The large and expensive house built for William S. Kimball (March 30, 1837–March 26, 1895) and his second wife, Laura Page Mitchell, was considered too pretentious and extravagant even for Rochester’s third ward, at that time the “ruffled shirt” district of the city. A fine example of the oversized and overdesigned mansions of the early 1880s, it was three-and-a-half stories high, contained 30 rooms and cost $500,000 to build and furnish. Composed asymmetrically of a variety of materials, horizontally laid stone below and vertically oriented half-timber work above, and enlivened on its sides by numerous voids and projections and on top by prominent chimneys and gables, “Kimball’s Castle” expressed well the exuberance and confidence of the period as well as its spatial and material excesses. The house was used for only 41 years, one more instance of a later generation’s inability to support a personal monument it had inherited. Uninhabited after the death of the second Mrs. Kimball in 1922, the deteriorating structure was taken over by the city in 1938 and sold ten years later for $1000 to the Rochester Institute of Technology, which razed it.
If the cubic footage of houses were proportional to the municipal importance of their owners, the dimensions of this one made sense. Kimball’s obituaries agreed with nineteenth-century histories of Rochester that he had been more closely identified with the growth of his city than any of his contemporaries. In 1863 Kimball left the Union navy for Rochester, where he established W. S. Kimball and Co., later known internationally as the manufacturers of Peerless and Vanity Fair tobaccos. The company employed 800—the largest work force in Rochester—and was respected for its efficient organization and relatively humane treatment of its workers. It was the first major company of the city to require only a half day of work on Saturdays. Kimball was also president of the Union Bank, the City Hospital and the State Industrial School, and served as director of numerous financial and railroad enterprises. He married his first wife, Marion Elizabeth Keeler (1836–1879), on October 7, 1858 and, a year after her death, his second. There were two children from each marriage.
Kimball was capable of bold but quirky decisions. In the early 1880s he commissioned his brother-in-law, sculptor Guernsey Mitchell (1854–1921), to create a mammoth statue of Mercury that was placed on top of the tobacco factory, where it remained as a symbol of Rochester until its removal in 1951. The exterior of Kimball’s house did not reveal his independent streak, but other aspects did. His greenhouses protected what may have been the finest collection of orchids in the country. His deep wine cellar was air-cooled. His carriages were lifted by elevator in the two-story brick stables. A diversified collector, he had acquired 1200 pepper boxes from around the world. One of the bedrooms, lined with bamboo, was finished in a pseudo-Japanese style, a step that would have been considered unusual even in the major cities of the Eastern seaboard. On the third floor were the quarters for 20 Japanese servants.
The interior was the startling feature of this house, primarily because Kimball, for unknown reasons, selected L. C. Tiffany & Associated Artists to furnish it. If the exterior made its point through plagiarized, bulky divisions, the interior, at least the hall and the library, seemed to shimmer. Tiffany’s intricate combinations of materials and patterns suggested impermanence and lightness, qualities frequently expressed by the artists of the twentieth century.
67. Hall, William S. Kimball house, 145 Troup Street, Rochester, New York; architect unknown, 1881–82; demolished ca. 1948. Here the decorators from New York took risks and transformed the hall into space attractive primarily because of its surfaces. The main feature was the wooden screen on the right, composed of panels of East India teak. Because it reached almost to the 13′-high ceiling, this screen separated the hall from the stairway beyond it, yet it was so open that the hall and the stairwell could be read as a single space. Paradoxically, this was an inviting barrier. Note the variations of patterns in these panels. The disciplined energy of this elegant divider was also expressed in the carpet and in the papers of the walls and ceiling.
In contrast to these small-scaled designs, the fireplace of Siena marble and oak seemed strong and calm. This strength was also evident in the oak beams of the ceiling. The stairway behind the screen led to a musicians’ gallery that overlooked the room in which Kimball hung his collection of nineteenth-century French, German, British and American paintings. The gallery also contained a large organ whose pipes could be seen through the screen from the hall below.
68. Library, William S. Kimball house. In several respects the library was typical of its day and class. It was well illuminated by natural light by day and by the gas chandelier and the kerosene table lamp at night. Warm wooden beams added both strength and intimacy, and the top of the bookcases served as a shelf for a variety of expected items: a stuffed owl, globe, vases, bowls and a relief sculpture. The relief is a Nubian head in which the features of a beautiful white woman are painted a dark red-brown on a molded plaster cast. A relief showing her male counterpart is on the table opposite. The well-padded, comfortable furniture, encouraging a slower and less formal pace, was also popular. The central table was large enough for folio volumes and also contained storage drawers. The fireplace, often an ornament in the drawing room or dining room, was actually used in this and most libraries.
Less typical, however, was the visual impact of the fireplace designed by Associated Artists, probably in 1881. Usually the mantel area was the anchor around which the remainder of the room was arranged. Here the fireplace looks like a late addition, as if it were a glittering box shoved into a quiet niche once terminated by a wall of glass. Though small in size, this box was visually prominent. Tiffany played surface against surface, the stained glass of the windows against the glass tiles and the glass tiles against the polished squares of mahogany in the overmantel.