Darryl Pinckney with Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts.
Sentimental people offer such hopefulness. They provide an outward manifestation of ideas so many cherish; that love can be real, that affection might endure. Love being the extraordinary motivator that it is, it ought hardly come as a surprise learning that Darryl Pinckney's and James Fenton's Harlem house arose out of a romance. John Dwight, it seems, was sentimental and so was his first wife, the former Nancy Shaw Everett.
Miss Nancy Shaw Everett
A doctor's son, as a young farmer, John Dwight did odd jobs to boost his income. So he was putting down a carpet at Mount Holyoke's new Seminary in 1837, when one pupil who had just arrived, caught his eye. A relative of a Massachusetts's governor, the elegant but modest young lady had remained perfectly composed, but Dwight did not escaped her notice, either. Having previously been disinclined to do the job, John Dwight rethought his earlier reticence. Forthwith he arranged to deliver milk at the school, first-thing every morning. The pair was married in 1841. Years later, Dwight immortalized the friendly cow that had facilitated their courtship, as the trademark of his brand of baking soda. In production until the 1970's, the Cow Brand bore a pastorial image of a South Hadley cow with a little bird at its feet in the corner. During Dwight's lifetime, inside each box one found a colorful card with a bird-picture. Both Dwights were fond of bird-lore, and prior to the formation of the Audubon Society, or the popularity of the ecology movement, interest in wildlife had been instilled in any number of people, who as childeren had embarked on making a collection of these cards that came in the soda box, depicting birds .
At Mount Holyoke the Dwight Memorial Art Building also attests to the couple's sentimentality. So too must the fine house they erected in 1890. In 1904 a New York Times reporter described it as, "an odd-looking house [that] resembles a fortress, viewed from the exterior, the windows being secured with iron architectural work. The doors are double barred, and to gain an entrance to the lobby it is necessary to pass two heavy doors, one oak, the other of iron, and then to pass the inquiring scrutiny of an English hall boy."
John Dwight''s stout oak front door.
The Dwights had first acquired a speculatively-built brownstone row house immediately north of where they would build. Number 32 'Mount Morris Park Square' was part of a group comprising 32 through 34 Mount Morris Park West. Surviving, they date to 1881 and were designed by Charles Baxter. A year later, houses he designed at 4-26 West 123rd Street were completed. Obtaining numbers 22 and 33 in addition, the Dwights were well cossetted in the warmth of family. Similarly, when it came to building a well-appointed residence, it was not made so roomy in order to give lavish society entertainments, but instead was meant to be be the headquarters of frequent, large gatherings of family and choice friends.
John and Nancy Dwight's grand Harlem townhouse bore, over the years, four different addresses. It has variously been designated as number 1 West 123rd Street, 31 Mount Morris Park Square, 31 Mount Morris Avenue and as number 31 Mount Morris Park West.
As with some contemporary Boston houses, both the ground storey and the floors above the piano noble, are successively lower, indicative of the hierarchy, from reception rooms, to bedrooms, to top floor quarters for children and servants.
By 1891, Nancy Shaw Everett Dwight had been married for fifty years. During that time, in an era when, whether rich or poor, it was quite easy to sicken and die, no member of her immediate family, nor anyone in her children's families, had passed away. It was a comforting record, joyfully noted during a gala dinner for family and a few close friends who came together to celebrate the Dwights' golden wedding. Most of her children were close at hand. The eldest was her son, the Rev. Melatiah Everett Dwight, M. D., D. D.. Both the Reverend Doctor Dwight and his family, like his sister Anna Frances, who had married the Rev. Theodore A. Leggett, lived on Staten Island. In distinction, their other siblings each lived with their famlies close to their parents. Clara, married to Col. Alexander Phoenix Ketchum, an officer in the Church & Dwight firm, had started married life at 22 Mount Morris Park West. But by the early 90's, the Ketchums lived with the ageing Dwights at number 31. A door away, at number 33, Clara Ketchum's brother John E. Dwight and her sister Marion, Mrs. William I. Walker, at first lived together with their spouses and children. Mr. Walker was the treasurer of Church and Dwight. While John E. Dwight would remain at 33, as late as 1917, by 1912 the Walkers had moved away to 11 Mount Morris Park West.
John Dwight.
The Rev. Melatiah Everett Dwight, M. D., D. D..
Sooner than anyone had imagined, only a year after John and Nancy Dwight celebrated being wed for a half century, on November 2,1892, Mrs. Dwight died. Morned by her devoted husband, morned by her children and neighbors, she was buried from her still neatly-new house at 31 Mount Morris Park West. This then proved to be but the start of a series of dramatic transitions. A year later the Dwight's daughter Clara, Mrs. Alexander P. Ketchum, was to perish. With the passing of a further year, 75 years old, on March 14, 1894, millionaire John Dwight was married for a second time. His widowed bride, Clara Leigh Freeborn, was a family friend who would sadly predecease her husband by two years, in 1900.
Earning a mere two billion dollars last year Church & Dwight Co., Inc. is characterized as, "a minor U.S. manufacturer of household products that is based in Princeton, New Jersey..."
Manufactures of several well-known brands, including Pesodent and Trogans, it is by far best known for its Arm & Hammer line which includes baking soda and many other items made with it.
The company unified two enterprizes created by John Dwight and his brother-in-law, Dr. Austin Church of Connecticut. Their partnership had begun in 1846 with the two founders selling sodium bicarbonate, also known as baking soda, that they refined in Dwight's kitchen. The arm and hammmer logo was derived from the Vulcan Co. of Church's sons, which had formed a part of the Church and Dwight merger.
A European-trained painter, as an architect Frank Hill Smith was especially noted as an exceptional interior decorator. In this he resembled fellow practitioners like Arthur Little, Stanford White and a few others, who were never happier than when afforded the opportunity to design custom-made cabinetry, light fixtures, carpets, leaded and stained glass and furniture, as well as buildings. Like these more artistic architects, Smith's highly-integrated interiors, were a decided departure from the richly complex, but dark and discordant schemes representative of the earliest phase of the Aesthetic Movement. Characterized by intricate, yet subtle, delicately refined ornament, Hill's rooms at the Dwight house are a synthesis of Federal and Renaissance precedent. Constrained not to exceed the cornice height of surrounding houses, his relatively low ceilings are all that compromise spaces otherwise beyond par!
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Located on what most Americans would consider the second storey, above the 'basement' or 'ground floor', Frank Smith's Dwight House Drawing Room is a decorative tour de force.
Leaded glass cabinetry in the Dwight House Drawing Room.
Adamesque garlands of husk embellishing the Drawing Room ceiling are coordinated with...
The frieze bas relief ornamented with festooned cherubs, torches, cornicopia, and doves...
Each of these devices is an emblem of Venus, the goddess of sensual earthly love!
Smith's elliptical Renaissance Dining Room is reminiscent of one designed for William Powell Mason in 1881 in Boston, seen below...
The Mason Dining Room's overmantle, with an arcade between pilasters, is strikingly like the one gracing the Dwight's Dining Room, which employs engaged columns. It also boasted complementary furniture, designed by architect Arthur Rotch. Frank Smith might well have devised similar furnishings for the Dwights.
Of unsurpassed dexterity, no Dining Room in all Harlem, and few others elsewhere, equals the virtuosity of detailing found in this magnificent elliptical space...
The fireplace has a lovely surround of roseate alabaster...
Carving, of the highest order...
Suggest the skilled handiwork of a masterful firm like...
Davenport & Co. of Boston?
Pierced vents in the central rosette of the ceiling...
Undoubtedly, exhausted fumes from a gas chandelier equipped with an adjustable...
Hanging lamp which burned kerosine...
Typically utilized to light Dining Room and reading tabletops.
Adorned with twisted balusters, the Dwight staircase is quietly handsome. It was augmented by one of only four hydraulic elevators found in a late 19th Century Harlem house.
This Hall by Arthur Little indicates how the Dwights' might have looked.
A bedroom mantlepice.
Broad fire surrounds lent considerable interest to late Victorian Colonial style chimneypieces.
A second bedroom mantlepice.
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