The Evolving Fortunes of the Grand Residence

“ In an even more brilliantly illuminated mansion on Fifth Avenue, New York City, a distinguished company is assembled. Elderly and middle-aged gentlemen, dignified and imposing, with the suggestion of opulence pervading every look and movement; young men, alert and full of vigor, all clad in conventional dress suits and immaculate linen ”

“ The house, which was as large as a good-sized English country mansion, is constructed of timber of the finest quality, beautifully worked, painted and varnished; and with moderate care a mansion of this kind will last, in this climate, a couple of hundred years, which to the American mind is an eternity. There were artists from New York, and the staff of an upholsterer and decorator of great renown from the Empire City were still busily engaged in the place as we went through the rooms. ”

“ We were now within a half block or so of the old-fashioned mansion regarded by this scion of New York's aristocracy as one of the most desirable residences in the city; so motioning to the man who had accompanied me to take his stand in a doorway near by and watch for the signal I would give him in case I wanted Mr. Gryce, I turned to the woman, who was now all in a flutter, and asked her how she proposed to get me into the house without the knowledge of Mr. Blake. ”

“ The more pretentious of the mansions of the nobility and gentry are pretty sure to boast of at least one fine, large, and imposing window, affording ample scope for artistic design, and, whether in the family tracing its pedigree for centuries, or the nouveau riche who began life with a struggle, heraldry and its concomitants seem to be held, more or less, in equal reverence. ”

“ This ought to be the true rule of building for all dwellings, except in the cases of those aristocratic palaces or châteaux where the public character of the owner requires a sacrifice of private convenience to public dignity. Houses that are constructed in accordance with the requirements of those that are to live in them, and that are suited to the exigencies of their ground and situation, are sure to please longer, and to gratify the taste of a greater number of persons, than those which are the mere embodyings of an architect’s portfolio. ”

“ There is no enclosed park; and park palings, lodges, bolts, bars, and locks are unknown. The Duke, in this noble [1003] mansion, rests in the midst of his immense estates, and draws no cordon around him. The roads, right up to the very castle, are open and free to all, and restriction is unknown. For miles in extent, and from every side, the public may wander on foot, or ride or drive, through the estate and up to the very doors, unmolested, and untrammelled by fear of porters, or deterred by appliances of state or ceremony. ”

“ This is, and is to be, a street of palaces and churches throughout its whole extent, always provided that the changeful current of Fashion do not set in some other direction too soon, carrying with it all the millionaires that are yet to arise within the century. In that event, the costly mansions of Fifth Avenue will inevitably become hotels and boarding-houses,—a reverse which so many grandly intended houses of elder New-York have already experienced. ”

“ Wanton destruction is another cause of the disappearance of old mansions. Fashions change even in house-building. Many people prefer new lamps to old ones, though the old ones alone can summon genii and recall the glories of the past, the associations of centuries of family life, and the stories of ancestral prowess. Sometimes fashion decrees the downfall of old houses. Such a fashion raged at the beginning of the last century, when every one wanted a brand-new house built after the Palladian style ”

“ Those occupied by the well-to-do working people, and those which are simply the homes of the poor. The first are immense, but spruce looking structures, and are kept cleaner than the latter, but all suffer from the evils incident to and inseparable from such close packing. Those of the second class are simply dens of vice and misery. In the older quarters of the city, many of the old time residences are now occupied as tenement houses. The old Walton mansion in Pearl street, opposite the vast establishment of Harper & Brothers, was once the most elegant and hospitable mansion in New York. ”

“ Occasionally, in some obscure corner of the city, we come upon a rambling old mansion of quaint, picturesque architecture, once the home of refinement and wealth, where the great ones of the country lived in a state of ease, luxury, and almost feudal splendour. It is occupied now by hosts of coloured folk; swarms of black babies crowd the verandahs or climb and tumble about the steps and passages, while the dilapidated balconies are filled with lines of clothes to dry ”

“ We feel as though we have fallen upon an enchanted land, where time is standing still, and the years have grown grey with watching. Here and there we come upon a large empty mansion,{60} one of the grand dwellings of old colonial days, whence the tenants have been driven by adverse circumstances; it stands staring down upon the street with blank, glassy eyes, perhaps with a rent in its side, and its face bruised and battered, its discoloured, painted skin peeling off, and slowly rotting. People have neither time nor money to rehabilitate these ancient mansions ”

“ And that is how it happened that, an hour later, I was walking over toward Washington Square, just above which, on the Avenue, the old Vantine mansion stood. It was almost the last survival of the old régime; for the tide of business had long since overflowed from the neighbouring streets into the Avenue and swept its fashionable folk far uptown. Tall office and loft buildings had replaced the brownstone houses; only here and there did some old family hold on, like a sullen and desperate rear-guard defying the advancing enemy. ”

“ They recalled the hot morning, when they sauntered over the trodden weed that covered the sickly grass-plots there, and sentimentalized the sweltering paupers who had crept out of the squalid tenements about for a breath of air after a sleepless night. Now the paupers were gone, and where the old mansions that had fallen to their use once stood, there towered aloft and abroad those heights and masses of many-storied brick-work for which architecture has yet no proper form and aesthetics no name. ”

“ You look up and see a mere strip of blue sky, but trailing plants reaching far downward from window-sills, one above the other, light up the gloom with many a patch of vivid green. You venture down some dim passage and come suddenly upon a little court where an old Gothic portal with quaint sculptures, or a Renaissance doorway with armorial bearings carved over the lintel, bears testimony to the grandeur and wealth of those who once lived in the now grimy, dilapidated, poverty-stricken mansion. Pretentious dwellings of bygone days have long since been abandoned to the humble. ”

“ An expensive house requires a corresponding expense to maintain it, otherwise its effect is lost, and many a worthy owner of a costly mansion has been driven to sell and abandon his estate altogether, from his unwillingness or inability to support "the establishment" which it entailed; when, if the dwelling were only such as the estate required and could reasonably maintain, a contented and happy home would have remained to himself and family. ”

“ The gardens of the once stately mansion are gone to decay, or else, being overgrown with grass, are fed upon by cattle; the windows were broken by the fierceness of the flames when it was set on fire; and though strong walls, still standing, tell of what has been, not a trace remains of the great oriel window, and the roof has long been gone. He who wishes to trace the former extent of the building may just discover the foundations in some parts; but in others, not even a few scattered stones, sunk deep in the untrodden grass, would reveal that a mansion had stood there. ”

“ We are not here concerned with the political or economical aspect of this transference of landed property; but even the most utilitarian will admit that there is something melancholy in seeing a fine old historic mansion advertised for sale, or a family divorced from an estate with which it{335} may have been connected for generations. On the other hand, nothing, we should fancy, would be more tempting to the new class of rich men desirous of acquiring landed possessions than the chance of securing some old family seat, of quaint architectural design, and crowded with memories of the past. ”

“ The pressure of commercial competition and the struggle for life in our cities—the mere necessity for more room for traffic—the dead weight of vested interest, the market value of a site, the claims of convenience, fashion, ecclesiastical or otherwise, or [pg 43] sometimes sheer utilitarianism, entirely oblivious of the social value of historic associations of architectural beauty—all are apt to be arrayed at one time or another, or even, perhaps, all combined, against the preservation of an ancient building if it happens to stand in their way. ”

“ Wherever modern office buildings have been erected, the advantages they offer have drawn tenants from the dark and old-fashioned buildings surrounding them. The offset to owners from this destruction of capital in old buildings by modern improvements, is the increase in the value of the land due to the possibility of similarly improving their land. Old property two or three blocks away, however, may lose its tenants without any corresponding gain in values, since the increase in space supplied by the skyscraper is so great that its district is more limited. ”

“ The famous residences of the wealthy, like hundreds of great London mansions in the neighbouring squares, were untenanted. People could not afford to live in such palaces nowadays; the governing bodies of the capital had done their best to ruin it by Socialistic experiments and over-rating. ”

“ We recognize the unstable nature of our whole social fabric, and are therefore more and more capable of transforming it. Our institutions are no longer held to be inevitable and immutable creations. We do not attempt to fit them to absolute formulae, but continually adapt them to a changing environment. Even modern architecture, notably in America, reflects the consciousness of change. ”

“ Even more charming than the mansion itself are its gardens and grounds. Nowhere in England are these surpassed. The mansion, with its grounds, is open daily to the public without charge, and we were told that in some instances the number of visitors reaches one thousand in a single day. As I noted elsewhere, the Duke of Devonshire owns numerous other palaces and ruins, all of which are open to the public without charge—a fine example of the spirit of many of the English nobility who decline to make commercial enterprises of their historic possessions. ”

“ Childress, “that a proposition is made in that city to raise a fund to rebuild the mansion house at the Hermitage, every individual in the United States who may choose to contribute fifty cents and no more in order that it may be in the power of every man who may wish to join in tendering to you this complimentary mark of public gratitude and contributing to the repair and preservation of a residence which is almost looked upon as National property. ”

“ It may be very undesirable and unwise to wish to imitate these institutions in America, and yet it may be illiberal to undervalue them as they stand in England. A man would not build a house, in this nineteenth century, on the pattern of a feudal castle; and yet where the feudal castle is built, surely its antique grace might plead somewhat in its favor, and it may be better to accommodate it to modern uses, than to level it, and erect a modern mansion in its place. ”

“ Last of all—as if to mark its definitive decadence;—the mansion was occupied by some military-bed purveyors. The fine carvings, sumptuous paintings and gilded arabesques disappeared beneath a thick white dust from cards of wool. In the great gallery, so magnificently decorated by Le Brun and Van Opstaël, mattress-women set up their trestles and seamstresses began to sew sacking.
Later, Prince Czartorisky bought this noble dwelling and thus saved it from ruin. ”

“ This{149} property has passed from the hands of the Green family, and I am told that the present owner talks of pulling down the ruin and building a modern mansion on the site thereof. Social opinion lifts its voice loudly against such an act of vandalism, but a man has a right to do as he likes with his own; and reverence for the past and love of the picturesque must be inborn, it cannot be ingrafted on a commonplace mind, even though its owner be a millionaire. ”

“ Year by year, as we made our homes afresh in accordance with the saner needs of our new social families, we swept away more and more of those horrible structures, the ancient residential houses, hastily built, without imagination, without beauty, without common honesty, without even comfort or convenience, in which the early twentieth century had sheltered until scarcely one remained; we save nothing but what was beautiful or interesting out of all their gaunt and melancholy abundance. ”

“ The chief feature is a pergola of lofty granite columns reached from the house, and rising from a little promontory that projects from the bluff. It can be seen for a long distance and invests with a classical character the earliest impression of the city. The mansion is spacious, containing thirty large apartments, and is entered through an extensive courtyard under a monumental gate. For several years it has been occupied as a school for engineers. ”

“ Apart from the numerous national and archaeological societies, whose proceedings contain invaluable accounts of practically every monument of interest throughout the kingdom, there are two societies directly formed with the object of monument preservation in its widest sense, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, founded in 1877, and the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest and Natural Beauty, constituted in 1894 under the Joint Stock Companies Acts for the purchase and preservation of sites and buildings, which it can hold in perpetuity for the benefit of the public. ”

“ AN ACT
To amend the Act of October 15, 1966 (80 Stat. 915) , establishing a program for the preservation of additional historic properties throughout the Nation, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, Historic properties preservation program, extension. ”