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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. EDITH BLAKE BROWN AND THE RISE OF PROFESSIONAL INTERIOR DESIGN

Karina Helen Hiltje Corrigan

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the University of Delaware in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts with a major in Early American Culture

Summer 2001

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 1404589

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. EDITH BLAKE BROWN AND THE RISE OF PROFESSIONAL INTERIOR DESIGN

Karina Helen Hiltje Corrigan

Approved: JamesJCl Curtis, PhJD. Professor in charge of thesis

Approved: James G. Curtis, Ph.D. Director, Winterthur Program in Early American Culture

Approved: Conrado M.'S^fnpesaw II, Ph.D. Vice Provost for Academic Programs and Planning

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Richard McKinstry, National Endowment for the Humanities Librarian at the

Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, acquired Edith Blake Brown’s papers for

Winterthur. I am grateful for his foresight in acquiring the collection, his suggestion

that a study o f these papers might make an interesting thesis topic, and for the

encouragement he offered along the way. The librarians at the New York Historical

Society, Syracuse University, and the Avery Architectural Library at Columbia

University were tremendously helpful in locating material relevant to the project.

Neville Thompson, Andrew W. Mellon Librarian at Winterthur deserves particular

thanks for her assistance with not only this manuscript, but also for her helpful

suggestions throughout my tenure as a Fellow. I feel blessed to have spent two years

within such an awe-inspiring institution; the company of my fellow Fellows made

those years all the sweeter. Ashli White deserves my particular thanks for her

willingness to serve as teacher, guide, therapist, and chef both during my tenure at

Winterthur and in the ensuing years. I am profoundly grateful to Dr. James C. Curtis

for his guidance and willingness to persevere with this project, even when I had given

up all hope for ever seeing its completion. Lastly, I thank my parents, Sharon and

Don Corrigan and my sister, Caitlin Corrigan for their love and support.

iii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract

Chapter

1 THE RISE OF PROFESSIONAL INTERIOR DESIGNERS IN LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICA

2 THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE IN ARCHITECTURE: STANFORD WHITE AT 11 EAST 61 st STREET

3 EDITH BLAKE BROWN, INTERIOR DESIGNER AT 11 EAST 61 st STREET

Bibliography

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT

This thesis examines interior design in late nineteenth-century America

through a careful study of one project, the renovation and redecoration of the home of

Almeric and Pauline (nee Whitney) Paget at 11 East 61st Street in New York City.

An unprecedented number of documents relating to the project survive in the archives

of Edith Blake Brown, a designer from Boston. Brown served as the interior

decorator and general contractor for the project in 1897. McKim, Mead and White,

New York’s leading architects, were commissioned to renovate the house; the

correspondence between Stanford White and Edith Blake Brown which survives in

her archives is the only surviving record of this commission. This archive also

records the work of upholsterers, painters, wallpaper hangers, lighting experts, and

antiques dealers on the project.

In the late nineteenth century, professional interior designers or “artistic

decorators” offered to coordinate a client’s interior renovation from start to finish,

serving as artistic guide and general contractor to properly furnish a late nineteenth-

century room or house. As industrialism expanded the variety and availability of

consumer goods, Americans became increasingly conscious of what their homes

revealed about their moral character and their affluence. Securing the services of an

artistic decorator ensured that one’s house would be both beautifully and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. appropriately furnished. Most scholarship on early interior designers has focused on

large firms; very little has been written about independent designers in the late

nineteenth century, particularly early women designers in the field. The papers of

Edith Blake Brown in the Joseph Downs Collection of Archives and Manuscripts at

the Henry Francis duPont Winterthur Museum facilitate this study of one of the

field’s earliest practitioners.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Chapter 1

THE RISE OF PROFESSIONAL INTERIOR DESIGNERS

IN LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICA

Professional interior designers or “artistic decorators” in the United States first

began advertising their skills in the second half of the nineteenth century. These

designers offered to coordinate a client’s interior renovation from start to finish,

serving as artistic guide and general contractor to properly furnish a late nineteenth-

century room or house. As industrialism expanded the variety and availability of

consumer goods, Americans became increasingly conscious of what their homes

revealed about their moral character, their cosmopolitanism, their pedigree and their

affluence. Securing the services of an artistic decorator ensured that one’s house

would be both beautifully and appropriately furnished. Large firms devoted

exclusively to interior design such as Herter Brothers, Leon Marcotte and Company,

and Associated Artists catered to the demand for a professional artistic vision in the

ornamentation of the American home.1

1 Katherine S. Howe, Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Catherine Hoover Voorsanger, editors. Herter Brothers Furniture and Interiors for a Gilded New Age. York: Harry Abrams, Inc. in association with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1994. Phillip M. Johnston, “Dialogues between Designer and Client: Furnishings proposed by Leon Marcotte to Samuel Colt in the 1850s,” in Winterthur Portfolio vol. 19, no. 4 (Winter 1984): 257-276. Wilson Faude, “Associated Artists and the American Renaissance,” in Winterthur Portfolio vol. 10 (1975): 101-130. See also Leslie Pina. Louis Rorimer: A Man o f Style. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1990.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Most scholarship on early interior designers has focused on large firms; very little has

been written about independent designers in the late nineteenth century, particularly

early women designers in the field.2 The papers of Edith Blake Brown in the Joseph

Downs Collection of Archives and Manuscripts at the Henry Francis duPont

Winterthur Museum provide an extensive record of the work of an independent

woman designer on a single commission.

Between May of 1897 and January of 1898, Edith Blake Brown designed and

coordinated the redecoration and installation of furnishings in the home of Almeric

and Pauline Paget. Pauline Paget was the daughter of William C. Whitney, a wealthy

New York industrialist and philanthropist; her husband, Almeric Paget, was the

youngest son of the Marquis of Anglesey. In true Gilded age fashion, this union of

American wealth and British aristocracy was “the most brilliant social function of that

year [in New York].”3 The Pagets purchased a townhouse at 11 East 61st Street in

Manhattan and hired McKim, Mead, and White, the prominent New York

architectural firm to renovate the house. The Pagets also hired Edith Blake Brown, a

Boston artist and interior decorator, to oversee the redecoration of the interiors.

2 A notable exception is the exhibition catalogue, Women Designers in the USA 1900- 2000: Diversity and Difference. The catalogue includes a chapter on women interior designers from 1900-1950 that touches briefly on late nineteenth- century designers. See Pat Kirkham and Penny Sparke. “'A Woman’s Place . ..? ’ Women Interior Designers,” in Women Designers n the USA 1900-2000: Diversity and Difference, Pat Kirkham, editor. New Haven: Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts and Yale University, 2000: 305-316. 3New York Times, April 2, 1896: 4.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Edith Blake Brown listed herself as a “designer” in Boston city directories

from 1897 to 1899.4 This rather ambiguous term referred to the artistic production of

various goods on paper, mural decoration, and interior design. In addition to her

work as an interior designer, she performed contract work as a graphic draftswoman,

including the execution of William B. Hunt’s poster design for the first exhibition of

the Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston.5 Her archive is littered with correspondence

between engravers, printing companies and booksellers about her designs for

personalized bookplates. In addition to these commissioned plates, Dodd, Mead and

Company purchased three of her designs to produce as blank bookplates. None of

these designs have been identified, but several designs executed by her sister, Ethel

Isadore Brown survive.6 The sisters also painted “little colored plaster figurines”

which they sold through the Doll and Richards Company in Boston.

4 Boston Directory. Boston: Sampson, Murdock and Company, 1897-99. 5 Henry Lewis Johnson to Edith Blake Brown, March 8, 1897 and March 9,1897. Edith Blake Brown Papers, Joseph Downs Collection of Archives and Manuscripts, Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, henceforth known as £EBB papers’. Johnson was the Director of the Society of Arts and Crafts. The Society, formed in 1897, was the first organization in the United States devoted to design reform and the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement, popularized in England by John Ruskin and William Morris. The Society provided an arena for exhibiting artists’ work and sought to encourage a market for its members’ artwork by educating the pub he about design reform. For more information on S ACB, see Inspiring Reform: Boston’s Arts and Crafts Movement. Marilee Boyd, David Acton, and Edward S. Cooke, editors. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997. 6 Bookplates designed by Ethel Isadore Brown in 1912 for her nephews, Neil Wilkie and John Wilkie, survive in the EBB papers. 7 EBB and EIB received two-thirds of the sale price for each figurine; the rest was retained by Doll and Richards as a commission for the sale. Doll and Richards to Edith Blake Brown, March 27,1897. EBB papers.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Edith Blake Brown also lectured widely as an authority on interior decoration.

The Boston dry goods store of Shephard, Norwell, and Company sent Brown

“twenty-seven samples o f goods,” most likely textiles, for use in her lectures “in

recognition of the fact that you will mention the firm name.”8 The mutually

beneficial relationship between Edith Blake Brown and Shephard, Norwell and

Company foreshadows the relationships between designers, manufacturers and

retailers that would become characteristic of the field of professional interior design

in the twentieth century.

Following one of her lectures, Eugene Reakke, the editor of the newly formed

magazine The House Beautiful commissioned Edith Blake Brown to write an article

on interior design for the journal.9 Reakke wrote to Brown, “we are strongly urging

the ideas of simplicity, restraint, and appropriateness, not without some

encouragement and I presume that you will not object to assist us in our crusade

against the showy useless, and inharmonious decoration of the usual home.”10

Whether or not Brown hoped to assist in Reakke’s “crusade,” she agreed to write the

article. Brown’s “Beauty in the Home” appeared in the January 1898 issue of the

magazine, several months after Brown had completed the redecoration of Almeric

and Pauline Paget’s house. The views in her article were undoubtedly influenced by

the demanding redecorating efforts for the Pagets. Brown’s views, shared by many of

8 John C. Hobart to Edith Blake Brown, November 16, 1897. EBB papers. 9 Eugene Reakke to Edith Blake Brown. January 15 and February 2, 1898. EBB papers. °Eugene Reakke to Edith Blake Brown. January 15, 1898. EBB papers.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. her contemporary designers, reflected a return to simplicity and appropriateness in

interior design.

Brown acknowledged that most articles on interior design featured images and

descriptions of “expensive furniture and of grand homes.”11 Brown sought to write

for homemakers of more modest means, emphasizing that “the principles exhibited in

these pictures are quite as applicable to the cheapest furniture and the humblest

surroundings.”12 Brown argued that the “thoughtful arrangement” o f furnishings was

more important than the expense of those objects and that the late nineteenth century

propensity to over-fiimish spaces should be avoided at all cost. She cautioned that “a

room should not remind one of either a museum or a household furnishings shop.” I ^

Ironically, the illustrations in her article featured a seventeenth century carved

Parisian side chair, a seventeenth century American wainscot chair and the “table

upon which the Declaration of Independence was signed.”14 None of these images

relate directly to the text. Nor were these objects within the reach of the

economically-minded housekeeper for whom she claimed to write.

But these objects point to Brown’s target audience: the aspiring upper-middle

class who hoped to establish their status through their household furnishings. Most

Americans seeking to transform their homes were unable to afford the services of a

professional interior designer. Edith Blake Brown’s article was the latest in a series

of late nineteenth-century publications offering guidelines and support for self

11 Edith Blake Brown. “Beauty in the Home,” in The House Beautiful, vol. IV, no. 2 (July 1898): 39-46. 12 ibid: 39. 13 ibid: 40.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. conscious Americans eager to advertise their refinement through their upholstery.

Perhaps the most influential work in this genre was The Decoration o fHouses,

published in 1897 by Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman. Wharton is primarily

known today for her novels, but her first pub fished book addressed the process of

decorating a house. Wharton teamed up with Ogden Codman, a successful decorator

and designer for members of fashionable New York society to write a treatise on

decorating that stressed the quality of Italian and French renaissance interiors and

adapted these design principles for late nineteenth-century American interiors.

Although the text reflects the type of ornamentation popular in the New York

apartments and Newport mansions of the super-rich, the accompanying photographs

are almost entirely of European interiors and furnishings, notably Italian examples, to

assist the reader’s study of appropriate early interiors. The Decoration o f Houses was

the first widely available American source on the history and development of the

Renaissance style.15

Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman published The Decoration o f Houses in

1897, the same year that Edith Blake Brown redecorated 11 East 61st Street for

Almeric and Pauline Paget. Brown’s work for the Pagets was completed before

Wharton and Codman’s book was published, but the ideas espoused in Wharton and

Codman’s writings reflect the cultural climate in which Edith Blake Brown was

working. For example, Brown’s specification that each room in the Paget house be

14 ibid: 45. 15 William A. Coles. “The Genesis of a Classic,” in The Decoration o f Houses by Edith WTiarton and Ogden Codman, Jr. The Classical Series in Art and Architecture. New York: W.W. Norton, 1978: xxiii-xxiv.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. defined by an individual style, and that French styles dominate the grander rooms of

the house clearly follows guidelines set forth in The Decoration o f Houses. The

Louis XVT style was selected for Mrs. Paget’s bedroom and the parlor was decorated

in the Louis XIV style. Edith Wharton would certainly have found favor with these

design choices.

Wharton’s book and Edith Blake Brown’s article for House Beautiful reflect

the influence o f Eastlake’s Hints on Household Taste, which was pub fished in

America in 1872.15 This work helped to shape the American Aesthetic movement for

the next decade and in turn, the work of American interior designers. Harriet Prescott

Spofford, whose own Art Decoration Applied to Furniture also offered American

readers advice on how to furnish their interiors, observed that “not a young marrying

couple who read English were to be found without Hints on Household Taste in their

hands, and all its dicta were accepted as gospel truths.”17 Periodicals offering advice

on furnishing one’s home became increasingly popular in the second half of the

nineteenth century. General literary and news magazines like Harper’s Bazaar

included columns on extravagant houses and current decorating trends. Journals

catering specifically to women like The Art Amateur, The House Beautiful, and

Decorator and Furnisher were devoted to the domestic arts and interior design.

Earlier “arbiters of taste” like Godey's Lady's Book and Peterson’s Ladies National

16 Charles Locke Eastlake. Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery, and Other Details. London, 1868; Boston, 1872 (First US edition from revised London edition). Harriet Prescott Spofford. Art Decoration Applied to Furniture. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1878: 147, quoted in Gail Caskey Winkler and Roger W. Moss.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Magazine went out o f print, unable to compete with the format and content of these

new publications. Many of these articles and publications were thinly veiled

advertising campaigns. Perhaps the most successful of these publicity stunts was

Clarence Cook’s wildly successful book What Shall We Do With Our Walls? }%

Warren, Fuller and Company, a wallpaper and textile manufacturing company in

Connecticut hired Cook to write the text and highlight papers and textiles produced

by the firm.

These new journals also publicized the elaborate efforts of a new profession:

that of the interior decorator. During the nineteenth century, architects began to

relinquish some of the responsibility of ornamenting interior spaces to decorators.

Interior designers, or “artistic decorators” as they were often known at the end of the

century, offered to coordinate a client’s interior design from start to finish, serving as

both artistic guide and general contractor for the project.

Journals such as Art Amateur and Decorator and Furnisher and vanity press

publications such as Artistic Houses (1883) showcased the interior decoration in the

homes o f America’s robber barons. These articles often highlighted the efforts of the

emerging stars of New York’s decorating world such as William Baumgarten, Allard

et Fils, Pottier and Stymus, and Odgen Codman, as well as more general advice on

how to correctly furnish a home on a more limited budget.19

Victorian Interior Decoration: American Interiors 1830-1900. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1986: 115. 18 Clarence Cook. What Shall We Do With Our Walls? New York : Warren, Fuller and Company, 1881. 19 William Seale. The Tasteful Interlude: American Interiors through the Camera's Eye 1860-1917. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1975:10.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Scholars of the early history of interior design have focused their attention on

prominent firms, rather than individual designers. By and large they have also

identified this new profession as a male preserve, though two female designers have

been included in these studies: Candace Wheeler and Elsie de Wolfe.

Candace Wheeler, a partner in Louis Comfort Tiffany’s firm, Associated

Artists, practiced as an interior decorator in New York during the last quarter of the

nineteenth century. Wheeler began her career as a textile designer after her visit to

the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876. Inspired by the South Kensington School of Art

Needlework’s program of social reform, which was highlighted at the Centennial,

Wheeler founded the Society of Decorative Art in 1877.20 Two years later, Louis

Comfort Tiffany invited Candace Wheeler, Samuel Coleman and Lockwood de

Forest to join him in a new design venture. In 1879, the four artists formed the

Associated Artsts, one of the earliest American design firms responsible for

decorating entire rooms or houses for clients. Tiffany said of the firm that he wanted

to set up a “business [,] not a philanthropy or an amateur educational scheme.”21

Unlike the Society for Decorative Arts, which Wheeler had organized in 1877,

Associated Artists was structured as a profit-making venture. Wheeler was largely

responsible for the design and production of textiles used in the firm’s decorating

20 Madeleine B. Stem, “An American Woman First in Textiles and Interior Decoration: Candace Wheeler, 1877,” in We the Women: Career Firsts o f Nineteenth Century America. Lincoln: University o f Nebraska Press, 1994: 275. See also Wilson Faude, “Candace Wheeler, Textile Designer,” in The Magazine Antiques 112 (August 1977): 258-261. 21 Candace Wheeler. Yesterdays in a Busy Life, quoted in Wilson H. Faude. “Associated Artists and the American Renaissance in the Decorative Arts,” Winterthur Portfolio vol. 10 (1975): 101-130.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. schemes. Associated Artists was responsible for commissions as diverse as Samuel

Clemens’ home in West Harford, Connecticut, the public rooms at the Seventh

Regiment Armory, and four rooms at the White House for President Chester Arthur.22

Despite the firm’s high-profile clientele, Associate Artists practiced together

for only four years. Tiffany, Coleman and de Forest left to pursue other goals, but

Wheeler continued to work under the firm’s name until 1907. Wheeler’s Associated

Artists firm focused primarily on textile designs, but also offered more general

interior design assistance to their clients.23

Nearly thirty-five years after Candace Wheeler began designing interiors,

Elsie de Wolfe, a flamboyant New York actress assured her prominent place in design

history by publishing The House in Good Taste, a self-promotional manual of style.24

De Wolfe recounted her efforts to redecorate the home she shared with Elizabeth

Marbury in Manhattan. This personal foray into decorating rapidly expanded into a

second career as an interior decorator. In 1905, Stanford White, of the architectural

firm, McKim, Mead, and White, hired her to decorate the Colony Club on Madison

Avenue. Her association with White and the success of her first book assured her

status as New York’s favorite decorator. Interior design historians often credit her

00 Catherine Hoover Voorsanger, “Dictionary of Architects, Artisans, Artists, and Manufacturers,” in In Pursuit o f Beauty: Americans and the Aesthetic Movement. New York: Rizzoli published in conjunction with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986: 474-5 and 481-3. The interiors of the Veterans’ Room at the Seventh Regiment Armory survive; Mark Twain’s house has been restored and contains some of its original furnishings. 23 Wilson Faude, 1975: 101-3. 24 Elsie de Wolfe. The House in Good Taste. New York: The Century Company, 1913.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. with “introducing the vogue for ivory white in New York.”25 Ultimately, The House

in Good Taste simply expanded the scope of this already popular design trend. She is

also widely acknowledged as the first decorator in today’s terms because of her

business arrangements with clients.26 Elsie de Wolfe secured her place in design '

history, as Candace Wheeler had done twenty years before, by writing about her

work.

With the exception of these two women — Candace Wheeler and Elsie de

Wolfe - decorative arts studies have overlooked the role of professional female

decorators in the early history of the field. Candace Wheeler and Elsie de Wolfe

worked nearly two decades apart — Wheeler in the 1870s and 1880s and de Wolfe in

the 1900s and 1910s. So who were the women working in the interim? The

directories of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston identify dozens of women

working as designers, considerably before Elsie de Wolfe began practicing as an

interior designer in 1905. 77 There were also many practicing female designers whose

names went unrecorded on the pages of the city directories. Associated Artists, under

the exclusive control of Candace Wheeler, employed dozens of women. Virginia

Brush, who supplied New Yorkers with “Interior Decorations, Artistic Embroideries,

Furniture, etc . .” for over a decade from her shops at 1264 Broadway and later at 532

25 Peter Thornton. Authentic Decor: The Domestic Interior 1620-1920. New York: Crescent Books, 1985: 360. 26 Stephen Calloway. Twentieth Century Design. New York: Rizzoli, 1988: 62. 27 Of the 104 artistic decorators listed in Wilson’s Business Directory of New York City in 1890, three were women. In 1895, seven o f the 102 artistic decorators were women.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Fifth Avenue most likely employed several female designers.28 The New York

Tribune noted in 1898 that “with the opening up of opportunities for women to take

part in the professions, there is no movement more interesting in this development

than the gradual increase of disposition on the part of educated and refined women to

engage in the work of what is called interior decoration.”29 The article’s author

assured that mural decoration and furniture design for public buildings “will properly

remain in the hands of really competent architects [presumably male] of taste . .. but

as it is not a secret that the decoration and furnishings of the most successfully

completed great houses of recent construction have been absolutely dictated and

supervised by the women most interested, there seems no reason why the woman

decorator has not come to stay.”30

Joseph P. McHugh, the wallpaper and textiles supplier and “Popular Shop”

owner offered a profile of these new female interior decorators in a self published

advertising essay:

[These new female decorators are] dotted in pairs of girl bachelors among the larger cities of the country, and though the firm is apt to dissolve after a more or less brief existence, it is not due to lack of business, but rather to the quick opportunity which seems to offer for the formation of permanent partnerships under a consolidated firm name. These are those, too, whom reverses of fortune have forced to use their taste and talents in this most womanly of occupations, and these, having once found the pleasures of self help and independence, are the pillars of the profession.31

28 Trow’s Business Directory of New York City. Trow’s Printing and Bookbinding Company, 1895: back cover. 29 “Woman and the House Beautiful,” The New York Tribune, March 28, 1897. 30 ibid. 31 Joseph P. McHugh. “Some Pictures of Quaint Things which are sold At the Sign of the “Popular Shop” and a few words about Making the House Beautiful with homely material.” New York: Joseph P. McHugh and Company, 1898: 1.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. This profile of a “girl bachelor” corresponds closely to what we know of Edith

Blake Brown’s life. Having grown up in New York, Brown and her sister, Ethel

Isadore Brown were sent to live in Boston with their uncle following their father’s

bankruptcy in the 1880s.32 Hoping to support herself financially as a designer, Brown

rented a studio at 160 Boylston Street with her sister and Elizabeth Parsons.33 The

sisters secured funds, possibly from Isabella Stewart Gardner, who frequently

supported Boston artists, to study in Paris and Venice.34 Living frugally, the sisters

managed to remain in Europe between the spring of 1894 and the spring of 1896.35

Although both sisters painted throughout their sojourn in Europe, only Ethel

Brown exhibited her work. Until the recovery of the Edith Blake Brown papers, the

only record of either of the sisters’ artistic pursuits were scattered listings of paintings

by Ethel Isadore Brown at exhibitions in Paris, Boston, New York, and

Philadelphia.36 Edith Blake Brown, unlike her sister, appears not to have exhibited

Conversation with Judith Webb, February 15, 1997. Boston Art Club records list Ethel Isadore Brown at 641 Tremont in 1889, the home of her uncle. Janice H. Chadboume, Karl Gabosh and Charles O. Vogel. The Boston Art Club: Exhibition Record 1873-1909. Madison, CT: Sound View Press, 1991: 90. 33 R.W. Vonnoh to Dr. Herbert C. Clapp, December 6, 1894. Edith Blake Brown was “in [Dr. Clapp’s] service at the time, but studying in Paris.” Vonnoh hoped Clapp would be willing to cover at $200 debt that Brown owed on her studio rental. EBB papers. 4 Family tradition maintains that Gardner paid for the Brown sisters’ trip, but Gardner’s personal archives do not contain any correspondence with the Brown sisters. Gardner frequently contributed to scholarship funds for needy students. It seems likely that the Brown sisters received their travel stipends through such a fund. The sisters returned at least once during these two years to attend the wedding of Pauline Whitney Paget on November 13, 1895. Paget would become Edith Blake Brown’s client in 1897. 36Ethel Brown studied under Luc Olivier Merson in Paris and exhibited at the Paris salon in 1899, listing her address as 65 Boulevard Arago. While in Boston, she

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. her work publicly. Currently, the only record o f her career as a designer and artist are

the cache of papers relating to her work on the redecoration of Almeric and Pauline

Paget’s townhouse at 11 East 61st Street. McHugh’s pithy description of women

decorators in 1898 may well have been a parody of Edith Blake Brown herself; in

July 1898, Brown hired McHugh and Company to supply and hang wallpaper at the

Paget’s house.

Edith Blake Brown worked in New York as an interior decorator for the

Pagets, but she chose to list her profession as “designer” in the Boston directories

from 1896 to 1899. This profession included a wide range of artistic expression in

the nineteenth century. F. C. Mason advertised in 1898 that, as a designer, he

provided “illustrations, Book Covers, Posters, Magazine Heads and Tails, Letter and

Bill Heads, and Mural Decorations.”38

The term “designer” may also reflect the scale of a decorator’s operation.

Larger organizations like Herter Brothers, William Baumgarten and Company, and

Leon Marcotte and Company advertised as “artistic decorators” because they could

both design interiors and supply their clients with the furnishings needed to realize

these designs from their own warehouses and showrooms. Perhaps designers such as

Edith Blake Brown, working without the benefit of a showroom, simply offered their

assistance in selecting objects and color schemes, as well as serving as the general

studied at the Cowles Art School. Lois Marie Fink. American Art at the Nineteenth Century Paris Salons. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990: 325-6. Chris Pettys. Dictionary o f Women Artists. Boston: G.K. Hall and Company, 1985: 100. 37Joseph P. McHugh to Edith Blake Brown, August 19, 1897. EBB papers. 38 Trows Business Directory o f New York City. New York: Trow’s Printing and Bookbinding Company, 1898: 348.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. contractor for the larger decorating firms involved with the commission. A design

operation was a much smaller enterprise than an artistic decorating firm.

Artistic decorating firms such as Herter Brothers and William Baumgarten

and Company were generally reluctant to hire women. Female decorators were often

forced to form their own firms in order to work in the field. In both New York and

Boston during the last decade of the nineteenth century, the percentage of women

working as designers was higher than the percentage of women working as artistic

decorators.

Women designers in Boston and New York frequently shared studio or office

space, perhaps even unofficially functioning as a design firm. Margaret Conary,

Gertrude Fuller, Agnes Goodale, and Isabel Stevens all worked from a building at 2

Park Street in Boston throughout the last decade of the nineteenth century, hi New

York, Sophia L. Crownfield, Eleanor F. Crownfield, and Emma W. Doughty all

practiced as designers from their studio at 3 East 14th Street. These women

specialized their trades to offer a wider range of design skills from within the studio.

In 1899, Sophia L. Crownfield advertised separately as a “designer of textile fabrics.”

Women comprised an even higher percentage of the designers in this, more

specialized branch of professional design.40

Even though Edith Blake Brown did not work in a large design firm and her

career ended with her 1899 marriage to John Wilkie, she exerted a powerful influence

39 Boston Directory. Boston: Sampson, Murdoch and Company, 1894-1900. 40 Of the thirteen designers who specialized in textile fabrics in New York at the turn of the century, five of them were women. Trow’s Business Directory o f New York City. New York: Trow’s Printing and Bookbinding Company, 1899.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. on late nineteenth-century American interior decoration.41 Her best-documented

commission, the Paget house at 11 East 61st Street, thrust her into a design partnership

with one of America’s most renowned architects, Stanford White. As Brown gave

the interior a distinctive look through her choice of furnishings, White shaped the

broad architectural details in his remodeling of the Paget house.

41 “John L. Wilkie, 71, Attorney is Dead,” in The New York Times. July 23, 1936, 21: 3.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Chapter 2

THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE IN ARCHITECTURE:

STANFORD WHITE AT 11 EAST 61 st STREET

The Paget house at 11 East 61st Street was renovated and redecorated in 1897

in a style known as the American Renaissance. Proponents of the American

Renaissance tradition rebelled against the “synthetic eclecticism” that had

characterized American designs in the middle of the nineteenth century. They argued

that designers had indiscriminately combined motifs and forms from different

European styles. The “scientific eclecticism” of the American Renaissance also

borrowed from different sources, but it placed greater emphasis on the accuracy of

these reinterpretations.1 One of the most visible landmarks of America’s fascination

with this new classicism was the “White City” at the World’s Columbian Exposition

of 1893 in Chicago.

The World’s Columbian Exposition was designed as a celebration of both

Columbus’ “discovery of America” and as an enormous display of the latest

technological, artistic, and architectural advances.2 The fairgrounds were constructed

on six hundred and sixty-four acres of land south of downtown Chicago and boasted a

mile long frontage on Lake Michigan. Enormous white classically-inspired buildings

1 Richard Guy Wilson. “The Decoration o f Houses and Scientific Eclecticism,” in Nineteenth Century, vol. 8, nos. 3-4 (1982): 199.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. surrounded the giant central basin and the lagoon. The colossal figure of Columbia, a

gold leafed statue carrying a torch dom inated the lagoon .3 Images of the “White

City,” as the Exposition was informally known, were familiar to the hundreds of

thousands of visitors to Chicago and the millions of Americans who purchased

pictorial records of the Fair.4 These images reinforced Americans’ appetite for

classically-inspired architecture.

Many early practitioners of the American Renaissance were trained at the

Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, an architectural program that stressed the importance

of studying the architecture of the past for inspiration, most notably the architecture

of ancient Greece and Rome. Americans who studied architecture at the Ecole

incorporated classical ideas of symmetry, order, and ornamentation in their designs.

Charles Follen McKim was perhaps the most prominent American graduate of the

Ecole.

The New York architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White, the most

prolific and successful American architectural firm at the end of the nineteenth

century, fueled the rise of the American Renaissance movement.5 Between 1879 and

1912, the firm completed over nine hundred commissions for civic buildings and

houses. The firm shaped the American urban landscape through its commissions,

2 Ladies ’ Home Journal. (July 1892): 6. 3 The Transportation Building, Louis Sullivan’s golden-arched masterpiece with its multicolored and glittering facade, was the only building on the main concourse that did not conform to this new classicism. 4 The collections of the Free Library of Philadelphia include over fifty different contemporary pictorial and textual explorations of the Exposition. 5 Samuel G. White. The Houses o f McKim, Mead and White. New York: Rizzoli in association with the Museums at Stony Brook, 1998: 10.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. articles on these commissions in architectural periodicals, and the architects who

began their careers in the firm.6

Charles Follen McKim and William Rutherford Mead formed an architectural

partnership in 1874 and invited Stanford White to join them in 1879. McKim and

White had met while both were working for H.BI. Richardson’s architectural firm in

New York. Richardson placed White in charge o f a large portion of the designs for

interior detailing, a specialty which he would cultivate at McKim, Mead, and White.7

Richard Guy Wilson asserts that Stanford Whitens interiors for McKim, Mead and

White were “perhaps his greatest architectural accomplishment. White created his

own unique brand of interior decoration, mixing styles, periods, textures, colors, and

imported European objet d’art.” 8 Mrs. Schuyler Wan Rensselaer, an architectural

critic for Century Magazine described White’s recently completed interiors for the

Villard houses in Manhattan as the finest interiors in the country.9

White placed a heavy emphasis on the architectural features of rooms. He

made frequent trips to Europe to purchase ceilings, doorways, fireplaces, and even

entire rooms that could be incorporated into the American interiors he designed.

Despite using architectural fragments in nearly all of his commissions, White

collected so many fragments that a two-day sale "was held to clear the warehouse after

6 American architects Cass Gilbert, John Merven. Carrere, Thomas Hastings, and Edward Palmer Lord all trained and worked with, the firm before opening their own offices. Richard Guy Wilson. McKim, Mead, a n d White, Architects. New' York: Rizzoli, 1983: 17. 7 LelandRoth. The Architecture o f McKim, Meacd, and White 1870-1920. New York: Garland Publishings, Inc. 1978: xvi, xxiv. 8 Wilson: 13. 9 Stephen Calloway. Twentieth Century Decoration. New York: Rizzoli, 1998: 56.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. his death in 1906.10 hi addition to buildings and interiors, White also designed

picture frames and jewelry. Edith Blake Brown commissioned a frame from White in

September of 1897 for a painting given to Almeric and Pauline Paget as a wedding

present.11

White’s work in the firm’s interior decoration projects has long been

recognized, but his collaborative work with outside decorators, contractors and

suppliers has been largely overlooked. The interiors of the Vanderbilt mansion in

Hyde Park, which were publicized upon completion as the work of Stanford White,

were the result of a collaborate effort between White, Ogden Codman and George

Glaezner.12 Frederick Vanderbilt paid Ogden Codman $1500 for designing the

interiors for two rooms in the house, including Mrs. Vanderbilt’s bedroom.13

Stanford White’s correspondence offers some insight into the various approaches

which McKim, Mead and White took toward the interior decoration of the firm’s

commissions.

White, responding to a letter from Miss Sawtelle, a decorator or decorative

painter who sought employment with the firm, wrote that “half the time our clients

themselves select the decorator, but in any case we may have one or two pieces of

decoration to do in a year, and we may have none as has often happened for two years

.. . any small and general pieces of decoration . . . [are] done by artists in the

10 Charming Blake. “Stanford White’s New York City Interiors,” The Magazine Antiques (December 1972): 1061 [1060-7] 11 Stanford White to Edith Blake Brown. September 9, 1897. EBB papers. 12 Katherine Boyd Mentz and Donald McTeman. “Decorating for the Frederick Vanderbilts,” Nineteenth Century, vol. 3, no. 4 (Winter, 1977): 48.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. contractor’s employ.”14 Yet, in a letter to a sculptor seeking employment by the firm,

White explained that “decorative work which comes in conjunction with our building

is always let with the entire building and is done by the workmen already in the

employ of the general contractor.”15 The size of the project and the involvement of

the clients presumably influenced the quantity of work handled directly by the firm

versus work handled by outside contractors.

It was quite common in the late nineteenth century for decorators to work with

an architectural firm on the transformation of a building’s interiors. The Paget house

at 11 East 61st Street was no exception. Edith Blake Brown and Stanford White, as

well as nearly a dozen prominent New York interior decorating establishments

worked together throughout 1897 on the transformation of the Paget’s home in

Manhattan.

The Pagets, rather than McKim, Mead and White, chose Brown as their

decorator. Brown, a woman and a resident of Boston, might seem an unlikely

candidate for the position of general contractor on the project, but her correspondence

reveals her central role in the renovation of the townhouse. Brown was a family

friend of Pauline ’Whitney Paget; she had served as one of the six bridesmaids in

Paget’s wedding.16 Brown’s correspondence indicates that she resided at Whitney

13 ibid:45. Codman’s drawings for Mrs. Vanderbilt’s bedroom are in the Department of Drawings, Prints, and Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 14 Stanford White to Miss Sawtelle. July 28, 1897. Stanford White correspondence copies, vol. 18, p. 371. Avery Architectural Library, Columbia University. 15 Stanford White to W. Granville Hastings. July 27, 1897. Stanford White correspondence copies, vol. 18, p. 369. Avery Architectural Library, Columbia University. 16 “The Paget-Whitney Wedding,” The New York Times, November 13, 1895: 2.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. family properties in Salem, Massachusetts and in New York throughout much of the

renovation. It is possible that Pauline Paget hoped to ease her friend’s precarious

financial situation by providing housing for her as well as employing her as the

interior decorator for her home. Residing with the Pagets allowed Brown to consult

with them daily on the renovation. Sadly, this direct contact has left us without a

written record of the working relationship between Paget and Brown.

The townhouse at 11 East 61st Street was acquired for the Pagets by Pauline

Whitney Paget’s maternal uncle, Colonel Oliver Payne during the Autumn of 1896.17

The five-story rowhouse was designed in 1876 by John G. Prague for Mrs. Susan

Sullivan. William F. King, the subsequent owner hired the architect CJP. H. Gilbert

to renovate the house. McKim, Mead and White later designed and implemented

renovations for Almeric and Pauline Paget in 1897.18

Following their elaborate and much-publicized wedding in November 1895,

Almeric Paget and his new bride left for five months of touring in Europe. Upon

returning to the United States, the couple resided briefly with Pauline Paget’s father,

William C. Whitney at his home on 57th Street and Fifth Avenue and then moved in

17 Colonel Payne commissioned and furnished a much grander house for Pauline Paget’s brother, Payne Whitney and his wife, Helen Hay Whitney. The house, on Fifth Avenue near 79th Street, and its furnishings cost Payne nearly $1,000,000. All of the surviving documentation of the house and its interiors is housed at the Department of Prints and Drawings, New York Historical Society. Conversation with Jenny Sandberg, March 15, 1997. 18 The earliest surviving blueprints of the house date to 1944, recording the plans of the house after two major renovation campaigns in 1907 and the 1920s. A second set of blueprints documents the current state of the property. The house has been further altered by its present owner, Syracuse University. Both sets of drawings are part of the facilities planning department at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. with her uncle. Oliver Payne during the course of the renovation. The Pagets’ move to

the home of Pauline Paget’s uncle was actually part of a family protest against her

father, who married Edith Randolph in September of 1896, less than three years after

the death of his first wife. Pauline and her brother H. Payne Whitney disapproved of

the union.19 Their maternal uncle, Colonel Payne, offered to support Pauline and her

brother if they renounced their father. A society columnist publicized the feud,

maintaining that “the married daughter inclines, like her younger brother, to lean

toward her uncle rather than toward her father. Indeed, she has good cause to feel

kindly toward the former, as it was he who gave the handsome house she fives in.” 20

Colonel Payne’s influence extended to the choice of architects in the

remodeling. Stanford White’s personal correspondence recounts the close

relationship between Payne and White, as well as the financial arrangements Payne

made on his niece’s behalf. White frequently catered to Colonel Payne’s interior

decorating needs and acquired a variety of antiques for him while in Europe on

buying tours. At the outset of the remodeling effort, White dealt directly with Payne.

He wrote to Payne in February of 1897, before most of the work on 11 East 61st Street

had begun, that the ‘Taget house is now in the hands of the Building department, and

I will bring the plans up to go over as soon as I get them returned.” 21 In addition to

purchasing the house and approving the early stages of the remodeling, Oliver Payne

19 W.A. Swanberg. Whitney Father, Whitney Heiress. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1980: 105. 20 “Town Topics,” February 1, 1900, quoted in Swanberg: 170. 21 Stanford White to Colonel Oliver Payne. February 2, 1897. Stanford White correspondence copies, vol. 17, p. 326. Avery Architectural Library, Columbia University.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. probably also paid for portions of the remodeling of the house. Stanford White

inquired of Payne whether “the commission charges on the 61st Street house [were] to

be made to Paget,” implying that Payne had assumed responsibility for at least a

portion of the bills for the Pagets’ remodeling efforts.

Although White appears to have consulted Colonel Payne directly at the

beginning of the renovation process, White received final payment for the firm’s

work from Almeric Paget. White wrote to Paget on December 22, 1897:

Enclosed herewith please find my own bill for professional services. I have not made out the commission charge upon all the bills I had to do with, but have simply lumped it at the sum of $57,627.1 have paid out in cash on the work myself $662.70. Send me your check for this and be kind enough to present the balance of the bill, receipted, [to McKim, Mead and White] with my compliments to you and Madam and my love to the Colonel. This, I know, will make him mad as the devil, but I’m getting used to his being so with me, and we have to even with him somehow.23

McKim, Mead and White began the architectural remodeling of the house at

11 East 61st Street in May of 1897. Although Stanford White was in frequent social

contact with Almeric Paget, the scope of work conducted by the firm demanded that

Thomas Wright, a draftsman in the firm, be directly responsible for overseeing the

work on the house. George Glaezner, who worked both for McKim, Mead and White

and independently as an architect and interior designer, worked on portions of the

renovation, including the installation of woodwork and the selection of furnishings

22 Stanford White to Colonel Oliver Payne. May 17, 1897. Stanford White correspondence copies, vol. 18, p. 199A. Avery Architectural Library, Columbia University.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. for use on the project from. Stanford White’s warehouse. White, in a letter to Paget,

mentions that Glaezner is “very anxious to have some money on account of the work

[he is] doing. I should advise, therefore, that you send me a check for . . . $1500 on

Glaezner’s [account.]” 24

The architectural plans and correspondence files for McKim, Mead, and

White’s alterations to the house do not survive in the firm’s archives at the New York

Historical Society nor in Stanford White’s personal papers at Columbia University.

Consequently, the limited documentation in Edith Blake Brown’s archive on their

work at 11 East 61st Street is the only surviving record of this commission. The most

complex alteration implemented by McKim, Mead and White was a new, ovoid

stairwell. The firm made other more minor alterations to the plan, designed new

wainscotting for a number of rooms, and installed a number of imported mantlepieces

including the monumental European mantle at the landing on the second floor.

George Glaezner, the architect and interior designer, installed new paneling in the

front entrance hall, although it is unclear whether this paneling was designed by

Glaezner or by White.

George Glaezner appears to have coordinated the interior redecoration efforts

from January until April o f 1897. By the middle of April in 1897, Edith Blake Brown

had assumed most of Glaezner’s responsibilities toward the project. Brown began

23 Stanford White to Almeric Paget. December 22, 1897. Stanford W hite correspondence copies, vol. 19, pp. 223 and 268. Avery Architectural Library, Columbia University. 24 G. A. Glaezner and Company to McKim, Mead, and White, April 5, 1897. Thomas Wright to Edith Blake Brown, June 24, 1897. Stanford White to Almeric Paget, August 21, 1897. EBB papers.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. work on the interior decoration at about the time that McKim, Mead and White’s

craftsmen were completing the majority of their work at 11 East 61st Street, which

may explain the transfer of control from Glaezner to Brown.

Edith Blake Brown dealt directly with decorating firms, upholstery and textile

retailers, painters, wall paper hangers, furniture manufacturers, and lighting retailers

to transform the shell created by Stanford White into a home at the height of elegance

in late nineteenth-century New York. It is to Brown’s efforts on the project that we

now turn.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Chapter 3

EDITH BLAKE BROWN, INTERIOR DESIGNER AT 11 EAST 61st STREET

Edith Blake Brown’s archive provides the careful observer with an

unprecedented reconstruction of the process of redecorating a New York townhouse

in the last years of the nineteenth century. The correspondence from architects,

interior decorators, upholsterers, painters, and. furniture manufacturers constitutes the

bulk of documentation on this process. Edith Blake Brown appears to have carefully

preserved the letters sent to her. Sadly, her responses do not survive. It seems likely

that she recorded these responses in a correspondence book that was not retained with

the rest of the collection. Nevertheless, we can intimate some of her responses from

the correspondence itself and from her aforementioned article in The House Beautiful.

Brown’s ideas are clearly revealed in the choice of objects, particularly the

furnishings, purchased for the Paget house. In terms of specific styles appropriate for

a home, Brown stressed that above all, the function of furniture should be truthful to

its materials. For example, “early Gothic, Henry II, and peasant furniture” were

constructed in a “severe style” whose construction was “direct and absolutely

simple.”1 These styles of furniture did not attempt to visually deceive in the way that

furnishings such as John Henry Belter’s elaborately carved laminated rosewood

1 Edith Blake Brown. “Beauty in the Home,” in The House Beautiful, vol. IV, no.2 (July 1898): 40.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. chairs of a generation earlier had done. Furniture in these “severe styles” was

“truthful”, if a bit clumsy. Brown offered furniture in the Louis XVI and Colonial

styles as an elegant compromise. Furniture constructed in these styles obeyed her

rules of design, while incorporating curved lines and surface ornamentation to

successfully augment the “directness” of the furniture’s construction.

Brown and her contemporaries believed in the appropriateness of

incorporating French styles and furniture into American interiors. Louis Napoleon’s

wife, Empress Eugenie’s admiration for Marie Antoinette popularized the

reintroduction of eighteenth-century French styles m nineteenth-century Europe.

Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, styles reviving the royal French

courts of Louis XIV, Louis XV, and Louis XVI emerged and faded in the United

States, only to return again a decade later in largely the same form.

Edith Blake Brown believed that the French styles were appropriate and

beautiful in American homes and she incorporated French styles in the decoration of

the Paget’s house. All of the window drapery and portieres in the house were based

on French design sources like Guilmard and Foussier. Much of the furniture chosen

by Brown and Pauline Paget for the house corresponded to one of the French revival

styles, most frequently the Louis XVI style. The furniture chosen for the drawing

room was a suite of eighteenth-century French tapestry furniture imported by Joseph

Duveen, the most prominent antiques dealer in New York for nearly fifty years/

Samuel Domsife. “Nineteenth Century Window Hangings” in Winterthur Portfolio vol. 10 (1975):69-99. 3 Duveen maintained galleries in New York, Paris and London. S.N. Behrman. Duveen. New York: Random House, 1952: 3.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Manufacturers and designers like Schultze, Dowling and Butler; Frank Bowles,

Emest Hagen, J. Mensusan, and William Baumgarten provided nineteenth century

furniture constructed in French revival styles to furnish the rest of the house. Many

of the wall papers chosen for the house were imported from France by Schultze,

Dowling and Butler and Joseph P. McHugh. Although Edith Blake Brown furnished

several of the secondary bedrooms in the house in other styles, most notably the

“Dresden” bedroom on the fifth floor, the house was dominated by French motifs,

fabrics, objet d’art, wall paper and furniture, in keeping with the fashionable interiors

of the Pagets’ New York contemporaries.

The use of oriental rugs was one of the few decorating trends that remained

popular from the end of the eighteenth century through the late nineteenth century.

W. & J. Sloane, the foremost late nineteenth century New York rug dealer, provided

and installed all of the rugs and carpets in the Paget house. Brown praised the use of

oriental mgs and ridiculed the introduction of floral bouquet-patterned mgs in her

House Beautiful essay. Brown was undoubtedly speaking of the revolution in aniline

dyes and carpet manufacturing in the last quarter of the nineteenth century when she

emphasized that “in carpets all patterns of shaded flowers and scrolls are bad. The

shaded parts looked raised, as if you might stub your toe against then, and the scrolls

look as if they were in constant motion.”4 Rugs such as Brown described were to be

found in abundance in the Sears, Roebuck & Company and Montgomery Ward

catalogues of the late nineteenth century.

4 Brown. “Beauty in the Home”: 41.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The Pagets selected rugs and carpets from W. & J. Sloane showrooms on

Broadway between 18th and 19th streets in August of 1897. They were installed at the

end of the renovation process, at the beginning of October.5 W. & J. Sloane

advertised as purveyors of “Artistic Carpeting and Upholstery Goods, Ancient and

Modem Oriental Rugs” throughout the 1880s and 1890s.6 A year after filling the

Pagets’ mg and carpet order, the trade journals speculated on the firm’s expansion

into furnishings as well as mgs and upholstery, reporting that it was “vaguely

rumored that W. & J. Sloane are about to add a large line of furniture... .[devoting]

the whole of the annex to this branch of the business.”7 W. & J. Sloane did indeed

add furniture and decorating departments to their business. In 1899, they pub fished a

short, but profusely illustrated pamphlet entitled Interior Decoration to highlight their

new venture. The introduction to this promotional brochure stated that,

The establishment of W. & J. Sloane has for over half a century furnished the varied materials that adorn the most beautiful homes in New York and elsewhere. During thieir business career an increasing demand has been made upon them to suggest fittings that would be approriate for varied schemes of decoration and cooperate in attaining an artistic and harmonious anangement of what is selected. Services of this kind have become so marked a feature of their business that the Messrs. Sloane have found it necessary to inaugurate a special department fully equipped to relieve patrons of the details incident to any decorative work, whether of a single room or an entire house.8

In order to compete with the interior decorating houses emerging in the last decades

of the nineteenth century, this New York firm, synonymous with mgs for the previous

twenty-five years, expanded their showrooms to include the sale of furniture and

5 W J. Sloane to Edith Blake Brown. August 3 and October 1, 1897. EBB papers. 6 Phillips' Elite Directory. New York, 1886: front cover. 7 “Sloane Furniture Rumor,” The Upholsterer, vol. 20, no. 3 (September 1898): 10.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. furnishings as well as the services of interior decorators who could help coordinate

these goods for affluent customers.

The firm of Schultze, Dowling and Butler, Interior Decorators and Furnishers

was undoubtedly one of the competitors who encouraged Sloane to expand their

offerings. Schultze, Dowling and Butler, which maintained an office at 431 Fifth

Avenue near 39th Street, earned the contract for most of the interior decorative work

on the Paget house. This short-lived and presently undocumented firm combined the

talents of William L. Schultze, Frank N. Dowling, and Thomas J. Butler to provide

upholstery, drapery, wall paper, and paint for at least several high-profile clients

including Almeric and Pauline Paget and her father, William C. Whitney.9

In 1896 and 1897, Schultze, Dowling and Butler listed themselves in the New

York business directories as artistic decorators. In 1898, they expanded their market,

advertising in both the furniture and artistic decorator sections of the directory. By

1899, they had added an advertisement to the upholstery department as well. By

1904, Schultze and Butler had left the firm, though it retained its original name. W.

L. Schultze and his brother, C. Augustus Schultze formed W. Ludwig Schultze

Company, their own decorating firm in 1908 and remained in business for the next

decade.10 Estimates and bills in Edith Blake Brown’s files indicate that Schultze,

Dowling and Butler were responsible for the installation of all forms of upholstery

8 W. & J. Sloane. Interior Decoration. New York: W. & J. Sloane, 1899: 1. 9 Trow's General Directory. New York, 1898. Schultze, Dowling and Butler’s work for William C. Whitney is recorded in the McKim, Mead and White billbook #6 (August 5, 1896-June 17, 1897) at the Department of Prints and Photographs, New York Historical Society. 10 Trow's Copartnership and Corporation Directory, New York, 1908: 546.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and drapery at the Paget house and the majority of the papering and painting of the

walls, but they also provided some furniture for the dining room, Mrs. Paget’s

bedroom, and two of the guest chambers.

Several other interior design firms and manufacturers were responsible for

specific aspects of the interior. William Baumgarten and Company, a New York firm

specializing in “Interior Decoration, Furniture, and Draperies, Etc.” focused their

professional eye on the dining room of the house, providing furniture and painting the

room’s decorative ceiling.11 Ernest Hagen, a New York cabinetmaker, designed and

built furniture for one of the guest rooms. 19 Joseph P. McHugh, an importer of

wallpaper, fabrics, furniture, carpeting and pottery installed the wallpaper in Mr.

Paget’s bedroom.13

Schultze, Dowling and Butler submitted all of their estimates for work on the

Paget house directly to Edith Blake Brown. On many of these estimates, Brown

penciled notes about changes she wished to make in the estimates, items she wanted

to cancel, and items which met with her approval. Their earlier estimates dealt solely

with the textiles to be used in the redecoration. The window draperies, portieres, and

bedhangings constituted the renovation’s largest expense for which Brown was

responsible. Following Brown’s approval of a series of amendments to this estimate,

Schultze, Dowling, and Butler turned their attention to the wall paper and painting of

the walls and ceiling in the house. These estimates went through a similar series of

11 William Baumgarten to Edith Blake Brown, May 12, 1897 and June 4, 1897. EBB papers. 2 Ernest Hagen to Edith Blake Brown. May 25, 1897. EBB papers. 13 Frank Dowling to Edith Blake Brown. August 16, 1897. EBB papers.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. amendments before Brown finally approved the work. Brown assumed the majority,

if not exclusive responsibility for the acquisition of furniture for the house. Stanford

White and Brown worked together on the purchase of the drawing room furniture.

Brown approved all of the furniture acquired from Schultze, Dowling and Butler,

Ernest Hagen, J. Bensusan, Frank Bowles, and William Baumgarten. Stanford

White’s correspondence with H. O. Watson, an antiques dealer in New York indicates

that White supplemented the furniture ordered by Brown for the Pagets’ house.

White purchased a Portuguese table from Watson for the Pagets’ house in May of

1897.14

During the eighteenth century, husbands rather than wives chose furniture and

fabrics for their homes. Benjamin Franklin, while in Paris, chose a wide array of

furniture, textiles, and wall papers for his house on Mulberry Street in Philadelphia.

In each letter from Paris, Franklin outlined for which room each item had been

chosen. Men conducted these transactions for several reasons: most men continued to

operate at least part of their business transactions from the home, but perhaps more

importantly, the workshops in which furniture was constructed were inappropriate

places for most women to visit.

By the nineteenth century, manufacturers offered their wares for sale in

showrooms. These showrooms were deemed more appropriate than the warehouses

and workrooms where goods had previously been ordered. Although female clients

were welcome in these showrooms, many affluent buyers like Pauline Paget were

14 Stanford 'White to H. O. Watson. May 12, 1897. Stanford White correspondence files, vol 18, p. 172. Avery Architectural Library, Columbia University.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. willing to let their interior decorators troll the showrooms and warehouses for

samples. Edith Blake Brown’s records indicate that she, and not Pauline Paget,

visited the warehouses and show rooms of many of the retailers involved with the

Pagets’ redecoration efforts. Pauline Paget remained at home, approving fabric and

paper samples and photographs of furniture sent or brought to her residence. It may

have been appropriate for Brown, a professional designer, to view objects in the

shops, whereas Pauline Paget’s social position, and perhaps her ailing health

prevented her from making these outings.

There is little doubt that Brown held the ear of her clients more fully than

other members of the renovation project, including even Stanford White. Edith Blake

Brown’s authority over the Paget house renovation efforts is perhaps most clearly

revealed through a letter from Brown to Frank Dowling during the middle of June,

1897. Dowling writes, “when looking through the house this morning, the young

man in charge for Mr. White [Thomas Wright] questioned me concerning what we

have ordered. I told him that I did not care to speak without Mrs. Paget’s consent.

He said he would write asking Mrs. Paget to furnish him with a copy of our order. I

thought it best to write and inform you of it.”15

Mrs. Paget was ultimately in charge of her own home’s renovation, but she

sought Brown’s advice on all decisions related to the redecoration and she placed

Brown in control of the orchestration of the plans and daily activity in the house

while in New York. Brown resided with the Pagets in New York and in Salem,

15 Frank Dowling to Edith Blake Brown. June 21, 1897. EBB papers.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Massachusetts during the renovation, consulting with Pauline Paget on aspects of the

design.

In response to the constant fluctuation o f fashion in interior design, Brown

recommended in her House Beautiful article that the scale and pattern of furniture and

wall hangings should relate to the room, not what was presently in style: ‘Tor small

rooms one should select small, inconspicuous patterns.” She cautioned that a room

should always have “some plain or nearly plain spot to rest the eye on. This principle

is invariable, irrespective of fashion.”

Brown’s comments on the use of color were similarly general: “the larger the

surface the more subdued should be the color.” She subtly derided the newer aniline

dyes for their entirely unnatural and uniform brightness. The design books written

“about the time of our Centennial in the dark ages of house-furnishing in our country”

emphasized the use of complementary colors together, a decorating style opposed by

Brown. Instead, “one predominating color” should be chosen for each room and all

of the other colors used in the room should relate to it. Brown noted that if pink was

used in a blue-dominated room, “the pink would have to be crimson or rose to

harmonize with the blues, united to them by the common possession of blue.”

Brown continued her comments on color by emphasizing the impact of a

room’s location in the house on its color palette. A sunny, southern room could be

painted a cool, light blue, whereas a “cheerless” room that faces north could be made

“more cheerful by choosing yellows or buffs or reds.” In an unusual example of early

Colonial Revival design aesthetic, Brown stated that the contemporary belief that “in

the white paneled drawing-rooms of the colonial houses the white wasn’t white as our

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ancestors danced the minuet by the soft flickering candle light, but a warm,

mysterious gray.” She believed that white walls in a room with strong light should be

“toned either pearly gray or cream.”16 Many of the walls in servants’ rooms of the

Paget house were painted white, but die walls and ceiling of the fifth floor large guest

room were to be cleaned off and tinted soft gray. The walls of the passageway on the

fifth floor were also painted gray. I *7

Brown concluded her House Beautiful article with short discussions of

decoration appropriate for each room in a house. Her descriptions replicate a

procession through a hypothetical home, a home that could easily represent the Paget

townhouse whose renovation and redecoration Brown had so recently completed.

As soon as guests arrive at a well-decorated home, they should “perceive the

character of cordiality and hospitality” of the house. According to Brown, a cold

reception hall implied that guests were unwelcome or infrequent. She recommended

“rugs, a table for the hat or coat of a guest, a tray for cards, and a place for umbrellas

and canes.” 1 £ Schultze, Dowling and Butler’s estimates indicate that the window was

hung with a pair of mauve damask curtains, interlined and lined with silk tamative

and trimmed with French gimp.”19 Unlike the damask curtains in Mrs. Paget’s

bedroom which were hung on gilt poles, the reception room curtain was hung on a

silvered poll. Presumably silver was deemed more appropriate with the mauve

16 Brown. “Beauty in the Home,”: 42- 44. 17 Schultze, Dowling and Butler. “Estimate of Painting, Tinting, Etc, Required at Residence of A.H.Paget, Esq.” June 5, 1897: 2. EBB papers. 18 Brown. “Beauty in the Home,”: 45. 19 Schultze, Dowling and Butler. “Estimate of Painting, Tinting, Etc, Required at Residence of A.H.Paget.” May 17, 1897. EBB papers.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. damask. A matching portiere hung in the doorway between the entrance hall and the

reception room. The reception room’s window was also hung with Arabian lace

curtains which unified all of the public rooms in the house. Schultze, Dowling and

Butler lined and hung the walls of the reception room with an imported French mauve

striped damask paper “to be made in deeper colouring to match Curtain material.”20

The floor of the reception room had harwood floors and would most likely have been

covered with oriental mgs, as Brown suggested in her article.21 Brown ordered two

Louis XVI side chairs with white enamel finish and upholstered seats, costing $27.50

each as well as a three-quarter bed from Schultze, Dowling and Butler for the

reception room.22 The entry hall of 11 East 61st Street today differs considerably

from its appearance after the Paget renovation. George A. Glaezner installed

woodwork throughout the entrance hall and the reception room. These

modifications were entirely removed at some point between 1897 and 1946, by which

time the marble panels covering the walls and marble staircase had been installed.24

Invited guests to the Paget house were probably encouraged to ascend the

staircase from the reception room to the second story. The large hall at the top of the

20 Schultze, Dowling and Butler. “Estimate of Interior Decorative Papering and Curtain Work at Residence of A.H.Paget, Esq.” June 5, 1897. EBB papers. 21 Thomas Wight of McKim, Mead and White to Mrs. Almeric H. Paget. May 22, 1897. EBB papers. 22 F. Dowling to Edith Blake Brown. June 1, 1897. EBB papers. 23 This is the only specific reference to Glaezner’s work on the house in Edith Blake Brown’s papers. He was paid at least $1500 for work completed, which may have included other work with which Brown was not involved, most notably, the coordination of the interior decoration prior to Brown’s involvement with the project. Stanford White to Almeric Paget, August 21, 1897. EBB papers; Thomas Wright of McKim, Mead and White to Edith Blake Brown, June 24, 1897. EBB papers.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. stairs, which led to either the drawing room at the front of the house or the dining

room at the back, was dominated by a ten foot high mantel imported from Europe.

Stanford White often purchased artwork and architectural details for clients on his

frequent trips to Europe. This mantel was acquired by White in Europe for Colonel

Payne and the Pagets to dominate this prominent position of the main public floor of

the house, hi addition to the imposing fireplace mantel, the hall was ornamented with

a tapestry installed by Schultze, Dowling and Butler.25 This space functioned

primarily as a swing-space between either the dining room or the drawing room.

The large drawing room, with three full-length windows looking out onto 61st

Street, was the main public setting in the house. In her article, Brown offered advice

on the specific arrangement of furniture in the drawing room or parlor. She

acknowledged that not all houses contained such as space, but that “if there be such a

room in the house, [it] should be used as a room for social gatherings and receiving

guests. It should have its furniture arranged in a number of little groups.”26 A sofa

next to the fireplace with a chair and a small table next to it formed the basis for one

of these groupings. Another grouping of chairs should be arranged by the window.

Brown discouraged the use of “lounging chairs” in the parlor because they

encouraged posture inappropriate for a drawing room. Brown did not offer any

specific suggestions on the appropriate color scheme of a drawing room in her essay.

The surviving correspondence on the renovation contains surprisingly little

24 Plans for 11 East 61st Street. Elmer E. Ward, draughtsman. December 18, 1946. Department of Buildings and Grounds, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York. 25 Schultze, Dowling, and Butler to Edith Blake Brown. October 6, 1897. EBB papers.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. information about this prominent room, which may indicate that Brown was not given

the primary responsibility for renovating this space. White may have extended his

more prestigious talents and name to the redecoration of this space. The largest group

of correspondence between White and the Pagets supports this assertion, as it

addressed the purchase of furniture for the drawing room.

The windows of the drawing room were graced with the most expensive

curtains in the house. Stanford White selected old rose velour from William

Baumgarten for the parlor curtains. This suggestion appears to have ultimately been

rejected in favor of pink and silver brocade curtains and portieres lined with silk and

trimmed with French gimp and a French “heading finish at the top of the curtain”

(possibly a lambrequin). Schultze, Dowling and Butler also provided Arabian lace

curtains which would have hung closer to the window than the more ornate velour

curtains. These Arabian lace curtains, which were installed in many of the public

rooms in the house, were ornamented not only with borders and fleur de lis

decoration but also with single panel medallions. The purchase and installation of

these lace curtains in the drawing room, as well as four other rooms in the house cost

an astounding $875.27

The drawing room contained panels of composed of woodwork trim. Stanford

White suggested that these panels be hung with alternating tapestries and white fabric

or painted wood. He argued in a letter to Almeric Paget that the use of white panels

of an unknown material would be a “simple and inexpensive way” of ornamenting the

26 Brown. “Beauty in the Home,”: 45.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. room. He discouraged the use of another, more elaborate material because “the

conflict between any stuff which you should put in and the tapestry would be

9R , t # unpleasant.” Ultimately, Edith Blake Brown did not implement White’s suggestion.

Whether Pauline Paget or Brown chose to override 'White’s decision is unclear, but

Brown approved Schultze, Dowling and Butler’s installation of “pink moire, edged

with pink and silver galoon to match moire,” on the wall panels in the drawing room,

with• the exception of the “large panel where the tapestry was hung.” 9Q

Stanford White focused most of his attention in the Paget renovation on the

choice of furniture for the drawing room. As the drawing room was the most formal

and important space within a late-nineteenth century American home, his opinion

would certainly have carried weight with his clients and may well have superceded

Brown’s suggestions. The comparative dearth of surviving information on the

drawing room is frustrating for efforts to reconstruct the interior from the

documentation, but it implies that Brown relinquished some of her design authority

for this space to Stanford White. White negotiated the exchange of unwanted

drawing room furniture acquired for Paget from Sypher and Company by Joseph

Duveen. Duveen was the foremost English dealer in antique furniture and accessories

in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, maintaining warehouses and

showrooms in London, Paris, and New York. Duveen agreed to purchase a suite of

furniture that the Pagets did not want if they purchased a “sofa and six tapestry chairs

27 Schultze, Dowling and Butler. “Estimate” May 28, 1897 and June 4, 1897. EBB papers. 8 Stanford White to Almeric Paget. May 18, 1897. EBB papers.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. for $6850, two tapestry bergeres for $1350, [and] three small tapestry chairs for

$625.”30 The Pagets considered purchasing a set of tapestry furniture from Lydia

Chandler Head in Brookline, Massachusetts. Miss Head believed that her set of

furniture was covered in Beaurais tapestry “from Honet’s cartoons,” who she

reminded the Pagets, “was a pupil of Watteau and designed for Beaurais Tapestry.”31

Many of the pieces of tapestry furniture available at high prices were apparently

valued for their age and association to Beaurais, regardless of their aesthetic value;

Miss Head reminded the Pagets that the value of her furniture was “much increased

by the fact that the designs themselves are interesting and pleasing as well as old.”32

Stanford White acknowledged the beauty of the Brookline furniture, while asserting

that “their condition is not good and the frames are poor in workmanship.”33 He

recommended instead the purchase o f a portion of the furniture Duveen offered,

including a mantelpiece for $1800, which is most likely the large mantel that remains

in the second story hallway to this day.

Edith Blake Brown appears to have lavished the majority of her efforts in the

Paget house on the dining room and Mrs. Paget’s bedroom. Brown argued in her

article that a dining table and a sideboard should provide the primary decoration for a

dining room. An ornamental and functional serving table and cupboard for dishes

were also appropriate. For the color scheme of a dining room, Brown insisted that

29 Schultze, Dowling and Butler. “Estimate” May 28, 1897 and September 18, 1897. EBB papers. 30 Stanford White to Almeric Paget. March 2, 1897. EBB papers. 31 Lydia Chandler Head to Mrs. Almeric Paget. May 22, [1897]. EBB papers. 32 ibid. 33 Stanford White to Almeric Paget. March 2, 1897. EBB papers.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. “as a rule, colors of medium depth are more effective than pale colors . . . as they

make better backgrounds for the table and the ladies’ dresses.”34 The dining room at

11 East 61st Street is presently entirely paneled, but during the Paget’s redecoration,

McKim, Mead and White installed two-foot, ten-inch high wainscoting in the room.

The mantel for the room was carved to designs provided by the firm.35

According to a letter from Dowling to Brown, Schultze prepared designs for

furniture and treatments for the windows in the dining room in early June of 1897.

The firm submitted an estimate for dining room furniture to Mrs. Paget on June 1st,

including a “buffet of French Walnut richly carved and finised in dull wax finish ... a

circular extension table to match ... 12 side chairs as per rough sketch to match

original Arm chairs.” The walnut buffet measured over nine feet long and was

offered at S550. The circular extension table measured five feet in diameter without

its leaves, but expanded to twelve feet long and could seat eighteen people. The table

and its leaves cost $340.36

A letter from Thomas Wright, the Paget house project director at McKim,

Mead and White indicated that the Pagets did not limit their commissions for

furniture design to the firm of Schultze, Dowling and Butler. The Pagets appear to

have purchased the extension table from Schultze, Dowling and Butler, but declined

the walnut buffet they offered. The Pagets hired William Baumgarten to repair a

variety of furniture Pauline Paget had inherited, including two sideboards, which they

34 Brown. “Beauty in the Home,”: 46. 35 Thomas Wright to Edith Blake Brown, June 12, 1897. EBB papers. 26 Schultze, Dowling and Butler. “Estimate of Dining Room Furniture for Mrs. A. H. Paget” June 1, 1897. EBB papers.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. altered for use in the dining room. The firm submitted “a new sketch for the two

side tables of Dining room, elaborated as suggested. The price of these tables will

now be $350 each, including black marble tops” rather than the walnut buffet from

Schultze, Dowling and Butler. Two weeks later, Wright inquired of Brown

whether Mr. Paget had “approved Baumgarten’s design for sideboard.”39 William

Baumgarten confirmed to Brown that Mr. Paget had ordered two sideboards from

him. Several months later, the work was apparently not yet completed. Stanford

White discussed these sideboards in a letter dated January 3, 1897 to Almeric Paget.

“The amount ($375 per sideboard) seems a large sum but the sideboards have to be

taken apart, pieced out, the marble cut and the entire upper work added ... I send you

the design, which be kind enough to return to me.”40

The majority of the fiimishings for the house were inherited, rather than

purchased. For use in the house, the Pagets repaired, reupholstered, and altered

furniture from Colonel Payne’s collection and from Pauline Paget’s inheritance from

her mother. A letter from George Glaezner to McKim, Mead and White dated April

5, 1897, before much of the decorating decisions had been made, indicated that a

large quantity of furniture from the family (largely in disrepair) was available for use

in the redecoration efforts at 11 East 61st Street. Glaezner indicated that “the majority

of the chairs, sofas, etc. are in a condition that would hardly be fit to put into

immediate use and beg to call your attention to this fact. The tapestry especially

37 William Baumgarten to Edith Blake Brown. June 3, 1897. EBB papers. 38 William Baumgarten to Mrs. Almeric H. Paget. June 4, 1897. EBB papers. 39 Thomas Wright to Edith Blake Brown. June 17, 1897. EBB papers.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ought to be taken off the furniture and given to Jolly or any other reliable concern to

be thoroughly cleansed. The majority of the frames need overhauling and probably

the upholstery is without any value. The pieces we have leit in the building are those

that will not be damaged by dust such as old gilding and several pieces of furniture

that will anyhow have to be entirely revamished before they could be serviceable.”41

The use of this older furniture may explain why Brown’s records do not indicate the

extensive purchase of furniture for the Pagets’ new home. The sideboards for the

dining room are a well-documented example of how the Pargets’ adapted older

furniture for the reinstallation.

The dining room at the Paget house was originally intended to be furnished in

green velour chosen by Stanford White. William Baumgarten and Company provided

samples of the green velour for the dining room and an old rose velour for the parlor,

both of which had been chosen by White, to Mrs. Paget in the early stages of the

redecoration project42 White participated in the early stages of the project, but he

appears to have relinquished most of his responsibility for tie interior decoration to

Edith Blake Brown by May of 1897. In a letter to Almeric IPaget, Stanford White

revealed his efforts toward the process of coordinating a room ’s decorating scheme.

After outlining his own limited responsibilities, White insisted that Paget decide on

40 Stanford White to Almeric Paget. January 3, 1897. Stanford White correspondence copybook, vol. 19, p.269. Avery Architectual Library, Columbia University. 41 George A. Glaezner to McKim, Mead and White. April 5, 1897. EBB papers. 42 William Baumgarten to Mrs. Almeric Paget. May 12, 1897. EBB papers.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the material for the dining room curtains, the parlor curtains, and the curtains in Mr.

Paget’s bedroom before anything else in those rooms was ordered.43

The color scheme of the rooms in the Pagets’ house was apparently based on

the color of the curtains. This emphasis on window drapery seems logical

considering that the curtains were often the most expensive component of any room

decoration in late-nineteenth century interiors.

The green color scheme proposed by Stanford White for the dining room was

apparently abandoned for red fabrics supplied by Schultze, Dowling and Butler.

Green and red were the most popular colors for dining room decoration in the latter

half of the nineteenth century. An article on “Color Harmony in House Decoration”

suggested that “Dining-rooms should be rich in coloring and not too dull. They

should always be suggestive of richness and bountiful provision of the prime

necessities of like and sufficiently cheerful to have a stimulating effect on any who

may approach the dining table with appetites impaired by worry or anxiety.”44 Edith

Blake Brown ordered Louis XIV red velour window hangings lined and interlined

with satine and enriched with metal applique work. Both the curtains and the

lambrequins on top of them were edged with fringe. This window treatment was

installed on the bank of five windows on the west wall of the dining room for $335.4:>

The dining room, like the majority of formal rooms in the house was also fitted with

43 Stanford White to Almeric Paget. May 17, 1897. EBB papers. 44 “Color Harmony in House Decoration,” in The Upholsterer, vol.20 (July 1898): 15. 45 Schultze, Dowling and Butler. “Estimates for Curtain Work at Residence of A.H. Paget, Esq.” June 2, 1897. EBB papers.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Arabian lace sash curtains.46 The walls were lined with fabric panels in “plain red

velour to match curtains trimmed of course with broad gilt gimp.”47 Two inherited

chairs, which Schultze, Dowling and Butler used as a model for the twelve side

chairs, had been originally upholstered in red velvet and may have contributed to the

decision to decorate the room in red.48

Black and Boyd, the prom inent gas and electric lighting fixtures firm solicited

business from Edith Blake Brown at the suggestion of Frank Dowling, announcing

that they had already completed work for Pauline Paget’s father and brother. It is

worthwhile to note that this solicitation was directed to Edith Blake Brown, rather

than the Pagets or Stanford White. Edward Gray of Black and Boyd submitted a

design to Brown for a “chandelier and brackets required for the Dining Room of Mr.

A.H. Paget’s residence” on July 30, 1897, two weeks after his initial inquiry. The

design of the gilt chandelier featured “crimson hand bent glass panels and silk fringe

which match the hangings in this room.” The chandelier cost $325, while the

accompanying eight brackets for the room cost $50 each.”49

The Paget’s library, on the third story at the front of the house, followed

Brown’s published recommendations for installing “bookshelves all around the wall,

but not so high that one cannot reach the top shelf easily.” She also recommended

furnishing the room with “a big table for writing and for papers, magazines and books

46 Schultze, Dowling and Butler. “Amended Estimate for Sash Curtains, at Residence of A.H.Paget, Esq.” June 2, 1897. EBB papers. 47 Schultze, Dowling and Butler to Edith Blake Brown. August 19, 1897. EBB papers. 48 George A. Glaezner to A. Debuysscher [houseman at 11 East 61st Street] March 3, 1897. EBB papers.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. that are in use; a small table that can easily be moved to a window. Comfortable

chairs and an open fire, and above all, plenty of light.”50 Brown’s notes reveal little

about the ornamentation and furnishing of the library other than that long curtains

were installed in the room.51 The walls are still lined with built-in bookcases and a

mantel that was probably installed by McKim, Mead and White.

Almeric Paget’s study, immediately off the main hall opposite the library,

presently contains an elaborate comice with muted detail due to successive

repainting. This cornice may survive from before the Pagets’ redecoration. Schultze,

Dowling and Butler’s painting estimates include touching up the “metal work of

comice” in Almeric Paget’s study.52 Schultze, Dowling and Butler also hung the wall

of the study with Japanesque wallpaper.53

The Pagets’ suite of bedrooms was located on the fourth floor of the house.

Recent changes to the plan of this floor have obscured the original configuration of

rooms, but a comparison of the 1944 floor plans and the information on the suite in

Brown’s papers indicate that Pauline Paget claimed the room facing the street for

herself. This room had doors to the main hallway as well as a door to her bath and

dressing room, which included a secondary hall to Almeric Paget’s bedroom at the

back of the house.

49 Edward F. Gray of Black & Boyd Manufacturing Company to Edith Blake Brown. July 30, 1897. EBB files. so Brown. “Beauty in the Home,”: 46. 51 Frank Dowling to Edith Blake Brown. September 18, 1897. EBB papers. 52 Schultze, Dowling and Butler. “Estimates of Painting, Tinting, Etc. Required at Residence of A.H. Paget. June 5, 1897. EBB papers. 53 Schultze, Dowling and Butler. “Estimate of Interior Decorative Papering and Curtain Work at Residence of A.H. Paget.” May 17,1897. EBB papers.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Brown argued in her article that “two characteristics of a bedroom should be

freshness and restfulness .. . the bed should be so placed that one can have air

without a draft, and the dressing table where the light will fall on the person dressing.

A soft rug and a little table with a few books beside the bed, a low easy chair; a light,

straight chair before the dressing table, and a chest of drawers.”54 Brown’s papers

offer numerous glimpses into the transformation of Mrs. Paget’s bedroom. Schultze,

Dowling and Butler lined and covered the walls of Pauline Paget’s bedroom with

French blue damask paper. The three windows facing 61st Street were hung with long

curtains of Louis XVI blue damask fabric, interlined and lined with old pink tamative.

The doors to the dressing room and the hall were also to be draped with similar

portieres.55 This color scheme was a popular choice in contemporary design sources,

particularly for furnishings in the Louis XVI style.56 Brown approved the order of a

“Louis XVI Bedstead finished in Antique Enamel, and Gold to match own furniture.”

Schultze, Dowling and Butler offered sketches of two designs for a dressing table of

which Brown ordered the less expensive $190 version. The firm provided a blue

damask bed drapery lined with pink silk and a drapery for the dressing table to match

the bed’s hangings.”57 The original design for the dressing table drapery was altered

the following week to incorporate blue silk brocade, rather than the damask used on

54 Brown. “Beauty in the Home,”: 46. 55 Schultze, Dowling and Butler. ‘Estimate of Interior Decorative Papering and Curtain Work at Residence of A.H. Paget, Esq. East 61 Street, City” May 17, 1897. EBB papers. 56 Desire Guilmard. Le Garde Meubles Ancien et Modeme Collection de Tentures, [Paris], (nd). 57 Schultze, Dowling and Butler. “Estimates for Furniture and Hangings of Mrs. Paget’s Own Room.” May 22, 1897. EBB papers.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the curtains and the bed hangings. The drapery was most likely hung above the table

on gilded holders included in the Schultze, Dowling and Butler estimate.58 They also

designed an oval table and a bed table for the room. Brown also ordered an

“overstuffed Chaiselongue covered in blue damask with fringe” for $120 from

Schultze, Dowling and Butler.

McKim, Mead and White added woodwork paneling to the ceiling in the bay

window of Pauline Paget’s bedroom.59 The paneling in the rest of the room may have

been designed by McKim, Mead and White as well. W.L. Schultze suggested to

Brown that the woodwork in Mrs. Paget’s bedroom be painted a glossy cream-white

to match the yellow paper hung by Schultze, Dowling and Butler in the bedroom.60

Almeric Paget’s bedroom received less of Edith Blake Brown’s attention than

Pauline Paget’s did, but her papers reveal some insights into the redecoration choices

for this room. Joseph P. McHugh, who had written at length about the new breed of

“girl bachelors” in interior design, supplied and installed yellow wallpaper imported

from Paris in Mr. Paget’s bedroom. McHugh’s father Patrick ran a dry goods store in

New York, which by 1875 specialized in oil cloths, carpeting and matting. Joseph

McHugh opened the Popular Shop in a comer of his father’s shop, making and selling

window shades. He opened his own store on Sixth Avenue near 52nd Street in 1880,

offering upholstery and wallpaper for sale and installation. He gradually expanded

58 Schultze, Dowling and Butler. “Estimate for Curtain Work at Residence of A.H.Paget, Esq.” June 2, 1897. EBB papers. 59 Thomas Wright to Edith Blake Brown. June 24, 1897 and July 22, 1897. EBB papers. 60 W.L. Schultze to Edith Blake Brown. July 28, 1897. EBB papers.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. his work to include the design and installation of entire rooms. McHugh is perhaps

best known today for the mission-style furniture he designed and produced.61

Schultze, Dowling and Butler included an estimate for cleaning and touching

up the woodwork in this room on their initial estimate in June. Brown struck this

item from the estimate. In one of the few examples of the firm’s disregard for

Brown’s authority, Frank Dowling decided to paint the woodwork in Almeric Paget’s

bedchamber without Brown’s approval. He justified his actions by stating that he

“found the mahogany woodwork needed refinishing, and rather than spend the money

on it, I ordered it painted white as the room is small and the dark woodwork would

look very badly with the Louis XVI fum. and the delicate paper.”

As in his wife’s bedchamber, Almeric Paget’s bedroom was furnished in the

Louis XVI style. Schultze, Dowling and Butler provided a full-sized bed, a dressing

table, a chiffonier, and a cheval glass, all in the Louis XVI style with a white enamel

finish for Mr. Paget’s room. They also provided a spring mattress, hair mattress, and

two down pillows to keep Paget comfortable.63 These furnishings cost $285,

considerably less than the $845 worth of furniture acquired by Schultze, Dowling and

Butler for Mrs. Paget’s bedroom.

Frank Dowling wrote to Brown that the curtains and portiere had been

installed in Mr. Paget’s room and that they had “one pair left over which you can use

61 Anna Tobin D’Ambrosio. “’The Distinction of Being Different’: Joseph P. McHugh and the American Arts and Crafts Movement,” The Substance o f Style: Perspectives on the American Arts and Crafts Movement. Bert Denker, editor. Winterthur, Delaware: Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, 1996: 144-145. 62 Frank Dowling to Edith Blake Brown. August 16, 1897. EBB papers. 63 Frank Dowling to Edith Blake Brown. May 28, 1897. EBB papers.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. for a bedspread.”64 Perhaps these curtains were recycled from another interior. They

were not listed on Schultze, Dowling and Butler’s estimates for the house, but are

included in the updates they prepared for Brown while she resided in Massachusetts

with the Pagets.

The final room of the house to receive Browns particular attention was the

guest room on the fifth floor, directly above Pauline Paget’s bedchamber. Schultze,

Dowling and Butler lined and hung the walls of this room with ‘Trench embossed

paper in ‘Dresden effect’.”65 The guidelines for the painting of the bedchamber and

closets of this room were specified more than any other room in the house. Brown

demanded four coats of oil color and two coats of gloss, rubbed to enamel finish on

all of the woodwork in this room.66 The walls were papered with “greenish olive

paper” imported from Paris.67 Schultze, Dowling and Butler sold the Pagets a “sett

[of furniture] in Gray enamel [which] seems to be of good style and has about the

same lines as mantel and trim in this room in the gray enamel.”68

Given the attention lavished on the room at the top of the house, it is not

inconceivable that Edith Blake Brown was slated to live in this space. It should be

noted that there is not any concrete evidence to support this assertion, but the

circumstantial evidence surrounding the decoration and installation of furnishings in

this room is worthy of further contemplation. Edith Blake Brown had been living

64 Frank Dowling to Edith Blake Brown. September 18, 1897. EBB papers. 65 Schultze, Dowling and Butler. “Estimate” May 17, 1897. EBB papers. 66 Frank Dowling to Edith Blake Brown. June 5, 1897. EBB papers. 67 Frank Dowling to Edith Blake Brown. August 5, 1897. EBB papers. 68 Frank Dowling to Edith Blake Brown. May 29, 1897. EBB papers.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. with Pauline Paget and her husband for nearly a year, in both New York and in

Massachusetts.

Brown married John Wilkie, a New York attorney, less than two years after

the completion of the project, giving up forever her professional life as an interior

designer. Joseph McHugh, writing about the “girl bachelors” who became interior

designers during the last decade of the nineteenth century, noted that “though the firm

is apt to dissolve after a more or less brief existence, it is not due to lack of business,

but rather to the quick opportunity which seems to offer for the formation of

permanent partnerships under a consolidated firm name.”69 Edith Blake Brown

formed just such a partnership. As Mrs. John Wilkie, she gave birth to two sons, John

Wilkie and Neil Wilkie. Tragically, she died while still young in 1907.70

After residing at 11 East 61st Street for ten years, the Pagets moved to England

and sold the house to Wesley Thome, who subsequently sold it to John Teal Pratt and

his wife Ruth Baker Pratt. The Pratts hired C.P. H. Gilbert to renovate the house for a

second time. Gilbert most likely renovated the first floor, removing the reception

room, sheathing the walls of the new entrance hall with marble, and installing a new

marble staircase from the first floor to the second. Both the 1912 entrance hall and

the staircase survive today. Gilbert also designed the addition of a sixth floor and a

skylight over the stairwell. Elbridge Stratton acquired the house from the Pratts in

1923 and hired Delano and Aldrick to alter the dormers and update some of the

69 Joseph P. McHugh. “Some Pictures of Quaint Things which are sold At the Sign of the “Popular Shop” and a few words about Making the House Beautiful with homely material.” New York: Joseph P. McHugh and Company, 1898: 1.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. interiors. la 1927, Mrs. Charles Shipman Payson, Payne Whitney’s daughter,

purchased the house and leased it to the Soviet consulate. The 29 Club acquired the

house from Payson in 1947. Joseph I. Lubin purchased the house from the 29 Club in

1964 with the intention of giving it to Syracuse University. The University continues

to maintain 11 East 61st Street and 15 East 61st Street, which they acquired in 1966

and renovated in 1981, as the Joseph I. Lubin House, a Syracuse alumni and

conference center in Manhattan. 71

70 Edith Brown Wilkie died on April 24, 1907. Death Records, Borough of Manhattan, New York City, certification #14230. 71 Magaly Olivero. Unpublished history of Joseph I. Lubin. Lubin House file. Syracuse University Archives.

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Joseph I. Lubin House file. Department of Buildings and Grounds, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York.

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