Tag Archives: Gilded Age

December 30, 2024

Mills Mansion Shines

By daseger

We arrived at my brother’s house in Rhinebeck on Christmas Eve, ate, drank and were merry for two days, and then I woke up on the 26th eager to explore yet another Hudon Valley mansion, what I always want to do when I’m in the area. There are loads of Hudson Valley posts if you want to see past tours: I apologize for the unwieldlyness of my now 14-year-old blog, but you can find most things by keyword searches in the search box. Eventually I will get around to providing an index. The house I chose to visit was ironically located very close to my brother’s house, yet I had never cared to stop in. It’s a big classical revival Beaux-Arts building called the Mills Mansion, located in the midst of the Staatsburgh State Historic Site on the river. I had hiked the trails that used to constitute its vast estate estate, but never ventured through its doors. I pictured enormous square drab rooms, but my vision was wrong. The tour was labeled a “Gilded Age Christmas” and it was indeed very glittery! My brother and brother-in-law came along with me (along with my husband), and they confirmed that the last time they had been in the mansion it was a bit tired, but what we all encountered was a very engaging space, encompassing the efforts of both state staff obviously, but also a very active Friends group. All the docents in the building were so enthusiastic, so obviously happy to be there and share the stories of the mansion and the Mills family. It reminded me of my colleagues at the Phillips House this past summer.

The Mansion was just one home of Ogden and Ruth Livingston Mills, very wealthy members of the fabled NYC 400. Mr. Mills inherited a California gold rush fortune, and Mrs. Mills was New York aristocracy: her Livingston lineage went back to the seventeenth century in the Hudson River Valley. I really can’t think of a better recipe for a Gilded Age couple! She had inherited a much smaller Greek Revival structure generally called Livingston Manor, and in 1895 she and her husband commissioned the prestigious New York City architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White to remodel and enlarge it, a mission which was accomplished in only one year. It was expanded from 25 rooms to 79, and 14 bathrooms were added–if you want to see and study Gilded Age bathrooms, this is really the place! The new Mills Mansion, called Staatsburgh at this time, had its own coal-powered electric plant and central heating but also 23 fireplaces, some of which are quite baronial as you will see below. All the usual classical details were added to the exterior of both the two new wings and the original house in the center, and a huge portico tied everything together. The entire complex was not only a family home and guest palace, but also a working estate of 1600 acres, with gardens and greenhouses, a dairy barn, and additional outbuildings. The entirety, including all of the furnishings, was donated to the State of New York by the Mills’ daughter Gladys Mills Phipps in 1938, following the dearth of her parents in the 1920s. And so a large chuck of riverfront land was preserved for all of us to enjoy. The obligation to steward was also granted to New York State of course, and given the size of the Mansion, that is probably a constant process: several docents, with obvious pride and excitement, informed me that they had just won a grant to restore the period kitchen so that it could be added to the tour. It was obvious to me that both material preservation and interpretation were ongoing initiatives: an exhibition space adjoining the visitor entrance presents the site in a broad social and geographical context, and then you proceed upstairs and get wowed.

The grand reception rooms: library, drawing room, central hall, dining room, service pantry off dining room, a “golden” drawing room.

Staatsburgh/ Mills Mansion was the Mills’ “autumn” house, and when they were in residence, they had lots of guests, attended to by a staff of 25. The bedrooms upstairs were separated and designated to single men and single women guests and married couples: bathrooms were interspersed liberally. There’s a rather widespread belief that Edith Wharton, who was very familiar with this region and its social scene, had used the Mansion for her depiction of Bellomont in the House of Mirth so I was looking for Lily Bart’s bedroom of course. That would make Lily’s hosts, the Trenors, Ruth and Ogden Mills, and Ruth does have a certain “ambitious hostess” reputation. Apparently she was very pleased that she could secure the services of celebrity architect Stanford White for her project before he designed the neighboring Vanderbilt Mansion. Ever the gracious hostess, Mrs. Mills even provided her guests with a safe in which they could deposit their valuables upon arrival.

Guest bedrooms and bathrooms and the safe.

The Mills Mansion docents did not stress Mrs. Mills’ competitive hospitality but rather her family life, and her fraility. She had a heart condition, so her bedroom, an extravagant raspberry damask confection, was located on the first floor adjacent to the reception rooms rather than upstairs. Her husband’s bedroom was just across the way, with a connecting bathroom in between. A smaller staircase connected these rooms to the Mills children’s bedroom upstairs, and doors could be closed to create a more private family “townhouse,” which I thought was pretty clever. All in all, our visit to the very festive Mills Mansion was the beginning of a perfect day after Christmas.

The Mills Family’s “townhouse” within the Mansion.

6 Comments | tags: Architecture, Gilded Age, great houses, Historic Interiors, holidays, Hudson River Valley, Mills Mansion, road trips | posted in Architecture, Culture

January 29, 2022

Gilded Age Salem

By daseger

Let me be very clear: Salem is NOT a Gilded Age town. In reference to the new series from Julian Fellowes, Salem is the two Old Money sisters in the stuffy house, not the nouveau riche couple across the street in the bright and shiny Beaux-Arts building. In fact, there are no Beaux-Arts buildings in Salem, which was so Old Money that its dominant Gilded Age style was Colonial Revival, expressed characteristically through renovation rather than new construction. But I wanted to produce a Gilded Age post for Salem for two reasons: 1) despite the mixed reviews, I really like the new HBO series (though I think it should have a more nuanced title than The Gilded Age) and; 2) this time period (I’m going with 1870-1900, though I made one exception) provides me with an opportunity to address a big myth about Salem history, chiefly that it was all over for the city’s economy by 1820 or so. That’s just not true: I see a lot of prosperity and vitality in Salem’s economy in the later nineteenth century, and I think the buildings I have chosen to illustrate its own spin on the Gilded Age prove it. My choices were inspired by shots from the series premiere, although I must say that some of the cgi exterior views (in which everything is so CLEAN) contrasted sharply with those of more textured interiors). But before I get to the new, let me reassert and illustrate my claim that (re-) gilding the lily that was the Federal style was the Salem Gilded style, as we can see so clearly in architect Arthur Little’s 1885 plans for the George Emmerton House on Essex Street.

Arthur Little and Herbert W.C. Browne architectural collection, Historic New England

Along Essex Street, which is undoubtedly Salem’s most dynamic street, there are also several prominent later-nineteenth-buildings that testify to the vibrancy of that age, but I want to start with a very showy building on parallel Chestnut Street which I think might be Salem’s ultimate Gilded Age construction: the Wheatland-Phillips House, built in 1896 for Mrs. Stephen G. Wheatland following the design of architect John B. Benson. At a glance, this imposing house fits right in with its Federal neighbors, but there is no restraint of scale or detail: it seems very “gilded” to me! Now on to Essex: even though it was built prior to the Civil War and Gilded Age, I’m still including the Bertram Mansion, built in 1855 for philanthropist John Bertram and donated by his family to the City for use as the Salem Public Library in 1887. This building really impressed contemporaries when it was built: I am always looking for signs of a nascent historical preservationist consciousness in the nineteenth century, and I found absolutely no trace of that sentiment in contemporary newspaper accounts of its construction, despite that fact that several “ancient” houses were swept away to make way for this “ornament” to the City of Salem. There are other candidates for such novel ornamentation on Essex Street, but none more than the Putnam-Balch House built in 1872, which once served as the headquarters for the American Legion in Salem.

I have no doubt that Salem had some really grand Gilded Age mansions on Lafayette Street, which was very much the new street of that era. But these structures were swept away by the Great Salem Fire of 1914. I don’t have photographs of all of them, but the Cassino Mansion at 192-194 Lafayette had to be among the most impressive, and it was gone in a day, an afternoon (A Cassino descendant gave me the photograph below, which I cherish!) Probably the grandest survivor on Lafayette is the Gove House built in 1888, the home of patent-medicine millionairess Lydia Pinkham’s very philanthropic daughter, Aroline Gove. The Pinkham story/connection is perfectly gilded.

Back in the center of town and heading north, I think I’m going to add the George C. Shreve House at 95 Federal Street and the James Dugan House on Dearborn Street, both built in 1872, to my list, as Italianate is as close as we’re going to get to Beaux-Arts in Salem. I love the situation of the Dugan House: it’s very grand.

Salem probably has more commercial or institutional architecture that approaches a Gilded Age style than residential: there are blocks on Essex and Washington streets downtown that evoke that era, still and fortunately, even though uninspired contemporary buildings are encroaching. The Superior Court Building on Federal Street (shown from Bridge, below) is an incredible structure inside and out, positively soaring and charming at the same time. It represents an era of unlimited opportunity and decoration quite well, but in typical Salem style, is an extensive 1887-91 renovation of an earlier Renaissance Revival building.