The landing and the hall below borrowed heavily from the theater; there were curtains, an abundance of entrances and exits and a balcony impatient for a soliloquy. Underneath the landing was a cozy sitting room, approximately 24′ × 11′, with a deep fireplace on the right. This was the pivotal space of the house, the center of both horizontal and vertical movement. However, the ornate mahogany chairs and the oak table were not compatible with the setting. This furniture is too large for the space and does not complement well the clean lines of the rafters and windows or the light that flooded this hall. Above, the paper, imitating alternating stone courses of medieval structures, and the somber tapestries seem out of keeping with the casually strewn drapery on the railing and the ungainly drawn portieres of the main level. The furniture appears to block access to the terrace doors. On the cabinet at the right is a large polychromatic rooster, inspired by Italian majolica.
45. Japanese library, Edward H. Williams house, 101 North 33rd Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; architect unknown, 1872–73; demolished 1912. Like many of the visitors to the Philadelphia Exposition in 1876, the authors of The Illustrated History of the Centennial Exhibition were impressed by the work of the Japanese, “We have been accustomed to regard that country as uncivilized, or half-civilized at the best, but we found here abundant evidences that it outshines the most cultivated nations of Europe in arts which are their pride and glory, and which are regarded as among the proudest tokens of their high civilization.” Similarly intrigued by this work, Dr. Edward H. Williams (June 1, 1824–December 21, 1899) began collecting Japanese bronzes, porcelains, lacquered ware, inlaid boxes, cabinetry, screens and wall pictures and displayed them in his home.
Graduating in 1846 from the Vermont Medical College, Williams served as an intern in New York City and as a doctor in Proctorsville, Vermont. But a few years later he returned to his originally intended career—railroad engineering. After working for numerous lines in Canada and the Midwest, he became the general superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1865. He became a partner in the Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia five years later, a position requiring trips to Europe, South America, Egypt, Australia, India and Japan. Williams endowed buildings at Carleton College and the University of Vermont. On June 15, 1848 he married Cornelia Bailey (d. July 16, 1889) of Woodstock, Vermont; they had three children.
This Japanese library or sitting room, executed between 1880 and 1882, was considered by contemporaries to be one of the most conscientious efforts to create a Japanese environment in an American home. Beguiled by the result, Sheldon claimed extravagantly that “the pervading impression of this beautiful room seems as native to Japanese soil as the venerable and venerated Fusiyama [Fujiyama] itself.” It is surprising that such an ambitious act of cultural plagiarism occurred in Philadelphia for, despite the local impact of the Centennial, the enthusiasm for Japanese objects and decor was stronger in New York.
Between the top of the frieze and the central rectangular window of stained glass was a blue coved ceiling depicting storks and picturesque trees. The frieze was highlighted by a series of frames containing bronze dragon reliefs. Above the mantel at this level was a miniature temple roof. The wall panels of Japanese flowers against an Indian-red ground were painted by George Herzog (1851–?), an accomplished Munich-trained designer. Written in characters on each of these panels was a verse of a poem about winter and homesickness. The glass bookcases and the flanking cabinets, shaped like small towers and capped with pagodalike roofs, were made of ebony and ebonized cherry. Above the fire opening, Yokohama tiles depicted a procession of grasshoppers, attended by harmless wasps, carrying banners and persimmons. The four hanging lanterns, two of which are visible, were made by Schneider, Campbell and Co. of New York. The rug on the floor was Chinese. When this room was illustrated in The Decorator and Furnisher (December 1884), more pieces of Western furniture had been added to this room than appeared in this earlier photograph.
Sheldon was wrong; this room, filled with Japanese objects and art, was still radically different from those “native to Japanese soil.” In Japanese houses interior decoration was essentially an act of reduction; in the United States in 1882 it was an act of accumulation. The Japanese library of Dr. Williams was too heavy, overloaded, dark, unplanar and even stylistically mixed to be mistaken for a Japanese equivalent. Williams may have acquired Japanese objects, but not an appreciation for their environmental simplicity.
46. Reception room, Henry C. Gibson house, 1612 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; architect unknown, ca. 1870; demolished 1928. Henry C. Gibson (1830–1891) was a millionaire active in the art market of the period who has been neglected by twentieth-century art historians. Sheldon claimed his collection was regarded as one of “the largest and most valuable” in the country. His estate, valued at $7 million in 1891, marked him as one of the wealthier men of Philadelphia, yet published sources then and now tell us little about him or his family. The son of a distiller and importer of wines, he joined his father’s firm in 1853, two years after he began studying viticulture and the distilling process in Europe. In 1865 he took over John Gibson’s Son and Co. There were at least two children, a son and a daughter, from his marriage to Mary Klett.
Gibson supported many of Philadelphia’s cultural and scientific organizations dedicated to public enlightenment, but probably devoted most of his energy to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He served on its board from 1870 until his death and as its vice president in 1890. Despite the Academy’s decision to emphasize American work, it accepted his 1892 bequest of 102 works—the majority by Barbizon and French academic painters.
Although this house was probably built in the late 1860s or the early 1870s, it may have been remodeled in about 1880 to display the Gibson collection more effectively. In 1879–80, Gibson and his children had gone to Europe on an art-purchasing trip. The perfect fit between the objects displayed under the triple arch—two Japanese porcelain vases and a group depicting Hector taking leave of Andromache and Astyanax—and the pedestals on which they rest suggests that this art may have conditioned the setting. Gibson and his architect appear to have been less concerned with the coherence and functional quality of the interior rooms than they were with the display of individual pieces, which, as was also true of the library, were jammed together regardless of their diverse origins and styles. Despite the simplicity of its walls, the systematic organization of the wooden screen and the neatness of the glass chandelier, the reception room looked overstocked—the Italian marble-mosaic table competes with the figure group of Mercury and a maiden on top—cramped and didactic. It was a room easier to contemplate than to enter.
47. Library, Henry C. Gibson house. Sheldon realized this house had been arranged to show off Gibson’s art collection. “Instead of building for them [the paintings] a distinct and lofty gallery, the owner has constructed a series of apartments called cabinets, that not only open into each other, but are integral parts of the house itself.” These “cabinets” are visible in this photograph of the library.
The two compartments in this photograph look less like a library than a gift shop. There was a print of Raphael’s La Belle Jardinière and next to it an unidentified portrait. Egyptian heads ornamented the gasolier and two large Oriental incense burners were placed under the pointed horseshoe arches characteristic of Saracenic architecture of Spain and North Africa. In the center of the second compartment, crammed with vases, plates, pictures and busts, was a stuffed owl. On the distant wall hung a Roman mosaic of a bacchante recently unearthed in the excavation of the Via Praenestina. Beneath this mosaic was an elephant tusk. This frenzied exhibition of materials and objects from around the world raises questions about the extent to which Gibson and his wife were aesthetically sensitized by the art they had collected.
48. Dining room, Henry C. Gibson house. The Herd, signed and dated 1869 by Émile van Marcke (1827–1890), dominated the rear wall of the dining room and was reflected in the great mirror opposite it, thus reminding diners at either end of the table of the original state of their sirloins. To its right was another animal painting—goats and sheep—flanked by two large marble groups, probably mid-nineteenth-century American, and below in the center a diminutive bronze version of the Dying Gaul or Dying Trumpeter of the third century B.c. Under the archway was a tall candelabrum, one of a pair that reportedly was owned by Napoleon. The furnishings and art of the dining room were not well integrated. The clock of the mantel would be incompatible with most settings.
49. Picture gallery, Henry C. Gibson house. American collectors often commissioned paintings by their favorite French artists, but Gibson apparently preferred to buy his on the market, usually through Goupil and Co. of Paris. He liked mood landscapes by Barbizon painters or touching descriptions of cattle or sheep with such titles as Seeking Shelter. He was also fascinated by exotic locales, collecting topographical and genre paintings of Venice and Constantinople. Among his many possessions that taught lessons were the three largest in this photograph of the gallery. On the far wall was Charge of the Ninth Regiment of Cuirassiers, Village of Morsbronn, Day of the Battle of Reichshoffen, August 6, 1870, painted by Detaille in 1874 to show the bravery of the French troops. Above it was a vignette of human fortitude tested by the rigors of nature, Traveling in the Ukraine (6′ × 3½′), painted in 1877 by the Polish artist Josef Chelmonski (1850–1914). On the right wall was The Potato Harvest by Jules Breton (1827–1906). Below it was The Wrestlers by Munkacsy.
Two of the best-known paintings in the photograph, Landscape by Corot, to the right of the capital of the column, and The Return of the Flock by Millet (1814–1875), hidden by the incense burner at the front of the table, have been sold by the American-oriented Academy.
50. Library, Charles S. Smith house, 25 West 47th Street, New York, New York; architect unknown, 1875–76; demolished 1938. “Charles Stewart Smith [March 2, 1832–November 30, 1909], noted in the commercial, financial, political, artistic, and social affairs of this city for years,” was the way the New York Times began his obituary. He had long been a dry-goods commission merchant, retiring in 1887 from Smith, Hogg and Co., was the director of numerous banks of the city, a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum and the Presbyterian Hospital and, from 1883 until 1890, president of the Chamber of Commerce. In 1894 he headed the celebrated Committee of Seventy that temporarily replaced Tammany Hall with the reform administration of Mayor William L. Strong.
Relatively free of furniture and lined with paintings as well as bookcases, the library was treated as a continuation of the picture gallery visible in the distance at the right. The open Moorish archway and the high, round-arched doorways between rooms suggested that Smith wanted the principal spaces of his house joined more fluidly than was typical of a New York city residence. Mrs. Smith (Henrietta Caswell, who married Charles in 1869, six years after the death of his first wife, Eliza Bradish) painted the copy of Millet’s The Angelus on the gold satin portiere stretched across the center opening—a rare example in this series of an owner’s contribution to the decoration of a house.
At the right is an Italian reproduction of Cupid and Psyche, by Antonio Canova (1757–1822), and over the mantel was The Golden Horn: Pilgrims Starting for Mecca by Ziem. The mantel contains two of the 450 pieces of Japanese porcelain and faience the family collected.
51. Picture gallery, Charles S. Smith house. The Smiths’ painting collection was modest in size (less than 100) and contained works by many of the fashionable European artists of the period: Meissonier, Diaz, Dupré, Daubigny, Detaille, Troyon, Gérome, Gleyre, Knaus, J. Breton, Boldini, Zamacois, Millet, Fortuny, Corot, E. Frère, Ziem, De Neuville, Schreyer, van Marcke, Munkacsy, Villegas, Vibert, von Bremen. With its small dimensions, fireplace, and simple furniture, this gallery was more intimate and informal than most of the galleries illustrated in Artistic Houses. Above the mantel were Watching the Flock by Edmond Tschaggeny (1818–1873) and Abelard Lecturing by A. C. E. Steinheil (1850–1908). To the right of the mantel shelf was Detaille’s Calling the Roll, depicting a sergeant checking off the names of Prussian prisoners.
52. Drawing room, Hamilton Fish house, 251 East 17th Street, New York, New York; architect unknown, 1867–68; demolished. Born in New York City on August 3, 1808, near the site of this residence, Hamilton Fish married Julia Kean (December 19, 1816–June 30, 1887) in December 1836 and died six years after her on September 7, 1893. He was one of America’s leading elder statesmen at the time his house on Stuyvesant Square was remodeled by L. C. Tiffany & Associated Artists. His long and distinguished political career had been crowned by his eight-year tenure as Secretary of State under President Grant. Although Fish had been retired from active politics for several years when this photograph was taken, his New York City residence was still the scene of many newsworthy political and social gatherings.
Although the Fishes were old-school social leaders, they could not have hosted many guests in their drawing room, crowded as it was. In fact, this space seems more like a disheveled library than a newly renovated drawing room. Certainly, L. C. Tiffany & Associated Artists would not want to take credit for this varied inventory of competing objects. If the company had recently reconstituted this space, where is the evidence of their special touch? Not in the carved marble fireplace, the anchor of the room, which had been there previously. We have to look past the profusion of objects to the wall surfaces to see the new work, specifically the checkerboard wainscoting to the right and left of the fire opening, the frame of the central mirror, the sections of beveled glass that border the central pane and the square panels of teakwood from Southeast Asia that border the sections of beveled glass. We should also include the repeated low reliefs in bronze and related colors that form the broad frieze, the tilelike pattern of the ceiling and, possibly, the four Venetian chandeliers. The two pieces of sculpture, a portrait bust by Hiram Powers near the fireplace and Indian Girl by E. D. Palmer (1817–1904) between the rooms, were falling from favor with critics in 1883–84.
53. Drawing room, Egerton Winthrop house, 23 East 33rd Street, New York, New York; Richard Morris Hunt, architect, 1878–79; demolished. Although born and raised in America, Winthrop (October 7, 1839–April 6, 1916) spent many years in Paris, where he acquired a deep interest in French art and culture. According to Sheldon, “Few apartments in this city have been treated with such persistent determination to reproduce in all respects the forms, color and feeling of a particular era [Louis XVI].”
Born to a family that traced its roots back to John Winthrop, who settled in America in 1630, Egerton was raised in an environment of culture and wealth. He married Charlotte Troup Bronson. At the outbreak of the Civil War, they sailed to Paris, where the family lived until 1870. Winthrop then returned to New York and his legal career, but after the death of his wife in 1872, he returned to Paris and resided in New York only occasionally until 1886.
Not surprisingly, Winthrop chose Hunt (1827–1895), trained at the École des Beaux-Arts, to design the exterior of the house in a Second Empire style. Much of the ornamentation, including the papier-mâché decoration of this Louis XVI room, was imported from France. Also imported was the furniture, reproduced from period models and heavily gilded. In this room were displayed some of the family’s choicest tapestries, a few after paintings by Charles Le Brun (1619–1690), and examples of its Sèvres and Chelsea porcelains.
54. Reception room, Egerton Winthrop house. The importance many owners attached to the history of their objects and furnishings was revealed effectively in Sheldon’s comment on this reception room, a comment that implies his endorsement of Winthrop’s reverence for age and provenance:
The mantel is a copy of one in the Louvre, of Henry the Second’s time, said to be the work of Goujon, who executed for that monarch the celebrated recumbent statue of Diane de Poitiers …. An old Portuguese cabinet, with intricate brass ornamentation, stands near an old French cabinet, probably a reproduction of a Ducerceau. All the stuffs—French and Italian brocades, principally—are old …. A Stuyvesant clock, on one of the cabinets, is chiefly remarkable for having been in the Stuyvesant family one hundred and seventy-five years.
Edith Wharton, identifying Winthrop as her first real friend and intellectual companion, called this house the first in New York City in which “an educated taste had replaced … rubbish ‘ornaments’ with objects of real beauty in a simply designed setting.”