The decor in this house is so interesting. It's all well done but the style differences from room to room are a little jarring.

"It's a McKim, Mead, and White building... so if they designed the door, it's awesome!"

So if somebody else designed it, it wouldn't be awesome?

The house is stunning and when the door to the butler's pantry is closed, it will have the appearance of one tall door.

So if somebody else designed it, it wouldn't be awesome?

I would think this house would be awesome no matter who's name is on it.

I'm just glad that previous owners didn't decide to screw up the house by painting the woodwork, or lightening it, or...

Hopefully the next owners will realize what a treasure they have and not "redo" or "modernize" it.

Some of the white woodwork may have been stained originally; maybe not. They did colonial revival designs too and different styles would be mixed in the interiors of large houses

It would actually more awesome if this house could be executed today. I am not sure that it could and if it could it would probably cost more than $6M

I was reading an article in the Providence Journal about the house. The owners purchased it for $5 million in 2010, did some updates and then put it on the market for $10.5 in 2015. The article also mentioned that when they worked on the wood paneling they added gold to the finish to counteract the darkness.

I *love* this forum! The educational material is outstanding; thank you, Pal!!!

The door is built to match the other door heights in the room.

My preference would be just to make it a full-height door. It really does look strange as-is.

It's a secondary door into a butler's pantry of some sort and there is storage over the top of it. So they matched the door height to the rest and cut the functional door as needed.

I, personally, would sacrifice the storage over the top of the door ('cause I can't reach it anyway without a ladder, lol, and who wants to be up on a ladder with an in-swing door?), and just make it a standard door.

It's done in the classic architectural tradition just like the Georgians who built fake doors opening to a brick wall just to match another door symmetrically.

Fake doors opening to a brick wall, just to match symmetry? I'm not fond of fake home elements *today,* so I feel like it makes pretty good sense for me to be consistent and criticize architectural dishonesty of yesterday, too.

But I admit to being very green when it comes to architecture. I am not a formal student of it, so there may be things I am missing or lack understanding in.

McKim, Meade & White. That's all that's need to be said. :-)

"jib" door.

Now that I've found the other side, it's more like a saloon swinging door.

Nice to see the connoisseurs here approve of the overall look!

Take a minimum US$3.5-US$4M million off the list price for the 11-acre lot and the Frederick Law Olmstead-designed grounds, trim the finished floor size by 25%-40%, cut back on the woodwork and fireplaces and substitute brick for stone and it's starting to look feasible on two inland wooded acres in New England.

Compared to Toronto, anything outside the Hollywood Hills or NYC looks dirt cheap!

Now, how do I find a local architect whose eyes aren't seeing dollars signs when I approach him/her etc. with such a model? Especially when I tell them, draw it and I will build it.

That's not a cheap awning. I'm sure there at one time were more. This one actually may roll up. Striped awnings and summer houses just go together.

Symmetry was of great importance to architects in the Georgian and Federal periods in particular, so a false door to balance a real one, or a jib door hidden because you needed one and it was in an asymmetric location was standard practice. Symmetry, balance and order was what drove the design.

But talking about "fake" in architecture becomes a slippery slope;

The Georgian, Federal and Greek Revival are based upon the classical orders of Rome and Greece.

Romans developed concrete to mimic the Greek which was in stone, of which many of the Elements in the Classical orders were Stone representations of organic materials used in wooden building that have been gone for thousands of years.

The revivals use plaster and wood to mimic the stone of the Greeks, so a wood column mimics a concrete or stone column that was designed to represent a wood column made of bundled reeds or saplings or something, and now we have polystyrene and fiberglass and drywall standing in for plaster and wood which stood in for stone which stood in for wood to begin with.

Worthy, at $874/sq.ft with 11 acres it is also a bargain by Los Angeles standards.

I know nothing about McKim, Mead, and White ... but I know I like the windows, crown molding and color scheme ... but I don't like that door. It's kind of odd.

I think they kind of do a disservice by showing that door open. That door was never propped open when the family was in the dining room. Its a swinging door and staff would have passed through it when serving the family from the butler's pantry. I don't know exactly why they made it shorter, easier to operate maybe and quieter, but it would have only been seen as a full door frame in the dining room, not open and looking into service area.

"...I know nothing about McKim, Mead, and White..."

No time like now to learn some architectural history...! :-)

I was also going to say that the awning is entirely appropriate to the home. :)

Oh to have a spare $7 million kicking around. That house and property seem like quite the deal.

There's another MMW Newport cottage, Berkeley, which I've had bookmarked since reading about it on a blog. The house is everything you'd expect it to be, and the current owners (I think they still own it) have decorated and remodeled fairly sensitively (pal would have a better idea) -- they removed the white paint from the original oak in the foyer,

http://privatenewport.com/living-with-style/design-decor/rock-star-architects-in-newport-mckim-mead-white

Wonderful, a mere century later!

jln333 here. Really need to stop borrowing wife's computer.

I have to say, I thought it was a modern house designed to look old. I still hate it but it does change the perspective. Interesting how tastes vary. The grounds are beautiful and I get that many appreciate design elements of the house, but would anyone really want to live here?

I certainly wouldn't. And I don't appreciate architectural history I guess. I think the house is beautiful on the outside and I would be interested to walk in it. But live there - no way. Tear it down and build something practical is what I say. There is no use for such dwellings in 2017. It will never be lived in by a family of 10 so it is a complete waste to try and heat and otherwise maintain.

Now - convert to a B&B - perhaps. Hard to say if that is practical based on bathrooms and location.

Sounds like the market agrees with me. No one buying at a "cheap" price.

Leaving aside the six garret guest bedrooms serviced by one w.c., the floor plan is classically modern. Scratch the attic and the second staircase. I would only modify the first floor kitchen/pantry to suit the contemporary egalitarian take on the servant-lite kitchen.

Of course, for all those North Americans raised on TV-sitcom architecture, the foyer will forever remain a "waste of space".

My preference would be just to make it a full-height door. It really does look strange as-is.

It was NOT meant to be kept open. They needed its appearance when closed to balance the heights of other doors.

worthy, that's going to be some project -- looking forward to following along!

Thanks for the floor plan. I just realized from those and from the photos of the house, that the kitchen does in fact have rounded walls because it's in the former library. I thought originally it may have been some distortion.

The swinging pantry door would be solid oak. So for anyone serving (whether a taller, stronger butler/footman or a shorter maid), carrying a heavy tray laden with dishes, you'd need to make the door as light as possible, and shortening it would be the simplest way to make the door lighter and easier for a servant to handle.

"And I don't appreciate architectural history I guess. I think the house is beautiful on the outside and I would be interested to walk in it. But live there - no way. Tear it down and build something practical is what I say. There is no use for such dwellings in 2017. It will never be lived in by a family of 10 so it is a complete waste to try and heat and otherwise maintain."

I can understand not appreciating architectural history - not everyone does - but the suggestion to tear down and rebuild with something "practical" is ridiculous!! This is a part of our history that should be preserved, not destroyed!! Even more so due to the provenance of the home. That would be something akin to tearing down Wright's Falling Water to build something more practical.........horse pucky!!

As to there being no use to a dwelling like this in 2017, you must live a pretty sheltered life. Large, complicated homes like this are not at all uncommon. My niece and her DH recently bought a large 8 bedroom, 8 bath home (almost 8000sf on 5 acres of beachfront property). And they only have two kids, who are just about old enough to leave home. But we have a large extended family and they wanted some place roomy enough to host the entire family for holidays or a summer vacation (there are also two "outbuildings" that can accommodate even more guests). It is not a historic home (only 20 years old) but definitely in the Northwest vernacular with lots of wood and stone both inside and out and has more than a passing resemblance to the MMW pictured above. And it is only one of a number of other large, similarly designed dwellings in the area.

Apparently, a great many people like these sorts of large, sprawling estate-like residences and have the financial wherewithall to afford them as they are picked off like hotcakes here!!

the kitchen does in fact have rounded walls because it's in the former library

Actually, it's one floor down, where food is prepared, then sent by dumbwaiter to the smaller pantry kitchen.

As a grad student, I lived one semester in a much-faded Gatsby Era north shore L.I. mansion. It featured large public areas, including a 50-70 ft. loggia overlooking the LI Sound. But the kitchen where we boarders ate was the size of Wild Moor's pantry kitchen. I once snuck up to the abandoned 3rd floor--an endless array of small bedrooms with 50-year old wallpaper.

worthy, thanks for that info. So still in a rounded space, directly underneath the library. IIRC, those back-to-back island cabinets are Ikea.

But yikes at the thought of sending up food by dumbwaiter in 2017. You have to wonder if that's at least part of what's holding up a sale.

Also interesting -- the original name of the property was Berry Hill. It was changed to Wild Moor the first time the property was sold, in 2010, to Wild Moor LLC.

I can understand not appreciating architectural history - not everyone does - but the suggestion to tear down and rebuild with something "practical" is ridiculous!!

No it's not just ridiculous, it's disgusting and shows a true lack of understanding or caring for our history.

This is not some builder grade McMansion, but a true architectural gem built by one of the leading architecture firms of the last century. The truth is we couldn't build a house like this nowadays for triple the price. And if nothing else, we lack the old growth wood that went into creating this beauty.

Just because you show a complete ignorance of architectural history doesn't mean it should be torn down. More builder grade monstrosities? YUCK!

Many of this continent's fabulous mansions and public buildings have been demolished to make way for "modern skyscrapers", street widenings and celebratory plazas for persons since long forgotten. Witness, below

See "Crimes Against Architecture."

You can't talk about Crimes Against Architecture in a thread about McKim, Mead & White and not mention the murder of Pennsylvania Station in 1963, barely 50 years after it was built:

In 1955, the PRR [Pennsylvania Railroad] secretly agreed to sell the station's air rights and later revealed the station was operating at a $1.5 million annual loss. The sale required confining the station entirely below ground and demolishing McKim, Mead and White's colossal gateway to New York City. A legal means of preventing the destruction of historic buildings did not exist at the time and, despite ardent protest from leading architects, demolition was complete by 1966. The granite and marble were dumped, Doric columns and all, into the marshes of Secaucus, New Jersey. The protest efforts were not in vain, however. The event led to the formation of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, which prevented the destruction of Grand Central Terminal just three years after Penn Station's demise.

You can't talk about Crimes Against Architecture...and not mention the murder of Pennsylvania Station.

#1 crime in the link.

worthy, yup. I just thought I would mention it in the thread for the possible edification of anyone here learning more about MM&W...

Of course, for all those North Americans raised on TV-sitcom architecture, the foyer will forever remain a "waste of space".

Foyers aren't a waste ... but private-home foyers that are as large as main rooms are wasteful.

It was NOT meant to be kept open. They needed its appearance when closed to balance the heights of other doors.

Okay, I can see that if the doors had been closed, I might've liked them better.

Indeed! Proportion in everything.

Symmetry is everything! :-)

Come on cpartist. 100 years old is not history. Nothing in the US is really old enough to get that sentimental about.

This is a wasted 11 acres that no one gets to appreciate. Make it a museum if you want or a B&B, but something that no one gets to enjoy - it is a waste. Honestly, how do you get to enjoy this property? Who famous was born or lived there? If it is such an amazing piece of history, then make it a museum. I loved visiting Shakespeare's childhood home. I will never visit this private home.

There are a tremendous amount of amazing homes that sit empty the vast majority of the time and it is a waste. It is a symptom of our amazing income inequality and it is a shame. This house is a perfect symbol of that.

But yeah me and 99.9% of the population has never heard of these great architects and we don't care. And that is a tragedy in your eyes but that will not change the reality. And the world is a horrible place because of that? No, it is horrible for a lot of other far more important reasons.

I am not usually such a rabble rouser and I honestly didn't mean to offend. Feel free to ignore me - but that is my opinion. I never said to build a McMansion on the site - but maybe 30 homes that will actually be enjoyed.

"100 years old is not history. Nothing in the US is really old enough to get that sentimental about."

LOL!! And if you get your way, apparently nothing ever will be!!

Quality architecture - not 99.9% of what you see being designed/built today - is an art form. And one that should be just as highly valued and revered as any other type of fine art. Should we be going around burning or destroying the paintings of the great masters because they are not practical? Or converting the canvases they are painted on to some other more egalitarian purpose? And should we remove all these works of art from private ownership because no one else will see them?

Maybe you need to educate yourself on these architects and the major contributions they have made to this art form. In few countries other than the US does one encounter privately owned residences designed by architects of extreme merit and skill. Yeah, let's tear them all down and construct a bunch of ticky-tacky cardboard junk for the masses. That's so much more practical.

Pack 'em in, pack 'em high!

Or here.

"Symmetry, balance and order was what drove the design."

Yes. They, along with proportion and unity, have driven good design through the ages. And as with a number of disciplines, you have to know the rules in order to break them successfully.

It occurs to me today, as it does from time to time, that if more of the folks who doodle around with house plans, professional (Don and Frank, I'm looking at you) and amateur, understood more of symmetry, balance, and order (and their friends unity and proportion), there would be fewer GardenWeb members desperately trying to remedy ill-conceived house plans, houses, and rooms.

Quality architecture - not 99.9% of what you see being designed/built today - is an art form. And one that should be just as highly valued and revered as any other type of fine art. Should we be going around burning or destroying the paintings of the great masters because they are not practical? Or converting the canvases they are painted on to some other more egalitarian purpose? And should we remove all these works of art from private ownership because no one else will see them?

Maybe you need to educate yourself on these architects and the major contributions they have made to this art form. In few countries other than the US does one encounter privately owned residences designed by architects of extreme merit and skill. Yeah, let's tear them all down and construct a bunch of ticky-tacky cardboard junk for the masses. That's so much more practical.

Worthy, I couldn't have said it better. Thank you.

I'm guessing Jln would rip a masterpiece he/she didn't like out of a frame and throw it in the trash so he/she could reuse the frame.

So if you rip down something because it's "only" 100 years old, how does anything get to BE 200 years old? 300 years old? Do you even begin to understand some of the value of the techniques showcased in some of these beauties? My father recently had the opportunity to walk through a local Wright house being restored - with the brothers who did the original carpentry. They pointed out how they had assembled and pegged together some of the woodwork and explained the way other pieces had been made. It was a massively educational experience for a woodworker.
Now, not every house built 100 years ago is worth saving, any more than any modern home is, but a magnificent piece like this, which contains not only architectural history but the natural history of where it was built in the wood and the stone and other local materials used in its construction... tearing that down because you don't think it's "practical" would be a crime. If we only ever did what was "practical," how banal life would be.

As to your complaint about "wasted space" - that's sort of another matter of perspective. Out where I am, 11 acres is a tiny parcel. We just bought a parcel that's 10.7. I'm eyeing the adjacent pieces and wondering if I can coax their owners to sell pieces to me later. With luck, all the way back to the more thickly wooded portion that fronts the next cross street, 1/2 mile away. To me, packing 30 houses onto a parcel that could otherwise be pasture, woodland, wetland, orchard, etc, would be a bigger crime. Who enjoys it? Me. The neighbors. The people I've given permission to hunt on it this season. Land doesn't have to have housing on it to have value to its owners. Frankly, I'm sick to death of neighbors who can look in my back windows and can't wait to get a house up that offers views of trees and birds instead of the wacky neighbors.

The fate of Pruitt-Igoe and housing theories of this sort:

jln333, thank you for offering a different perspective to consider (even if one disagrees). For me your posts brought to mind the book How Buildings Learn. There's a lot of room between mansion estates and stack-and-pack.

Thanks to LeCorbusier, born Charles Jenneret.

As the reviewer of a recent biography notes:

I agree with Oak... I don't agree with jln's perspective -- my initial reaction to it prevented me from posting, because I was kinda emotional about it, lol -- but I *do* enjoy hearing people's thoughts.

And now, back to the beauty of McKim, Meade & White:

Pruitt-Igoe may have worked if it had been executed as originally intended.

In my city, a high priced trio of concrete high rises built for slum clearance in the 1960s still thrives blocks away from an old trio of public housing high rises from the same era were partially imploded in the early 2000s. Actually they were able to maintain one or two of the highrises after rehabilitation and rethinking of the project, while most other clusters have been imploded. The construction methods of both were about the same.

What happened to Pruitt-Igoe?

1) they did not budget for maintenance. Maintenance was almost non-existent.

2) they gave apartments to non-intact family units and female heads of households. One early family said that her parents were married and they divorced so they would be able to get an apartment in Pruitt Igoe rather than stay a family of 8 or so in a slum.

3) the fixtures and finishes were chosen with the assumption that the tenants were going to vandalize them. The lightbulbs were bare and in locked cages. The tenants could not change a bulb in the public spaces if they wanted to. One person said as kids they tried to figure out ways to break the bulbs (cold water thrown at them).

3) they kept white applicants out. they kept applicants at the higher end of the income pool out. they helped and encouraged white applicants to buy in suburban developments and helped them get mortgages.

4) as systems started failing due to lack of maintenance and vandalism, they moved people into better buildings and out of worse buildings. The worse buildings were taken over by squatters and drug dealsers. The police and fire department stopped answering calls to Pruitt Igoe.

If Pruit Igoe had been properly maintained, managed and implemented as was originally proposed it may not have become such an abysmal failure.

The other aspect of International Style living is that mostly-white occupants of similar high rises had cars and other places to go and their children had other options for recreation and went to better schools. They weren't trapped in their 20th floor unit.

The entire "Urban Renewal" movement of the 1960's didn't do anybody any favors, either. Many a lovely downtown was destroyed and replaced by "planned" developments. That are now being torn down and replaced with more "walkable" neighborhoods. Muskegon, MI, is a good example. It's downtown was razed for a mall. The mall died. It was also razed. Then sat as empty sand for a while. Gradually, new projects are going in that are designed to look like... an old fashioned "downtown." Mostly because it's one of the few Lakeshore cities that doesn't HAVE that kind of area and it's missing out on lots of tourists because of it.

Even Grand Haven suffered from it. The gorgeous old county courthouse came down, replaced by one of those concrete monstrosities that was, in turn, destroyed and replaced by a modernized courthouse that I can only describe as "ugly revival."

Here is the succession:

It does take longer for houses in the original post to sell. But apparently there are people with the money to buy and maintain them.

One of the types of renewal going on in my city and in Manhattan is people buying 19th c. town houses that were converted to a bunch of small apartment in the middle of the 20th century, back to single family houses or mult units with much fewer units in them.

The argument of wasted space is interesting, at a time when, despite the growing informality and busy-ness of modern life and modern families, recent builds (not limited to McMansions) are rife with two-story entry halls and "great rooms", front entries built but not used because residents prefer to use the garage / mudroom / back entry, and houses with at least one living room AND one family room, not to mention the dining trifecta of dining room + island with counter seating + breakfast nook.

Reminds me of one of the decorating rules from Magnaverde over on the Home Decorating forum, which could apply just as easily to building a house: "Decorate for the life you really have, not the life you wish you had."

I love McKim, Mead, and White homes. Seems like there is alway something quirky in the design somewhere. Stanford White's living room is wonderful; everyone needs an exposed steel beam in their ceiling. I would want to be like Stanford, but I don't want to be shot by a jealous husband in a building I designed .

Just thought I'd drop this in here,

http://www.rebuildpennstation.org/new-jersey-transit-ad-campaign

From which,

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 20, 2017

Ad Campaign Urges Commuters to Support Rebuilding the Original Penn Station

New York, NY—Rebuild Penn Station today launched an advertising campaign urging commuters to support the movement to reconstruct the original Pennsylvania Station in New York. The magnificent building, designed by McKim, Mead & White and completed in 1910, was demolished in 1963 in what is widely considered to have been an act of civic vandalism.

New Jersey Transit trains arriving in the transportation hub feature advertisements (see below) with renderings of the original station in a contemporary context. The ads pose the question: “Wouldn’t you rather arrive here?” LIRR and Amtrak riders will be leafletted with a similar campaign.

The loss of the original Penn Station, in the name of urban renewal, was a great tragedy. For years, there's been talk of relocating and rebuilding in the old post office across the street from the current Penn Station.