VSA e-newsletter



photo: Kingscote (1838) Richard Upjohn's prim Victorian is featured on the VSA Newport Summer School
Newport Summer School 2005 A Victorian excursion VSA member George Born reports on his visit to the Newport Summer School from his perspective on the Florida Keys "So how was Gingerbread Camp?" A friend's humorous question greeted me when I recently returned from a summer school sponsored by the Victorian Society in America, a group interested in 19th architecture and design. Set among the opulent mansions of Newport, R.I., this program offered insight into a remarkable New England city and gave me a greater appreciation for an era pivotal to many American cities, including Key West. The summer school, now a quarter-of-a-century old, is a 10-day short course on Victorian buildings, interiors, furniture, and taste, comprising both classroom lectures and site visits. Based at Salve Regina University, it is led by Richard Guy Wilson, Chair of the Architectural History Department at the University of Virginia, who is also featured on the television show, "America's Castles." Like Key West, Newport is located on an island — Aquidneck Island, the original Rhode Island. Also like Key West, it is now connected to the mainland by bridges. Yet the early history of Newport goes back to Colonial days, when religious dissenters founded the settlement in the 17th century. Puritan critics claimed they cared less about spiritual matters than making money. In any event, Newport developed as a prosperous seaport by the middle of the 18th century. The American Revolution put an end to this, when the British occupied the town. Worse, in the years after the war, Newport's strength as a trading center was broken, as ports such as Salem and Boston rose in importance. The early 19th century was a slow time in Newport, but by the 1830s, the city saw its beginnings as a resort. Wealthy southerners — especially from Charleston and Savannah — came to escape the low-country heat and enjoy Newport's breezy summers. Some built comfortable Gothic Revival or Italianate villas associated with architects Richard Upjohn and Alexander Jackson Downing. By the 1850s, the rise of the anti-slavery movement made it increasingly difficult for these white, slave-holding Southerners to find a congenial reception in a Yankee city. Ultimately, the Civil War and its aftermath destroyed the traditional wealth of the South, and Newport attracted a different audience. Northerners of various stripes — intellectuals and artists from Boston, rich industrialists from New York, and others — discovered Newport and during the last third of the 19th century built a variety of summer "cottages," displaying the full range of architectural styles and aesthetic choices available during the period known as Victorian. Houses up to the early 1880s are usually wood-frame structures featuring asymmetrical massing and informal plans, executed in the Stick, Queen Anne, Shingle, or other picturesque styles. Although not small buildings, they do not announce their size. Many combine traditional vernacular prototypes from England or early America with a progressive interest in the Arts and Crafts Movement. Interiors sometimes bear the stamp of design reformers Charles Locke Eastlake and William Morris, along with the Aesthetic Movement. By the end of the late 1880s, considerable changes were underway. Newport was attracting people with more money and more desire to impress, such as the Vanderbilts. The demand grew for monumental, stone architecture with high-style precedents, and soon massive Italian palazzos and French chateaux dotted spacious seaside lots. Lavish interiors designed for formal entertaining boasted crystal chandeliers, painted ceilings, and conspicuous gilding — all the accouterments for living "in the grand manner." All of this sumptuous display required the services of architects, whose careers are coincident with the rise of the architectural profession in America. Richard Morris Hunt was the first American to attend the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, the leading architectural school in the western world at the time. H. H. Richardson almost single-handedly revived the Romanesque style. And McKim, Mead & White became one of the most prominent firms in the history of American architecture. All designed notable buildings in Newport. The early 20th century ended the Gilded Age, thanks to the income tax, World War I, and other social, economic, and political forces. Soon, the old mansions were white elephants, relics of an earlier time, out of place in the modern age. More than a hundred were torn down. Eventually, momentum for preservation gained traction, initially focused on saving the Colonial center of town and gradually expanding to include the later, great houses in the surrounding areas. Currently, Newport has an active municipal historic preservation commission and a variety of non-profits — a preservation society, an historical society, a restoration foundation, and others. Newport overflows with three centuries of architectural history, including a remarkable flowering during the Victorian era. More recently, the city has worked energetically to preserve its past as a legacy for the future. Admirers of historic buildings can certainly appreciate this. VSA member George Born is the historic preservationist at the Historic Florida Keys Foundation. Courtesy: Florida Keys, Key News: http://keysnews.com/290607065315314.bsp.htm
EVENTS
ANNUAL MEETING 2006 ST. LOUIS Looking ahead. St. Louis 2006 PowerPoint presentation Microsoft PowerPoint required	Newport Summer School 2004 Photo archive of Karen L. Mulder Assistant to Professor Wilson
	Dates for 2006 Summer Schools Newport: June 2 - June 11, 2006 London: July 8 - July 23, 2006 For more contact: Summer Schools
THE GREATER CHICAGO CHAPTER OF THE VICTORIAN SOCIETY IN AMERICA MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN DAY OUTING - SATURDAY JULY 23, 2005 After arriving in Milwaukee the itinerary will start at 11:00 A.M. sharp to tour the Fredrick C. Bogk House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1916-17. This is one of Wright's sculptural façades, with its frieze of Amerindian chieftains. The interior features recessed art-glass wall lights, a fish pond and planter separating the living and dining rooms. The original metallic gold and celadon color scheme has recently been replicated. The furnishing are Wright 1950 design of the 1950s. (This is a private home and is rarely seen). Then it will be time for lunch at the famous Karl Ratzsch German restaurant. After lunch we will tour Milwaukee Public Library, 1896 Neo-Renaissance style by local architectural firm Ferry & Clas. They were the winners of a national competition for the building's design. Next we will cross the street to visit the Alexander Mitchell Mansion. Built in 1873 it is now the Wisconsin Club. The interior contains decorations in the Moorish Style. The most amazing feature is a ceiling covered with carved pansies. Our last stop will be the Flemish Renaissance Mansion of Captain Frederick Pabst. We will be hosted by Mr. John Eastberg for a tour of the mansion and the current exhibit on sports & leisure in the Victorian Era. Vanessa Forry Falcon, Greater Chicago Chapter President

MEMBERS

Victorian Kitchens & Baths
by VSA members Franklin & Esther Schmidt

Romance is in and Victorian design and architecture are as popular now as they were when Victorian was the contemporary style more than a hundred years ago. Often, people who buy a Victorian home have expertise in antiques of the era and can furnish a period living room or bedroom, but they are stymied when it comes to the kitchen and the bathroom. Victorian Kitchens and Baths solves this common dilemma by looking at the individual design, decor and architectural elements that make a room Victorian, offering a myriad of purist as well as interpretive ideas that can be used and adapted to fit many homes and tastes.

Review: Victorian Homes Magazine
August 2005

"Victorian Kitchens & Baths – a new book by husband and wife team, Franklin and Esther Schmidt … takes readers on a pictorial journey of "Victorian self rediscovery." Recently released by Gibbs Smith, the book is a veritable "who’s who" of 19th century architecture. Sprinkled with informative essays throughout, and written by a host of authorities on the subject, contributing authors include Erika Kotite, editor of Victorian Homes magazine, Bruce Bradbury of Bradbury & Bradbury Art Wallpapers; Dan Mattausch, an internationally recognized 19th-century lighting expert; and Brent Hull, an expert on historic millwork. "… the Schmidts have created a volume worthy of any renovator’s library. Stimulating essays answer questions the Victorian neophyte might ask about the accuracy of mixing one style with another, while exquisite photos inspire the seasoned veteran. Readers are not only led to the river of great debate that surrounds turn-of-the-century authenticity, Victorian Kitchens & Baths encourages them to drink, long and deep."

Click here to purchase at Amazon

Book launch and signing in NYC
Thursday, July 28th

The VSA will be represented at the book launch of Victorian Kitchens & Baths to be held at Studio Dante, 257 W. 29th Street, in New York City from 4.30pm--7.00pm on Thursday, July 28th. There will be a book signing and Q&A session. You are welcome to attend.

Nature's Museums: Victorian Sciences And The Architecture Of Display
by Carla Yanni

"Nature's Museums . . ." is a major contribution to our understanding of the history of public architecture, scientific practice, and the cultural life of the Victorian era." -- Jim Secord, University of Cambridge.

Cabinets of curiosity, glass-enclosed cathedrals stuffed with sea shells, butterflies, lizards, birds, animals, and exotic marvels of all kinds -- our Victorian forebears went to extraordinary lengths to acquire and display the strange fruits of the earth. Their carefully organized collections helped shape our vision of the natural world and form the social and architectural construction of knowledge we confront today. In this beautifully illustrated book, historian Carla Yanni brings together the history of architecture and the history of science in an engaging study of how the Victorians approached the housing and display of scientific artifacts.

VSA member Carla Yanni is an alumna of the London Summer School and associate professor of art history at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Her book, Nature's Museums: Victorian Science and the Architecture of Display, originally published by Johns Hopkins, was released in paperback by Princeton Architectural Press in September 2004.

New Life Member

The VSA is please to recognize David Buchta of Lexington, KY as a new Life Member. We are extremely grateful to David for his generous support as a permanent partner in our mission to keep the spirit of the nineteenth century alive.

Life Members

MEMBER ORGANIZATIONS

IN SERVICE AND BEYOND:
Domestic Work and Life in a Gilded Age Mansion
A New Permanent Exhibition at Maymont House Museum Tells the Other Half of the Story

VSA member organization, the Maymont Foundation, has a new permanent exhibition “In Service and Beyond,” a restoration project 10 years in the making.

Step through the basement door and into the lives of the Dooleys’ domestic staff--the butler, cook, housemaid, laundress, lady’s maid, chauffeur and others--who maintained the 33-room mansion and James and Sallie Dooleys’ luxurious lifestyle from 1893 to 1925. In eight newly restored period rooms, visitors discover that Maymont was not only a millionaire’s showplace, but also a workplace. Artifact-rich displays, interpretive panels with period images, and interactive media bring to life the myriad tasks and daily rhythms of domestic work at Maymont and in similar southern households during an era of dramatic economic, social and technological changes. It’s the Virginia version of “Upstairs Downstairs”- a fascinating look at how two distinct perspectives made up the whole, how two worlds joined under one roof, and how one could not exist without the other. Maymont House Museum is located in Richmond, Virginia.

For information, call 804-358-7166, ext. 329.

MISCELLANY

Edward Townsend Mix (1831-90)
In anticipation of the Greater Chicago Chapter's visit to Milwaukee on July 23rd, VSA member Judith Knuth examines the work of architect Edward Townsend Mix

Before the Germans, there were the Yankees. Milwaukee's reputation as the most Teutonic of American cities began in earnest with the arrival here in 1848 of a wave of German émigrés fleeing their country's political turmoil. But as early as 1833, when the city-to-be consisted of little more than fur trader Solomon Juneau's log cabin and the swamps that surrounded it, it was East Coast entrepreneurs who arrived to lay claim to the land.

The industrious New Englanders and New Yorkers filled in the swamps, criss-crossed them with rough dirt streets, and established businesses that ranged from dry goods stores to hotels, butcher shops to banks. Other ambitious Easterners followed and became the city's first generation of doctors and lawyers, judges and newspaper editors.

As Milwaukee grew (the population was 20,000 in 1850; 70,000 by 1870) and the Yankees prospered, it became clear that the early buildings that housed their families, their businesses and their institutions were inadequate. Into this promising environment came the right man for the moment: Edward Townsend Mix.

Mix was 25 years old when he arrived in 1856. The Connecticut-born architect had moved to Chicago the previous year, and formed a partnership with William W. Boyington, a New Yorker who had set up an architectural practice there just two years earlier. According to the 1881 History of Milwaukee County, Mix traveled to Milwaukee in the summer of 1856 to supervise the construction of the neophyte firm's projects here, and was so taken with the city, he promptly dissolved his partnership with Boyington and made Milwaukee his permanent home. (Boyington went on to a remarkably successful career, designing the Illinois State Capitol and Chicago's much-prized landmarks, the Water Tower and Pumping Station on Michigan Avenue.)

At a time in America when trained architects were rare, Mix could boast an apprenticeship in the practice of popular Connecticut architect Sidney Mason Stone, and time spent under the tutelage of Richard Upjohn, an acknowledged master of the Gothic Revival and Italianate styles. Along with his professional credentials, Mix had another key asset: both he and his wife, Mary, were descended from long-established New England families. The young couple was instantly accepted into the upper strata of Milwaukee society, and Mix had barely hung out his shingle before high-profile commissions from the city's movers and shakers were coming his way. Meat-packer John Plankinton called on Mix to build a sumptuous hotel. T. A. Chapman turned to Mix when the elegant shopping emporium that bore his name burned to the ground, and Mix drew up plans for an even grander one. But perhaps Mix's best client was multi-millionaire banker and railroad tycoon Alexander Mitchell.

Mitchell and his wife, Martha, the acknowledged leaders of Milwaukee society, asked Mix to update and expand their home at what is now 9th Street and Wisconsin Avenue. The process continued through the 1870s as a gazebo and greenhouses were added to the grounds, and a library and ballroom extended the house. Along with other embellishments, Mix changed the home's profile with a square tower and a mansard roof a steep-sloped top story deemed sophisticated and fashionable following its use in France to enlarge the Louvre in the 1850s. (The Mitchell home is now owned by a private organization, the Wisconsin Club.) The same exuberant Second Empire styling went into the design of the six-story granite and limestone Mitchell Building, built in 1876 at the southeast corner of Michigan and Water streets to house Mitchell's banking and insurance interests. Two gilded gryphons flank the entrance, and the façade's embellishment of shells, shields, lions' heads and cherubs is a virtual textbook of 19th-century ornament.

In 1879, again for Mitchell, Mix produced the only-marginally-less-elaborate Chamber of Commerce next door. The building wraps around the soaring three-story high Grain Exchange (meticulously restored in 1983), a lavishly-gilded and artistically-painted trading room suitable for a time when Milwaukee was one of the leading wheat markets in the nation. The greatest concentration of Mix's domestic designs was north and east of the downtown business district in Yankee Hill, the leafy high ground where many of Milwaukee's pioneer monied families lived. Mix is thought to have designed more than a dozen homes there, and is credited with three of the neighborhood's most notable churches: All Saints Episcopal Cathedral at Juneau Avenue and Marshall Street; Immanuel Presbyterian Church, 1100 N. Astor Street; and St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Knapp and Marshall streets.

Mix was a master of the flamboyant styles of the Victorian age demanded by his clients, but his own home was a more modest affair. Built in 1869 at the corner of Juneau Avenue and Waverly Place a block-long street in Yankee Hill the understated Italian Villa style house displayed simple rounded-arch windows, broad eaves, and a discreetly-scaled square tower. (Mix's house is gone, but the similar Peck house, the only remaining 19th-century house on Waverly Place, is attributed to Mix.)

In the late 1880s, with his client base diminished, and his health failing, Mix moved to Minneapolis where several prominent buildings had been built from his recent designs. He died there in 1890. At the time of his death, many Milwaukeeans may not have known Mix's name, but there were few who did not know his buildings. They worshipped in his churches, studied in his schools, shopped in his stores, lived in his homes. They passed through his Milwaukee Road railway station, marveled at exhibits in his Exposition Building, and visited veterans in his Soldier's Home* at Wood. James S. Buck, in his Pioneer History of Milwaukee, might have been summing up Mix's career when he wrote in praise of the Mitchell Building and its designer: The architect who planned this famous bank was E. Townsend Mix, to whose genius in that noble art Milwaukee is indebted for many of her most beautiful dwellings as well as public buildings

'Victorian' lady still sought

As reported in the April edition of the email newsletter, preservation plans are afoot in Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia. Local preservationist, Gersil Kay is still seeking a spirited lady to wear a Victorian gown and be chased by a gentleman in a tall black hat and handlebar mustache in front of the greatly endangered buildings.

If you think you can help please contact her at: 215-568-0923.

August 11th will be the final appeal to save the four shops on 18th Street leading to Rittenhouse Square, and the once-elegant Rittenhouse Club, and the Rittenhouse Historic District would be meaningless without the authentic historic buildings surrounding it. They are are not asking to stop the 37-story condominium - just to incorporate the threatened buildings into the modern design.

Gersil N. Kay, Building Conservation International

WEBSITE OF THE MONTH

THE LOUVRE
http://www.louvre.fr/llv/commun/home_flash.jsp
click on menu for English version

The Louvre’s website, relaunched after 10 years online, is a masterpiece in the making. You can navigate the Louvre’s more than 175,000 works of art by using either the curatorial departments or the Kaleidoscope feature which categorizes works into themes such as nudes, religion, or kings and emperors.

For serious researchers, the site offers access to databases such as the Louvre’s current works on display and works in French museums. Some areas of the site are still under construction - future plans include more thematic sections, more personalization features and online ticket sales - and it can be slow to load at times, while some of the color schemes make the navigation bars hard to read.

The Biennale, which opened recently and runs to November 6, can usually be guaranteed to show off some of the most bizarre and cutting edge art in the world and this year’s edition is again an eclectic collection of paintings, video, sculptures and installations, many of which make use of digital cameras and editing.

PREVIOUS WEB SITES OF THE MONTH

And finally, your staff of one at the email newsletter was called upon last month present a local award on behalf of the Philadelphia Chapter. But not before climbing up the leg of an elephant.

The beast in question was Lucy the Elephant, a Margate, NJ landmark since 1882, fairly recently restored.

It was the left leg to be precise as this houses a novel way in, while the right leg serves as the stairway out. More predictable perhaps was the viewing window betwixt the two -- fittingly named the 'pane in the butt'.

The main event of the Philadelphia Chapter day out however, was a visit to Hereford Inlet Lighthouse in North Wildwood, NJ, built on the north end of Five Mile Beach in 1874. While the building renovation continues, the award was for the sensitive restoration of the gardens. I was pleased to present the award to Steve Murray, Superintendent of Parks for the City of North Wildwood and designer of the Hereford Lighthouse Park. He does sterling and selfless work for the lighthouse and the community.

http://www.the-wildwoods.com/activity/lighthse.html

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The Victorian Society in America
205 S. Camac Street
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