Mr.Michael Henry Adams' Style & Taste

"BEAUTY IS POWER": HOW HELENA RUBINSTEIN, WITH ELIZABETH ARDEN AND MADAME C. J. WALKER IMPROVED THE WORLD

 

 

 

 

 Madame Helena Rubinstien, 1870-1965 

 

 The catalogue cover for the Jewish Museum's new special exhibition, shows Helena Rubinstein in 1939 , dressed by Chanel in a dark dress with straw cuffs and wearing a trompe l'oeil braided straw hat, mimicking a coil of hair, by milliner Suzanne Talbot

 

 

Much like Iris Apfel today, exemplary of the originality and daring that is exceptional style, Helena Rubinstein is the subject of a small but carefully conceived and beautifully mounted retrospective exhibition. “Beauty Is Power,” will be on view at the Jewish Museum through March 22, 2015. With portraits, sculpture, photographs, cosmetic designs and packaging, clothing and jewels, it explores a life well lived, in which art and refinement were strategically applied to every aspect.

 

 

Irrepressible superstar of personal style, 94-year-old Iris Apfel, the subject of Albert Maysles' outstanding documentary, "Iris" 

 

 

If only great faith makes it possible to fully appreciate George Herbert’s devotional verse, at least one observation of the 17th-century English metaphysical poet is quite easily grasped by any New Yorker: “Living well,” he wrote, “ is the best revenge.”

 

 

 

Agaton Strom for The New York Times

Bust by Elie Nadelman from the remarkable Rubinstein collection

Agaton Strom for The New York Times

A lifetime of portraits of Helena Rubinstein by various artists

 

The only rub then is all that is required for most who are not born to affluence, to carry on an enviable existence of elegant ease. How striking, in our highly unequal society, that outsiders born in rather modest circumstances sometimes, best pull-off this ultimate objective of doing well as they live and work in the Big City. Indeed the progress of those who start with little or nothing, occasionally exhibits far greater panache and verve than that of those equipped with a legacy of auspicious connections and prodigious means. 

Bebeto Matthews

Tuesday October 28, 2014: Mr. Mason Klein, curator at the Jewish Museum, discuss portraits of cosmetics empress Helena Rubinstein, the subject of his special exhibition, "Helena Rubinstein: Beauty is Power"

1957: Graham Sutherland painting, “Helena Rubinstein in a Red Brocade Balenciaga Gown”, which made a mountain-like monument of an artful imp, who stood a mere four feet, ten inches tall

 Red Brocade Balenciaga suit

An elegant compact spplied by Helena Rubinstein  

 

1938: Helena Rubinstein portrayed in her New York apartment by  Vogue Magazine 

Lovely Sheila Stone, who started her advertising career interfacing sometimes with Ogelvy & Mather while working for the "demanding but incredible" Helena Rubinstein, a"role model like no other".  How fortunate it was to meet Ms. Stone and her husband at the members' preview of "Beauty is Power"

Helena Rubinstein epitomizes this notion. A Jew from the shtetl she fled Krakow and an arranged marriage in 1902. Migrating from Melbourne, Australia, to London to Paris, drawn inevitably to the land of opportunity, she was safely in America by 1915. Here Helena Rubinstein was at the apex of a group of beauty entrepreneurs dominated by just three women. With Canadian Elizabeth Arden and African American Madam C. J. Walker, Helena Rubenstein both transformed the beauty industry and helped to formulate the very conception of all that American beauty entails.

Elizabeth Arden, Helena Rubinstein and Madam C. J. Walker's daughter, partner and heir, A'Lelia Walker. A trio of beauty queens who helped to improve their world, offering countless women hope and enhanced self-esteem

 

Her adult life of supreme stylishness, its glamorous splendor, a corollary to imaginative vision, great ambition and hard work, was ever like a biblical banquet perfectly prepared for her, as if by providence. Day in and out, it was served lavishly up before all those who had stood in her way. This life unlike that of most, quite closely mirrored the experiences of Elizabeth Arden and Madam C. J. Walker. All three found their way from obscurity to New York City. Through their own efforts, largely unaided, they made there way, living large, as both an advertisement of success and as an affront to oppression. Each held aloft an anointed head, bejeweled and arrayed in haute couture‘s ‘fine linen’, their golden goblets overflowing.

Circa 1909, Helena Rubinstein dressed by Worth

 

Circa 1911: Rubinstein by Paul Helleu

 1924: Rubinstein wears a 1923 Paul Poiret dress

Circa 1936: Rubinstein dressed by Captain Edward Molyneux

Circa 1939: Madame Rubinstein wearing an elephant emblazoned bolero from Elsa Schiaparelli's sensational 1938 'Circus collection' 

 

Helena Rubinstein wears a sequin and bead embroidered Chantilly lace Christian Dior gown and a starfish-shaped, Ecalle-designed ornament dominated by a splendid 84-carat sapphire

 

1938: Rubinstein by Cecil Beaton, wearing Schiaparelli's sari dress and cape with a massive jeweled cross and a mass of charm bracelets

 

Selections from a collector's treasure trove, whose vast jewel casket is a small filing cabinet, in which D-stands for diamonds, E-is for emerald, P-is for pearls and R-is for rubies! 

An Edwardian diamond and baroque pearl necklace Helena Rubinstein stated was the first of many trinkets she purchased to assuage her rage following spats with her first husband, her "quarrel jewelery " 

 

 

 

Renowned Mexican silversmith, William Spratling referred to this necklace as the "Rubinstein necklace" because it was initially designed for Helena Rubinstein. It appeared in Spratling's wholesale catalogues from 1942 until 1945 although the example above was made about 1939

 

 

 

 

 

 

Circa 1912: The second Paris beauty salon of Madame Edward Titus, who was soon to emerge professionally as Madame Helena Rubinstein 

Circa 1936: Helena Runinstein's emporium designed by Harold Sterner at 715 Fifth Avenue. Contrasting with severely modern architecture, neo-Baroque and Victorian flourishes of the decor were at the vanguard of taste. The 1830's alabaster vases across from a neo-Classical work by de Chirico, inspired couturier Charles James, who used similar urns with a 'boquet' of a length of silk in his own atelier

Wiener Werkstätte silver flatware designed by Josef Hoffmann for the newly wed  Mrs. Edward Titus in 1908

 

Self-made, reborn, each woman’s carefully crafted self-invention was rooted in an ability to enhance and amplify her own appearance. Elizabeth Arden came from Ontario. Born Florence Nightingale Graham, her mother had died of tuberculosis when Arden was just four years old. Her widower Scottish immigrant father supported his five children by peddling household supplies to farmers. Becoming a nurse after school, luckily, Arden came close to approximating the conventional ideal white Anglo Saxon standard of attractiveness. Scornfully declaring, “Nothing that costs only a dollar is not worth having.”, Elizabeth Arden focused her attentions on helping the elite to achieve the beauty that she believed to be their birth-right. Imperiously she quipped, only half jokingly, “There's only one Elizabeth like me and that's the Queen.” Alternately, she was never smiling when telling employees at her luxurious establishments, “Dear, never forget one little point. It's my business. You just work here.”

Circa 1905: Elizabeth Arden, 1884-1966 

673 Fifth Avenue: The oval room of Elizabeth Arden's first New York beauty salon  

Circa 1934: TheLos Angeles Elizabeth Arden beauty salon 

 

Yearning for beauty with as much fervent wistfulness as any Astor or Vanderbilt, ignored, “tempest tossed” and formerly enslaved masses were left to Walker and Rubinstein. Workers were hardly their only clientele however. Such was the desire of all women to appeal to others and be admired, that ultimately, the promising nostrums this trio purveyed, found some adherents irrespective of class, age or race. Just as housemaids who lived in Harlem might splurge and buy an Elizabeth Arden lipstick, they had first tried out at work, so too certain dowagers on Park Avenue came to swear by Madam Walker’s preparations that allowed them, at last, to manage their unruly hair.

As though they were indeed royalty, all three beauty queens lived in gracious opulence, conveyed in fine cars, traveling widely and occupying more than one residence throughout the year. Each took care too, that their business premises be appointed to provide well-off customers with surroundings of reassuring refinement, commensurate to their dignity. Those who were less fortunate, they were also treated in such a way as to make them feel welcome, worthy and special. Much as movie theaters were devised as picture palaces, places that flattered even poor moviegoers with deluxe surroundings, the beauty salons of Rubinstein, Walker and Arden were calculated to help momentarily transport customers into a realm beyond the ordinary. For every bit as much as any specific potion, powder or polish, through a hospitable atmosphere, with solicitous and well-trained staffs, eager to please and pamper, they were selling fantasy and wish fulfilment too. 

Circa 1908: Madam C. J. Walker, 1867-1919 

Circa 1912 

Circa 1909 and 1928: Madam C. J. Walker and her daughter, partner and heir, A'Lelia Walker

Born Sarah Breedlove, the only member of her family not born a slave, MadamWalker adopted the name of the second, of three husbands. Her daughter married three times and both died young. Yet whether with architecture or through generous philanthropy to black causes, paying as much attention to projecting as regal an image as any sovereign, the Walkers utilized a saga as poignant and compelling as Lincoln's trek from a back-woods cabin to the White House. This was how they distinguished their brand from every other similar product on the market. For the Walkers, as for Helena Rubinstein, the concept that beauty and success were synonymous was espoused as an alluring doctrine of faith

 

Madam Walker's log cabin birthplace at Delta, Louisiana 

 

1918: The Walker residence-beauty salon, 108-110 West 136th Strret.

How adroit, for  architect Vertner Tandy, Madam C. J. Walker and her daughter, A'Lelia Walker Robinson, to do just what whites would have maintained they were incapable of.  Employing what a century ago was regarded as the epitome of "good taste", they took their cue from the Park Avenue townhouse of Percy Rivington Pyne, II, Esquire, a picture of WASP decorum and rectitude, planned by McKim, Mead & White and completed in 1911. Devising a hybrid Walker-townhouse-salon, they combined home and business, in one imposing structure in 1917, well before the idea was adapted by Helena Rubenstein in Paris, or at Bergdorf-Goodman and by Elizabeth Arden on Fifth Avenue

1918: The Reception and tea rooms of the Walker Beauty Parlor, College and Spa

1915: Light filled, with painted furniture, Helena Rubinstein's first New York beauty salon was designed by the Viennese modernist  furniture designer, architect, painter, and writer, Paul T. Frankl. How reminiscent of this cheerful space the Walker's somewhat later beauty salon was

 

In his newest movie “Iris” the celebrated documentarian, Albert Maysles who first gained acclaim with “Gray Gardens”, follows the 94-year-old New York personality Iris Apfel. An interior designer and businesswoman of considerable ability, her remarkably personal fashion-sense has become far more famous than anything she has ever done professionally. Speaking of her budding courtship in the late 1940’s, Mrs. Apfel recalls how Carl Apfel, before they decided to marry, had confessed to a mutual friend, how although he was much taken with her considerable glamour, he felt that she ought to get a nose job. Unwilling to do what so many others did in order to fit in, that confidence might have been the end of things. Only, not long afterward, Apfel called to admire what Iris had been wearing that day, as he’d passed her on the bus. Even from a great distance, the dissimilarity of Iris’ alluring style had reached out to grab him 

 1918: A'Lelia Walker's 136th Street bedroom.

Although the old original mantelpiece and architraves were kept here, decorators Righter & Kolb, much like Stanford White at the Ogden Mills' estate, or Paul Frankl at the Rubinstein beauty salon, made them 'modern', with cream colored paint, matching new painted Louis XVI-style furniture    

Madam Walker and Helena Rubinstein’s approach similarly was to encourage women to be their best selves by embracing and accentuating what made them unique. Early in the 20th-century, as now, promoted by modeling agencies, espoused by advertisers and disseminated by Hollywood, great effort was exerted to achieve a universal aesthetic. Not everyone was born with the much praised ’peaches-in-cream’ completion, or flowing, gently waving golden tresses, bright blue eyes, an aquiline or retroussé nose, a cupid’s bow mouth, and an athletic but curvaceous figure. None-the-less, incredulously, many sought through artifice, the very attributes they otherwise lacked. Certainly, neither Walker nor Rubinstein eschewed or ignored their epoch’s ‘ideal’ look. Rubinstein sold blond hair dye just as walker offered skin bleaching ointments. But by incorporating their own distinctive images in advertisements, images with an unambiguously ethnic identity, portrayals of women otherwise largely absent from mainstream media, both downplayed the importance of assimilation. Each emphasized instead, that through diligent grooming, one could cultivate beauty; not by aspiring to look like some iconic film star, but by perfecting who it was that you are.

 

1928: The Dark Tower, photographed by James Vanderzee

Already living at her 80 Edgecombe Avenue apartment by the mid-1920's, to better utilize the living space at 110 West 136th Street, A'Lelia Walker rented several rooms for private social and civic events, calling this enterprise, "The Walker Studio". Supposedly inaugurated as a gathering place for artists, another part of the house was also rented for gatherings and called the "Dark Tower", in reference to Countee Cullen's evocative poem.  The Walker's former drawingroom was dominated in the redecoration by  by Paul T. Frankl, Skyscraper bookcase, first produced in 1924.  A Viennese furniture designer and maker, an architect, painter, and writer, Frankl was one of Walker's numerous acquaintances from Greenwich Village parties. The gold-stenciled light shade, also represent his smart handiwork

Circa 1928: 8 East 57th Street

Starting with her very first location in New York, Paul T. Frankl, who was also befriended and patronized by A'Lelia Walker, design several Helena Rubinstein salons. Here his famous Skyscraper bookcase dominates the minimalist modern interior he devised for Rubinstein in an elaborate old former town house

 

Skyscraper bookcase, by Paul T. Frankl

 

Habitually wearing pink was as close as Elizabeth Arden, a stable owner, whoes horse once won the Kentucky Derby, ever came to developing a notable personal style-sense. Some sources suggest that her two marriages were quite calculating. The first, in 1918, between Elizabeth Arden and Thomas Lewis, gained her American citizenship. Lewis served as Arden’s business manager until their divorce in 1935. His wife never permitted her husband to own company stock. Tellingly, after their split, Lewis went to work for Helena Rubinstein.

Circa 1927: The Walker's incomperable country retreat, Villa Lewaro  

 

 

Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

 

 

 Aurora: Apollo in his chariot proceeded by Dawn, after Guido Reni, 1613-1614.

 

 

   

 

 

The glory that was Villa Lewaro.

The Walker's estate was realized in 1918 at a cost of $350,000.00. Although Helena Rubinstein boasted more dwellings and more resplendent collections, at a time when the average black New Yorker earned just $800.00 annually, Villa Lewaro was seen by African Americans as an otherworldly palace and a singular accomplishment. Disparity based on race in America, meant that Rubinstein at her peak of operation, took in more in a year, than the Walkers earned over a lifetime, yet how prodigiously they expended their wealth  

Helena Rubenstein’s initial marriage was also to an American. Only she met publisher and bibliophile Edward Titus, in Paris. This alliance brought Rubinstein two sons and invaluable acquaintance with her intellectual husband’s literary and artists friends. Noted couturier Paul Poiret, for one, became a close friend of Helena Rubinstein. She admired the designer’s innate talent and taste. Both relished his festive bohemian parties alive with good talk and loud laughter, fueled by delicious food and wine. Many of Helena Rubinstein's discoveries, including Chanel and Picasso were made possible thanks to Paul Poiret, who most interestingly would also befriend and design clothes for Madame Walker’s daughter, partner and heir, the exuberant A’Lelia Walker, dubbed the ’Joy Goddess of the Harlem Renaissance’.

 

Circa 1912: A'Lelia Walker in a toque by  her friend Paul Poiret

 

   Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

 1926: A'Lelia Walker is shown in a cassock's uniform she purchased for a costume party

Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

Circa 1930 

Villa Lewaro's grand clock was a copy of the celebrated model made circa 1785 and attributed to Jean-Henri Riesener, now in the Louvre 

Well in advance of the Crash, late in the 1920s, Madame Rubinstein sold her company to Lehman Brothers. Shrewdly she retained a sizable block of company stocks. With the Great Depression, it’s value plummeting, she reacquired the outstanding shares to make this suffering enterprise more successful than ever before, After 30, years shedding her first husband, the father of her children, on taking a new mate, when past 60, she asked for and got a prenuptial agreement. Through this union with, still dashing Prince Artchil Gourielli-Tchkonia, Madame Rubinstein was styled H H Princess Gourielli. Oddly enough, by coincidence, ‘That Woman’, as Madame referred to Elizabeth Arden, responded by wedding another Russian aristocrat, Prince Michael Evlanoff. Alas, where Prince and Princess Gourielli remained together happily until his highness’ death, the Evlanoff’s were rent asunder in less than a year.

For all of Elizabeth Arden’s prowess as the top supplier of beauty potions to the carriage trade, there was a way in which she remained every bit as much an outsider as Rubinstein and even Madam Walker. The relationship she shared with the notable, but notorious, liberal and lesbian literary agent Elizabeth Marbury, is said to have been quite chaste, by some. These same ’historians’ make the same pronouncement about Marbury’s earlier ‘close friendship’ with decorating pioneer Elsie de Wolfe. A well-born friend of mine, whose much older late life-partner had been a member of these women’s circle, refutes such claims. “These girls were human too. Oh yes, Miss Elsie might well to have feigned her utter distaste for being pawed and other earthy and pedestrian pleasures, But Bessie, she was a pistol. There’s no way that she would have countenanced or forborne such unfeeling behavior. None!…” In all events, it was this ‘friendship’ that in the full season of time, brought to Elizabeth Arden, Elizabeth Marbury’s diamond bracelet and her waterfront country place in Maine, which became the first of Arden’s Maine Chance spas for the super rich.

Elizabeth Arden and liberal and lesbian literary agent Elizabeth Marbury, depicted by the great gay artist Arthur Rankin

Drive and the pursuit of opportunity were half of what had motivated Madame Walker. Her only child, Lelia was the other part of this equation. The woman who became famous as A'Lelia Walker always came first where her mother was concerned. Neither possessing the requisite fragility, fair skin, or delicate features deemed necessary to be regarded as a beauty in her day, tall and statuesquely handsome Lelia made an impressive, even a striking appearance. Always the bright lights and good times of the big city beckoned alluringly to Madame Walker's child. In 1913 she had bade her mother to relocate with her from Indianapolis to the new Negro 'promised land' of Harlem,  a quarter with as many dance halls, cabarets and saloons as churches, hundreds! The women attending church and bars mightn't be the same women, but Lelia pointed out, that all hundred thousand wanted to get their hair done before they went there. 

So off to Harlem they ventured.  According to historian Christopher Gray, in 1913 and 1915 Madam Walker bought two old-style brownstones at 108 and 110 West 136th Street. In 1915 she filed plans to completely rebuild the two houses as one with a new facade. This was the same way that many midtown and East Side row houses were being reconstructed. Walker created a hybrid Walker townhouse-salon, that combined home and business long before this idea was ever considered by Helena Rubinstein in Paris, at Bergdorf-Goodman or by Elizabeth Arden on Fifth Avenue. 

Circa 1956: Above her famous red-doored beauty salon-day spa Elizabeth Arden had a penthouse apartment 

 

Most of her life Madame maintained flats in London, Paris and New York. She additionally enjoyed two country houses in France and another, in America. It should go without saying, that in accordance with so impetuous a mistress, each residence was kept in perpetual readiness.  Obtained on the eve of war, in 1938, her large flat at 24, quai de Béthune, llocated on the historic Île St.-Louis, was perhaps her favorite home. Not infrequently she exclaimed how, "I got it for a song, but the renovations cost me a fortune." Madame, the Princess Gourielli, was of course prevented from inhabiting her enchanting art-filled aerie during the Second World War. Nazis occupying it are said to have used sculptures for target practice, but the marvelous apartment survived.

 

24, quai de Béthune

Located on the historic Île St.-Louis, designed by architect Louis Süe and crowned with a vast roof garden with arresting panoramic views and an enormous reflecting pool, making it an ideal adjunct to entertaining in warm weather, stood Helena Rubinstein's final apartment in Paris 

 

 

 In Helena Rubinstein’s colonnaded grand salon, Louis Süe contrasted architectural restraint with furnishings fit for a queen. These included a magnificent gout grec Louis XVI center table and gilt chairs, designed by Georges Jacob. Madame’s suite of chairs were exceptional for retaining their still-vivid pictorial tapestry covers 

 An elevated alcove 

Madame's dining room was graced by a Monet seascape and spiraling wall sconces

As often happened with Helena Rubinstein, her passion for the simplicity of Jean-Michel Frank's modernism, ultimately gave way to her enthusiasm for antique grandeur, supplied by the addition of an exuberant Napoleon III carpet and rocco-revival Belter furniture, reflecting the influence of the antiques dealer and decorator Madeleine Castaing

 

Rubinstein's African art was both of the highest quality and reflected her innovatory couinisureship 

 

In Madame's bedroom Louis Süe covered the alcove walls and doors with pale yellow satin, diapered with gold cord. This was meant to suggest the surfaces of a suite of Charles X, mother-of-pearl veneered furniture, upholstered in white and silver damask

 

Following Helena Rubinstein's death, in the late 1960's socialite Doris Duke bought her mother-of-pearl clad furniture, for the very different sort of bedroom she occupied, at "Rough Point", in Newport 

 

 Madame's winter garden

 The view from the center of the universe!

 

Over the 40-odd years Helena Rubinstein lived a part of each year in New York, she occupied four extraordinary, much-photographed, apartments. By far the most spectacular was her last, 625 Park Avenue, a mammoth 27-room penthouse triplex with 7 wood-burning fireplaces and a series of servants’ rooms on a hidden mezzanine between the 12th and 13th floors. Here she resided and entertained memorably for thirty years. Built in 1931, the decorous building was designed by one of New York’s most adept luxury-apartment-house specialists, architect James E. R. Carpenter. 

James E. R. Carpenter's 625 Park Avenue

Informed the management did not lease to Jews, Princess Gouurielli bought the building 

The gallery 

 

 

The oak wainscoated, art-filled drawing room 

A commodious pine-paneled dining room 

A beautifully laid table 

 A Russian Easter buffet with roast suckeling pig

A rental when the recently remarried Princess Gourielli first investigated apartment suites there, like the majority of the East Side’s most fashionable buildings in 1941, number 625 Park Avenue refused to lease units to African Americans or Jews. Many, fearful of encountering such biases, avoided the embarrassment of rejection by self-segregating, in enclaves like the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. It comes as little surprise to learn that Helena Rubinstein had little interest in being relegated to anyone’s ghetto. Without hesitation, she bought the entire building and hired architect Max Wechsler of Wechsler & Schimenti to combined three apartments as her new abode, for $500,000.

 

Drinks on the terrace 

A birthday buffet with shrimp, ham, turkey and champagne punch  

 

Madame Walker, anxious to take her place among America’s ‘best society’, at least geographically, was thwarted in acquiring “Bishop’s Court”, a small estate in Queens, in 1917. When next she made a bid to live where the action and richest Americans were, aided by a white attorney, she succeeded. For nearly a century now, Walker’s now threatened “Villa Lewaro”, close to Jay Gould’s “Lyndhurst” and John D. Rockefellers “Kykuit”, has been one of the most conspicuous landmarks of Irvington, New York.

Featuring a 68-foot long oak-paneled living room, Helena Rubinstein’s last New York home brought together much of what she’d collected over a lifetime. One space was devoted to displaying dioramas with miniature rooms filled with diminutive furniture. An anteroom contained a set of Venetian shell-shaped grotto furniture that complimented murals painted by Salvador Dali. Breakfasting in her custom-made illuminated Lucite bed, a regal Madame, like a latter-day queen at her levée, enjoyed presiding over advertising presentations and other business meetings.

A morning conference. Madame's custom lucite bed cost just over $800.00 to make 

The suite of lucite furniture included chairs 

 

 Madame was not above moving things around when a change suited her

Suzanne Slesin, Rubinstein’s journalist step-granddaughter, called the apartment “unforgettable!”, enthusing over it’s Aladdin’s cave-like treasures: a rare Matisse landscape, early Picassos, powerful Rouault tapestries, dozens of candy-colored Mexican primitive paintings, works by Miro, Chagall, Derain and Modigliani, Chagall, Utrillo and de Chirico; African and Oceanic figures. Indonesian, Louis XIV and American Victorian Belter furniture; Russian icons, opaline glass; hundreds of drawings and prints by Degas, Dufy and Leger, and everywhere, she recalled with nostalgia, smooth, unblemished classical marble heads by Elie Nadelman, purchased from the Polish émigré’s first London showing en bloc, in 1915!

A rare wooden bust by Nadelman on view in the display of "Beauty is Power" 

Sadly, after Madame's death, when the building was converted into cooperative apartments, rival cosmetics tycoon, Charles Revson, bought the famous apartment and had McMillen redecorate, reducing all Rubinstein’s technicolor magnificence into a tastefully taupe backdrop not worth remembering. The sister of the Shah of Iran was the next owner. In the mid-1990’s Henry Kravis succeeded her, paying a then newsworthy price of $15-million.

Doing up a new Knightsbridge flat in 1960, Madame engaged the services of the young David Hicks, soon to become the jet set's darling 

With one’s curiosity piqued by the Jewish Museum’s masterful exhibition "Helena Rubinstein: Beauty is Power", it’s good to know her eventful and improbable life has been otherwise amply documented. An early most entertaining effort was written by her charming, calm and capable gay secretary-factotum, Patrick O’Higgins. Madame, his bittersweet memoir, among the finest biographies ever written, deftly captures so much of the nuance, style, wry wit, and mad resourcefulness of a woman who reflected on how at 90, she still carried her lunch to work in a brown paper sack, saying, “as a teenager, it embarrassed me. But now I can do what I want. So it seems chic to me to take my lunch to work in a paper bag…”

Helena Rubinstein's charming, stylish, calm and capable gay secretary-factotum, Patrick O’Higgins. who imortalized her with his memoir "Madame", which narrowly missed being made into a film. On her death he was bequeathed $5,000.00 outright and $2,000.00 yearly for life

In Lindy Woodhead’s War Paint, Madame is paired in an amusing mud-slinging match with her archrival beauty queen Elizabeth Arden. Over the Top by Rubenstein’s kinswoman by marriage, journalist Suzanne Slesin, produced by Slesin’s Pointed Leaf Press, is a lavishly illustrated chronicle which has been critically accessed as ‘magnificent. The legacy Rubinstein’s son Roy Titus bequeath to his fourth wife’s children, certainly was munificent, and how fitting it is that it should have provided for the publishing house that produced this worthy tribute.

A more problematic appraisal of the mighty Madame comes from a new book, Ugly Beauty: Helena Rubinstein, L'Oreal, and the Blemished History of Looking Good, by Ruth Brandon. It juxtaposes the rise of self-promoting, assertive, self-taught Polish Jew, Helena Rubenstein with that of social climbing, Nazi collaborator, French chemist, Eugene Schueller, of L'Oreal. The ultimate irony is how notwithstanding Hitler’s defeat and the demise of the National Socialists, it’s been L'Oreal that’s triumphed, both as the owners of Rubenstein’s firm and name and as an iniquitous force sullying everything in its wake. Some scandals associated with the company’s taint are profound, such as corrupt and covert contributions made to former President Mitterrand. Others, like lightening Beyonce's skin tone in a photograph, or engaging a white-only sale force at Macy's are almost farcical.

Yet the point of the book seems to be, two-fold: That even dead, Eugene Schueller‘s malevolence persists. While on the other hand, however heroic a role model Rubinstein might seem, making a place for women in the corporate world, and repeatedly battling misogyny and anti-Semitism, that she was no angle either. She is said to have failed Marc Chagall’s appeal for assistance to flee the Nazis and to have even failed to denounce the Germans before they murdered one her sisters.

Patron of inumerable groundbreaking artists and craftsmen, the benefactress of hundreds of individuals and numerous cultural intuitions around the world, what do even the worst failings of this imperfect but eternally fascinating woman, someone who improbably managed to change the world as she’d found it, matter?

 

 

 

 

 

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MAKING THE CASE TO SAVE EXTRAORDINARY VILLA LEWARO

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

Born just after slavery's end, America's first self-made black woman millionaire, Madam C. J. Walker built the finest house inhabited by a 'Negro'. Today it is in jeopardy due to avarice and racism, that dismisses African American history and attainment as unimportant. Symbolic of the depth and breath of America's unrealized offer of possibility, Villa Lewaro is an inspirational monument all patriots must join in preserving and opening to the public as a museum dedicated to faith and determination

 

 

 

 

Masterful magnate, Madam C. J. Walker, 1867-1919, the hair-care-beauty specialist who built the most spectacular residence ever owned by an African American in 1918: Villa Lewaro! Not for a moment was there ever the least doubt for her, as to why she was building such a showplace. Villa Lewaro was a testament as to the ability and value of African American faith and enterprize, and every black in America knew it!  

 

Circa 1908 

Circa 1910

 

  

 

Circa 1912

 

 

 

1924: Villa Lewaro, Irvington-0n-Hudson, Walker Company employees, sales agents and beauty culturists' convention outing. 

"The sprawling mansion, which served as a gathering place for notable leaders of the Harlem Renaissance, may soon be on the market — but it is not legally protected from demolition..." warns Peter Souleo Wright in the September 8, 2014 New York Daily News

Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

1924: Villa Lewaro, Irvington-0n-Hudson, Walker Company employees, sales agents and beauty culturists' convention outing. 

"The estate is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976, but it has no legal protections to prevent major changes to the property, including a complete leveling."Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/uptown/preservationists-save-historic-estate-madam-walker-article-1.1929984#ixzz3Czpdhc6g

 

 

Why is it that a man, just as soon as he gets enough money, builds a house much bigger than he needs? I built a house at Akron many times larger than I have the least use for; I have another house at Miami Beach, which is also much larger than I need. I suppose that before I die I shall buy or build other houses which also will be larger than I need. I do not know why I do it – the houses are only a burden.…all my friends who have acquired wealth have big houses…Even so unostentatious a man as Henry Ford has a much bigger house at Dearborn than he really cares about. I wonder why it is …In a few cases, a big house is built just as an advertisement that one is rich; sometimes a big house is built so great entertainments may be given. But in most cases, and especially with men who have earned their own money, the house is just built and when it is done, no one quite knows why it was started…Henry Ford 1926, Men and Rubber; The Story of Business

There are only a few houses ever built in America that hold such significance that they become the very embodiement of the American Dream. Completed in 1918, Villa Lewaro is such a house.  Henry Ford may have been preplexed as to why he had built a big dwelling, but Madam Walker experienced no such confusion. Not for a moment was there ever the least doubt for her, as to why she was building a showplace. For her, Villa Lewaro was a testament as to the value of African American ability, faith and enterprize, and every black in America knew it!  

 

Circa 1789: West Front of Mount Vernon, by Edward Savage.

Distinguishing historical substance from symbolism is imperative. Taught that Washigton was incapable of telling a lie, that he valued liberty above all else, the life of slaves at his vast plantation, with meager rations, communal accomodation and twelve hour workdays, reveals a harsher truth. 

 

For those who are un-knowledgeable, a cursory glance mightn't leave much of a lasting impression.  For many examining the surface of things, the constituent elements, making an aesthetic evaluation, their final conclusion might be that they'd seen a conventionally 'nice' mansion, in well-kept, but not extensive grounds. They might determine that the house  Sarah Breedlove-McWilliams-Davis-Walker built at Irvington, New York, "Villa Lewaro" was, as nice as it is, hardly exceptional.  

But from a better-informed vantage point, the Villa Lewaro, named a National Treasure this year by the National Trust, the grandest house ever built by an African American before 1960, is something else again. Howsoever 'modest' it might appear materially, in relation to grandiose abodes built by whites; placed in context, contrasted with the isolated and unequal conditions characteristic of African American life, it is as magical as the Summer Palace of China's dowager empress, as incomparable as the backdrop of the glittering court of the Sun King at Versailles. 

 

1858: Mount Vernon by Ferdinand Richardt 

By repeatedly expanding his father's existing one-and-a-half-storey farmhouse, over several decades, Washington created a structure with 11,028 square feet ! Mount Vernon dwarfed most dwellings in late 18th-century Virginia, which typically comprised one to two rooms, ranging in size from roughly 200 to 1200 square feet.

   

© 2004: Dinner at Mount Vernon by Pawinee McEntire 

Following George Washington's death, on the eve of a new century in 1799, his beloved Mount Vernon Plantation passed on to a succession of less capable heirs overwhelmed by its costly upkeep. Martha Washington's awareness had caused her to free slaves, otherwise freed by provision of her husband's will, upon her death.

Increasingly Mount Vernon fell into disrepair after a failed attempt by Washington’s great-great nephew John A. Washington to sell it to the United States or the Virginia Commonwealth in 1853. 

This prompted Ann Pamela Cunningham to establish the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, which began an unprecedented national campaign to purchase Mount Vernon and preserve it as a talisman of American history. This collaborative effort of patriotic and patrician white women from the north and the south alike, formed the nexus of the United State's historic preservation movement.

Every attempt was made to sanitize the memory of our foremost founding father. Acting to transform a bastion of white America's self-entitled wealth-through-oppression, into an icon of liberty, destroying the old slave quarters became the first imperative item of business before Mount Vernon was opened to the public as a shrine.  

Blenheim Palace, 1705-1722 by Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmore. Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England. 

Building one of the largest houses in Virginia, among the most commodious in the new nation, Washington had hardly sought to outdo the Dukes of Marlborough, whose house was one of the largest and grandiose in England. The Baroque masterpiece boast 175,000 square feet!

As an historian and a preservationist, one learns a good deal about where people stand historically, by looking at where, and how they live. A visit to venerable Addisleigh Park, in Saint Albans, Queens, is a revelation. Billed as the 'suburban Sugar Hill,' in reference to black Harlem's elite address of the 1930's and 1940's, the spic-and-span community offers neat mock-Tudor and Colonial Revival houses surrounded by supremely manicured lawns.  Initially met by restrictive deed covenants that prohibited the sale of property to blacks, after 1945 the enclave rapidly became home to a score of celebrities, from Lena Horne and Ella Fitzgerald, to Jackie Robinson, Count Basie and Joe Louis. A few houses boast double lots. Four or five even had swimming pools and tennis courts. But at best, the biggest houses here had about two-thousand square feet of space for living large.

 

 "Hyde Park", 1895, by McKim, Mead & White

Just as America's founding fathers wasted little time attempting to emulate far richer nobles in England, neither did Madam Walker seek to 'compete' with the splendor of the nearby Frederick William Vanderbilt estate, or the even closer and equally palatial Rockefeller place, at Tarrytown.  With fifty rooms comprising 44,000 square feet and two hundred acres, "Hyde Park" was one of the Hudson Valley's most notable showplaces.

 

Meanwhile, out in Beverly Hills, California, the largest houses of the most celebrated white stars, averaged around ten-thousand square feet. Accessing the extent of success accorded the United State's most acclaimed African Americans, it's useful to keep such observations of dramatic inequality in mind.    

 

Whether with architecture or through prodigious philanthropy to black causes, paying as much attention to projecting as regal an image as any sovereign, Madam Walker utilized a saga as poignant and compelling as Lincoln's trek from a back-woods cabin to the White House. This was how she distinguished her brand from every other similar product on the market. As this ad shows, for Walker, the concept that beauty and success were synonymous was espoused as an alluring doctrine of faith.

 

Twenty-three years ago, Thursday, August 29, 1991, expertly edited by Yanick Rice Lamb, my article, A Mansion With Room for the Great and Humble, was published in the Home section of the New York Times. "MY great-great-grandmother meant for her four-acre estate to be a showplace for black Americans that would motivate them to realize their own dreams," related A'Lelia Perry Bundles. Then a producer with ABC World News Tonight in Washington, Ms. Bundles was unknown to me. Now retired, as a philanthropist serving on the board of trustees of both Columbia University and the National Archives, my esteemed dear friend is more active and occupied than ever before. Beyond her endeavors to promote age-old Walker family interests, in education at Columbia, or history at the National Archives, it is A'Lelia Bundles veritable crusade to preserve and make known her own legacy, to protect and perpetuate her heritage, that's most commendable.

 

 

Lincoln Family log cabin, Sinking Spring Farm, Hodgenville, Kentucky  

This is reported to be the place where Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809.  Seven US presidents  were born in log cabins, including Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, and James Buchanan. Ironically, Whig contender William Henry Harrison, the son of a Virginia planter, hardly born in a log cabin, nonetheless  cynically appropriated this meager type of habitation as a symbol that he was a man of the people. Other candidates followed Harrison's example, making the idea of a log cabin, a background of modest means, a childhood spent overcoming the adversity of hard times, a recurring and classic campaign theme.

 

Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

 The Breedlove Family cabin at Delta, Louisiana

 A lowly log cabin has been a potent symbol of heroically-humble origins in US literature and politics since the early 19th century.

Renovated and featured in innumerable pieces since 1991, now threatened Villa Lewaro is ever so slowly gaining recognition as a singular monument to the American dream. When my story appeared, even after Stanley Nelson's titanic Walker documentary, Two Dollars and a Dream appeared, this was not so.  

Designed by Ventner Woodson Tandy, New York State's second registered black architect after his partner George Washington Foster, the neo-Palladian-style structure was built at Irvington-on-Hudson between 1916 and 1918. Close at hand are other larger historic houses on more ample acreage, that were built for famed whites. Several of these, writer Washington Irving's "Sunnyside", feared robber-baron Jay Gould's "Lyndhurst," and John D. Rockefeller's "Kykuit", are all operated as house museums and opened to the public. 'Why ought not this to be the case at Madam Walker's house?', I mused after my first visit to Villa Lewaro in 1988.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, America's bicentennial anniversary year, Villa Lewaro's then-owners, Ingo and Darlene Appel, greeted me warmly and encouraged my research and advocacy.  They had actually started exploring ways to make Madam Walker's house into a museum. As a result they'd engaged with several groups, including the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Madam C. J. Walker Committee of Westchester County.

"I think the time is right now," they were told by Steve Pruitt.  A government relations adviser, he was speaking on behalf of Representative Cardiss Collins of Illinois, who would introduce a bill calling for Federal funds to purchase and safeguard Villa Lewaro.  Historian Alex Haley of Roots fame, Oprah Winfrey and many others concurred. 

 

 "Cedar Hill", Anacostia, Southeast Washington, D.C.

Statesman Frederic Douglass lived in this respectable dwelling with his family from 1878 until his death in 1895. It's hardly a surprise learning that the largest contributor to a fund saving "Cedar Hill", and open it as a museum, an effort analogous to the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, was made by Madam Walker, to the National Association of Colored Women. Today a comparable undertaking is needed to preserve and open Villa Lewaro for public edification

 

I agreed too with this splendid idea.  So I was elated when a new 'Diversity Scholars' fund initiated by the Trust, picked up the tab for my airfare and hotel, enabling me to attend the nation's premiere preservation organization's annual conference at Miami Beach that autumn. This opportunity would give me a chance to ask Richard Moe, the Trust's new director, what he thought about the amorphous and tentative plans to make Madam Walker's house into a museum.

"Cultural Diversity" was the conference's theme. So why had it opened on Yom Kippur, the Jewish holy day of atonement? The seductive local ought to have further given me pause.  Why meet at Miami Beach? After local white politicians ignored recently freed Nelson Mandela durring his seven-city tour of America, black civil rights activists instituted a 1,000-day boycott against the local convention and tourism business. African American groups refusing to hold meetings or to book group tours in the region, meant an eventual loss of more than $50 million.

Still I stayed, undeterred, and had my chance to question Mr. Moe. Perfectly pleasant, he answered politely,

 "Under my tenure, I intend to lead the trust out of the business of collecting and opening the houses of the rich. We're past that..."

 

Protests that it might be a  fine idea, once the Trust saved and showed at least one rich person's house that had not been built by a white Christian man, were to no avail.

I'm in agreement with the stellar biographer Jean Strouse; no fabricated story can ever match history for drama, the unexpected, or valuable instruction. So I'm still convinced that Richard Moe's response to being cornered and confronted with a proposal that the Trust find some  way to acquire Villa Lewaro, was shortsighted, a missed opportunity.  For what an inspirational and encouraging tale can be told, examining the house that Madam Walker built.

"Villa Lewaro was", A'Lelia Bundles reiterates, "a symbol of what my great-great-grandmother termed 'the wealth of business possibilities within the race to point to young Negroes what a lone woman can accomplish and to inspire them to do big things.' "

Ms. Bundles's portrait of her ancestor is titled  On Her Own Ground, The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker. Published by Scribner's in 2001, it quickly became a national bestseller. How superbly A'Lelia Bundles un-spools the saga. How affectingly it resonates, as part primer, part cautionary tale. What is it that makes it so moving and so timeless?  This is a question that's answered easily enough. For all the nuanced specificity of Madam Walker's distinctly American life, an incessant journey seeking truth and meaning, bravely facing defeat and boldly tracking down triumph: her story is universal, too. 

 

Adamantly a 'race woman', Madam Walker was hardly deterred by condescension; neither from whites who disdained her very presence, nor from elitist blacks who felt past poverty and deficient education made her unacceptable. In America, wealth seldom hurts.  But Madam Walker's assets exceeded wealth alone. This was why Booker T. Washington, who initially tried to thwart her ambitions as a civil rights activist, had ended by becoming her friend.

Edward T. Bedford estate, by Montrose Morris, 1910, Green's Farms, Connecticut. 

Especially impressed by two nearly identical country houses near New York, Tandy adopted their design with only slight modifications. At Villa Lewaro, for instance, he used the simpler Ionic order in place of Composite columns with fluted shafts

 

Edward T. Bedford estate, by Montrose Morris, 1910, Green's Farms, Connecticut. Mr. Bedford was president of Corn Products Refining Co. and a director of the Standard Oil Co.

Villa Rosa Terrace, S. Z. Puli residence by Brown & Von Beren, 1914, Woodmont, Conneticut

Italian immigrant Sylvester Zefferino Poli a theater magnate associated with William Fox in the Lowe’s-Poli theater chain, started out sculpting wax figures for sensational and historic displays. Named for his wife, their waterfront estate consisted of the main house, and ten cottages deeded to five children

How slightly Vertner Tandy seems to have bothered to differentiate Villa Lewaro from the two nearby sources of inspiration he found illustraited in architectural journals

Circa 1928: Villa Lewaro, the Irvington, New York 20,000 square feet country house of Madam C. J. Walker, from 1918 to 1919. Walker is believed to be the first African American woman self-made millionaire, through the manufacture and sale of  hair care and beauty products, made expressly for blacks.

 Circa 1923: Villa Lewaro. 

Constructed just after the Walker townhouse, between  1916 and 1918, Madam Walker's country retreat cost  an estimated $250,000, a vast fortune at a time when the average wage for a black New Yorker was only $800 yearly. The name Villa Lewaro was coined by a visitor and friend, Enrico Caruso. It was derived from the first two letters of each word in Lelia Walker Robinson's name.

 Were one Jewish a century ago, chances are that attempting to move into a neighborhood that was not already substantially Jewish, would meet with resistance. Blacks were more fortunate, in one tiny paticular.  For Negros, before the 1940's there was little fear of restrictive deed covenants, that prohibited the sell, or even a future sell, sometimes into perpetuity, to a 'Colored person'. The common supposition was that Negros could not afford to buy property in nice neighborhoods. For all practical purposes, this was all too true. 

 Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

Circa 1935: 

Unlike most mansions on the Hudson, which sit like castles on the Rhine, Villa Lewaro is best seen from Broadway, the main street of Irvington. A two-storey semicircular portico dominates the street facade.

Circa 1949 

  

In the 1980's the huge trees that first attracted Madam Walker saved the house from a developer who wanted to erect condominiums. A tree ordinance protected the property.

 

After establishing a foothold in the 'Negro promised land' at Harlem, building a combination town house-beauty college-salon, the Walkes set their sights on a hose in the country. Madam C. J. Walker's bid to live in Irvington-On-Hudson, near Livingstons, Goulds and Rockefellers, was in fact her second try at locating where the action was, in the very midst of the country's most affluent whites. In the New York Times, March 25, 1916, it was announced that Mrs. C. J. Walker, through Samuel A. Singerman, her lawyer, had acquired "Bishop's Court". The price was given as around $40,000. Vertner Tandy filed plans for a house not so different from Villa Lewaro, but missing the graceful semi-elliptical portico. Madame Walker's entre into sacred precincts had commenced. Or had it?

 

Courtesy Historic New England/ Photo by David Boh

2011: Villa Lewaro, the porte cochere. Tandy's triumphal arch-like shelter for protection from the weather when alighting from or entering an automobile, is topped off by a sleeping porch and balcony

 

Like the would-be buyer, the seller of the "old English design, brick and timber house", set on a plot, 200 X 300 feet, was also black. Most unusual! His house was located at the North East corner of State and North Pine Streets, in an exclusive section of Flushing. Born in Antigua, in 1843, the Right Rev. William B. Derrick had a white Scottish father and a black Caribbean-born mother. According to his Times obituary, in 1913, educated in England, this African, Methodist, Episcopal, Zion prelate's jurisdiction included the West Indies, South America and the Islands Beyond the Seas. For this reason the renowned preacher was much involved outside the US, in setting up churches in Panama for blacks working to dig the canal, for instance.  Having rushed back from Britain to enlist in the Civil War, becoming sought after as a king-maker, able to reliably rally Negros to vote for Republicans, he was rather busy at home as well. "Bishop's Court" was his reward for a well-lived, sober life. White residents had certainly not welcomed his arrival around 1896. They had felt powerless indeed to prevent it. Over the years his sedate style of living had caused them to thank providence that it had not been worse. They were however, not about to take the same risk to property and propriety twice. All were determined, the Negro, former wash woman, from the west, was not to be admitted to their community. A reprise almost occurred at Irvington. But this time, Tandy did not produce drawing until after the deed was recorded.

Madam Walker's ambitious mansion was designed by Striver's Row resident,Vertner Woodson Tandy. A native of Lexington, Kentucky, Tandy studied under Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. He finished his studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., where he was one of seven founders of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first black college fraternity. He was also the first black to pass the military commissioning exam, and eventually became a major in the New York National Guard. 

 

Following his partner George W. Foster, Tandy would become New York’s second black registered architect, and the first black member of the American Institute of Architects. Apart from Madam Walker's two houses, among many alterations to existing buildings, he designed St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Harlem. Sadly, among his oeuvre, he only planned about ten additional houses, most of which have been greatly changed or destroyed. 

Vertner Tandy died in 1949 at age 64. 

 

Villa Lewaro, which Madame Walker built as a country house, was Tandy's "masterpiece," said Roberta Washington, a Harlem architect, who sits on the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. She discusses his career in depth in her forthcoming history of African American architects who practiced in New York State over the past century. "Yes, his work is derivative. He copied other people. Most designers did and do. But, just look at that novel way he introduced a light well, for the basement kitchen. The big terrace completely obscures the servants' area downstairs, giving them lots of light and air and privacy at the same time. That's good design in my book." 

Villa Lewaro's upper terrace conceals the kitchen light well and contains a home gymnasium

Circa 1924: Durring the blaze of a 1920's summer, from Villa Lewaro's palm decked terrace, the Hudson might as well to have flowed into the Mederterainian.

 

Three terraces step down to the swimming pool. Very few houses had swimming pools as early as Villa Lewaro.

 

 

 

Circa 1926: Villa Lewaro, the sunken garden and pool.

 

Set at the center of a hedge-enclosed sunken garden, that swimming pool at the Walker estate originally was lined with black masonry, enabling it to effectively act as a decorative reflecting pool too. Taken in the midst of a festive house party, this photograph shows brightly colored paper lanterns strung down the center of the garden.

 

 

 Circa 1926: Villa Lewaro, the sunken garden and pool.

 

In addition to having a dark interior, the pool boasted a setting resplendent with perennials planted in herbaceous borders in raised beds, retained by bolder walls, that embowered guests with blooms and fragrance

 

 

 

 Today the pool's raised borders at Villa Lewaro only have grass

 

 Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.

A pergola, with a curving center bay once framing the river view, has been restored. As to the dramatic prospect of shimmering water that the Walkers were so justly proud of , that has long ago vanished behind the dense foliage of  untended trees 

 

The Window punched into the side of Villa Lewaro's upper terrace, indicates Madame Walker's gymnasium, while an archway led into the kitchen light well and a service entrance.  Surmounted by a colonnaded pergola, the lowest terrace at Villa Lewaro was economically and beautifully constructed from rubble stones excavated on the property. Nearby, Madam Walker's ample garage at the edge of the property, provided extra accomodation for staff outside of the main house's top floor and basment.

The Villa Lewaro garage

 

2010: Villa Lewaro's great hall-living room

1918: The Living Hall, or living room. Vertner Tandy's trabeated ceiling, as much as Righter & Kolb's custom-designed furniture, combined to give Villa Lewaro an authentic Renaissance atmosphere

Aurora: Apollo in his chariot proceeded by Dawn, after Guido Reni, 1613-1614.

 

Even as a 19th century copy, this masterful Mannerist painting, reproducing a grand fresco with its vivid dissonant color harmony, never failed to make an impact on Villa Lewaro visitors 

 

 

Manufactured by Grand Rapids' Berkey & Gay Furniture Co., the walnut center table seen in Villa Lewaro's living room below, was based on 16th-century originals, like this example owned by great architect Stanford White  

 

Skillfully devised by Tandy to facilitate flexibility when entertaining, the reception rooms grouped on the first floor of Villa Lewaro easily flow one into the next. Alternately offering a relatively open combined envelope, or more compartmentalized spaces, it is the ultimate gala party setting 

 

 

 

Entry into Villa Lewaro was carefully calculated to best dramatize festivities held here with a maximum sense of pomp and pageantry.  From the very instant one came inside everything was designed to express that here was a realm apart. Leaving the entrance hall, two steps down, access into the Villa Lewaro living room was planned so that the arrival of each new guest, could be clearly observed by those assembled. Tandy was at pains to have a marble staircase, with all the splendor this implies.  But aware of his client's oopposition to extravagance, making reductions whever possible, in the entrance hall he cut corners for Madam Walker, by providing a machine-forged metal balustrade for the staircase, as opposed to a more expensive one, hand wrought from iron.  

  

 

Provided a needlework-covered Louis XIV-style rocking chair, Villa Lewaro's welcoming fireside, was immediately adjacent to a pierced grill of the Estey organ's sounding chamber.

The table lamp has a pierced brass Middle Eastern-style shade, glittering with glass jewels and beaded fring. Lighted, it must have added as much ambiance, with its pattern of colored shadows, as the sonorous music

 

 

Flower-form Arts and Crafts andirons graced the living room's Renaissance-style hooded mantelpiece, made of 'cast stone.' On the mantle shelf, Booker T. Washington's bust holds pride-of-place with two vases, formed from World War I German shell canisters, made of copper and silver loving cups, which attested to Madam Walker's generous philanthropy.

 

A bust of educator Booker T. Washington of the type pictured on the Villa Lewaro living room mantelpiece

The eclectic decor of Villa Lewaro was devised by Frank R. Smith, who apparently was employed by Righter & Kolb, the decorators of the Walker town house. Favorably describing two rooms in the "home of Mrs. C. J. Walker, at Tarrytown,  N. Y." they further related that, "Besides outlining the decorative scheme, Mr. Smith also supplied all the furniture, some of which he also designed..."  

Villa Lewaro's formal reception rooms, which open into one another along a straight line, form a series of contrasting areas. Neo-Renaissance in style, the great hall-living room and the barrel-vaulted dining room originally had furniture custom-made by Brekey & Gay, the Grand Rapids furniture manufacturers. The Louis XV-style music room still retains an Estey player-pipe organ with speaker ducts, which let music be heard throughout the house.

 

Villa Lewaro's decorator, Frank R. Smith of Righter & Kolb, had previously appointed Walker's Harlem townhouse. As the rendering above shows, his ideas for decorating Villa Lewaro, sometimes were more lavish than Madame Walker was willing to pay for

 

Beyond formal entertaing spaces, the living room, dining room, library, music room and solarium, thirty additional rooms included accommodations for eight servants and as many guests, a nursery, billiard room, gymnasium and laundry.

As for so many other builders of pleasure domes, it was all over rather quickly. Madam Walker died in 1919. Her daughter found the role of Lady Bountiful somewhat confining. Villa Lewaro was for her a less stimulating environment than Harlem.

But when duty beckoned, the house was the backdrop for a party: Lady Louis Mountbatten, Richard Bruce Nugent, Walker beauty-parlor girls and Pullman porters were all welcomed. In the 1920's A'Lelia Walker also let the house be used as a location for the black silent-movie classic "Secret Sorrow."

 

Courtesy of Half Pudding, Half Sause

 

1932: In Great Depression ravaged America, many fine houses besides Villa Lewaro, sold for a song

 

 

Even prior to A'Lelia Walker-Robinson-Wilson-Kennedy's death in 1931, an effort had been made to 'unload' costly-to-maintain Villa Lewaro. Two much-discussed auctions of its contents were staged.   In December of 1930, veteran dealer Benjamin Wise, with his force of black salesmen, conducted the first. It lasted three days. "White Buyers Strip Villa", screamed Harlem's Amsterdam News' headline, expressing something of the loss and heartache ordinary blacks felt, learning the news. A'Lelia's ormolu-mounted grand piano, Persian carpets, a French tapestry, a large spinach jade table lamp, beautifully bound sets of books, from a deluxe bible to the multi-volume memoirs of Casanova----all went under the hammer and were knocked down for a paltry $58,500! In light of prices payed to obtain these precious objects, just a little more than a decade earlier, this indeed represented pennies on the dollar.  But, all things considered, this was not such a bad result. Things went to hell in America after the debacle of November, 1929. Art and antique collectors once worth hundreds of millions, men like William Randolph Hearst or Clarence McKay, were forced to dispose of their treasures at department stores, for what really amounted to bargain basement prices, as well. In Newport, the ultra exclusive seaside summer resort, things were no better than at Irvington. "Marble House"was the palatial 'cottage' of Mrs. Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont, who as Mrs. Willie K. Vanderbilt had been the first social leader to divorce and remarry without sanction. Her 'cottage' is said to have cost $11,000,000.00 at the start of the 1890's! This is unlikely inasmuch as, well before the crash Mrs. Belmont challenged a property tax assessment based on a nearly $700,000.00 valuation. Indignant, she countered that around $400,000.00 was closer to the true value. Naturally, making this claim, she did not include the sumptuous contents of Marble House. Yet when she sold the four acre property in 1932, the house, lock, stock and barrel went for just a little over $100,000.00.

Even so, at Villa Lewaro, sufficient unsold remnants from six china dinner services, several sets of glassware, and other furnishings remained unsold to form the basis of a collection of Walker heirlooms that bring these figures to life, more vividly than anything that one could write.

Once A'Lelia passed away, Villa Lewaro was bequeathed to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which sold it in 1932 for $ 47,000.00 to the Annie E. Poth home for aged members of the Companions of the Forest in America, a fraternal organization. Under their care it remained largely intact for the next 50 years. 

  

The Annie Poth Home  was a refuge for the widows and orphans of the Frinds of the Forest Fraternal Society for over fifty years. 

 

 

1918: The vaulted dining room. Tablets among the ceiling's arabesque include the coupling of what appear to be a pair of same-sex lovers?

 

 

 

Robust cast plaster cornucopia fittingly ornament Villa Lewaro's dining room

 

An anonymous writer in Good Furniture Magazine, in 1918, praised Villa Lewaro's decor, observing of the dining room: "The arched ceiling is beautifully treated with a design of graceful lines and colors. The walls are without pictures or any ornamentation whatsoever. The furniture is of walnut, designed especially for this particular room. The result is a dinning-room, which unlike other dinning-rooms, is light, unstuffy and beautiful..." 

 

A trumpet-shaped "brilliant cut' glass vase of the type seen on the Villa Lewaro sideboard, in the view above.

 

  Courtesy of  Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

A sugar basin from an English china dinner service still owned by A'Lelia Bundles

 

  

 

A Spode china service plate of the same pattern as one used at Villa Lewaro 

 

  Courtesy of   Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

Breaking with tradition, this silver flatware once owned by Madam Walker, was engraved with her third husband's initails

 

 

Table linen, owned by A'Lelia Walker, 'corectly' bears the monogram, AWR, for A'Lelia Walker Robinson

 

1904: The East Room at the White House offered inspiration for Villa Lewaro's music room and many other ballrooms, private and public: earning for its designers the new name of "McKim, White & Gold"

 

Circa1920: The Music Room

  Terpsichore 

 

Crimsom silk velvet curtains in Villa Lewaro's music room, were embelished by satin madalions and silk tape articulation. The Queen Ann style davenport was covered in a flowered brocade  

 

After her mother died A'Lelia Walker replaced the music rooms conventional Steinway piano for one with an 'art case' in the Louis XV mode, mounted in ormolu. These gilded ornamental articulations caused her Peck-Hardman & Co. instrument to be named 'the gold piano'. In the 1930 sale it fetched only $450.00

 

  A gilded harp of the type found at Villa Lewaro

 

Nearly a century after they were installed, cut-glass chandeliers, with rocco ormolu mounts, still sparkle in Villa Lewaro's music room 

 

Circa 1920: Righter & Kolb were so exacting, that in Villa Lewaro's music room even the Victrola phonograph had its cabinet customised. It was painted with pastoral scenes in keeping with the rooms Watteauesque Lunettes and Louis XV sensibility. In 1930 it brought around $46.00

 

 

WHAT WAS A NEF?

 

 

 

 

 

A nef was an extravagant ship-shaped table ornament centerpiece and container used in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance. Quite rarely made of glass, usually they were elaborately fashioned from silver, silver-gilt, or gold and often enameled and jewel-encrusted, Nefs were  placed in front of the most important person at table as a mark of their status. When not just used for decoration, it might hold salt, spices, napkins, cutlery or even wine.  For this reason some nefs had wheels to allow them to be rolled from one end of the table to the other, but most had legs or stood on pedestals. 

  Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

Posed, poised and privileged alongside a graceful bureau plat, raffinée A’Lelia Walker, gowned in dark lace, looks every bit the pampered heiress. Most extraordinary among the accoutrements lending this scene such élan, is her repousse silver nef, a fantastic object with billowing sails and a large crew of minute hands, each exquisitely differentiated from the next. Most likely a late 19th-century copy of a late 16th-century example made in Augsburg, even these command $20,000.00 and more nowadays

 Emblems of Apollo enriched Villa Lewaro's splendid clock

 

   Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

Circa 1930: A'Lelia Walker sits in a Louis XV-style bergere beside a porcelain kater on a porcelain pedestal. Behind her is a Louis XIV-style clock of great presence. Like the clocks above and below, it was made to seem to be a timepiece in a nebulous of clouds amidst which puti play, resting on a terminal plinth, overlain with gilt bronze arabesque and festoons. Instead, it is a tall case or grandfather's clock, the ormolu-mounted center panel, opening to reveal the pendulum and weights.

Villa Lewaro's grand clock was a copy of the celebrated model made circa 1785 and attributed to Jean-Henri Riesener, now in the Louvre 

 

 

Neo-classical statuettes, such as this tinted alabaster nymph, graced each corner of Villa Lewaro's music room 

 Villa Lewaro's $25,000 Estey Pipe organ

 

As with many others who gain great riches, the Walkers set great store by quality. The best, the brightest, the biggest, ever held great appeal for them. Universally, the millionaire of 100 years ago esteemed the ultimate status symbol of a hone pipe organ. Largest and most complex of musical instruments, organs  traditionally had only been found in churches and royal palaces. Then, in the mid-19th century, organs started to be installed in houses of the well-to-do. Certainly the music was soothing, but so too must have been knowledge that home organs cost as much as, and sometimes more than, an ordinary houses!

 

 

 The Estey Organ Company, founded in 1852, went on to become the largest manufacturer of organs in the nation, with customers besides Madam Walker, including Henry Ford. Automatic player devices provided those who could afford them with a self-playing organ identified an elite among the elite. 

The Greek Slave 1848, Parian ware figutine by England's Minton's Pottery works. Parian, Minton's name for 'statuary porcelain', alludes to the white marble from the Greek isle, Paros.

 

The Greek Slave is a marble in Raby Castle, carved in Florence by American sculptor Hiram Powers in 1844.  Ostensibly it is merely a Grecian maiden, enslaved by Turks. But a cross and locket, amid the drapery, make it clear that she is a Christian, and betrothed.  

 

Powers intention was that one see her suffering, as transcendent, raised above outward degradation.  Innate purity and force of character bestow on her an uncompromising virtue that cannot be shamed. Many viewers on the eve of civil war, drew parallels between The Greek Slave and African American slaves in the South, with some abolitionists adopting the work, which was widely reproduced in ceramic reductions like Madame Walker's, as symbol. Compared with "the Virginian Slave", it was the subject of a John Greeleaf Whittier poem, inspiring as well a sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.  Lucy Stone, stopping to admire the statue broke into tears. For her it was emblematic of male misogyny. Thereafter, Stone included women's rights issues in her speeches

 

 A bust of Beethoven like the one atop Madam Walker's organ console

 

 

 Circa 1935

  

 

1919: A Villa Lewaro bedroom 

 

 

It's more usual than not, that children of the rich, raised in stately houses, fail to comply with the hope that they, and their children might always live in their childhood home. As James Maher noted in his poetic treatise on American palace builders, The Twilight of Splendor, a reoccurring motivation for building grand, has been the desire to establish a seat where one's well-established family might prosper and flourish for generations. Like countless others, the Walkers were not able to hold onto Villa Lewaro. Yet Madam Walker still initiated a dynasty, ambitious, socially conscious, bright, black and proud. A'Lelia Bundles part in the ensuing line of succession has been varied; filled with recognition and rewards for a groundbreaking career as a TV journalist, and that's quite wonderful.  Work for which she will most be remembered is quite different. One rarely grows rich writing history. But doing what A'Lelia has done and continues to do, with unstinting care and craft, one is granted the consolation of immortality!

Receiving such a warm reception with  On Her Own Ground, The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker, A'Lelia Bundles is continuing as she started.  She is in the final stages of rewriting, polishing her manuscript, well beyond the the superficial degree that others might. She is a perfectionist, like Walker women before her, and so will not be satisfied until her dulcet prose shines forth like a diamond.

Once she has finished, we will learn about all sorts of things long the cause of wonder. Was A'Lelia Walker's first husband, John Robinson, the hotel waiter, really the love of her life? Or, notwithstanding three tries tying the knot, was she also gay, like a score of her best friends, like several of her set who also married persons with a different gender than theirs?

We already know, that due to her industry, networking skills and keen instincts, that much of the success of the Walker Company was due to A'Lelia Walker. But far more awaits us, because once A'Lelia Bundles has completed her task, metaphorically, but still most magically, she will take us by the hand to the much changed world and times of her namesake. Guiding us into our recent history , like Dicken's spirit in A Christmas Carol, with but a touch of her gown, we'll be transported. Revealed will be a world familiar and foreign. Most surprisingly, we'll discover, that like our epoch, like our lives, it was hardly all bad, that many things were quite wonderful in fact. More amazing still, going back in time, communing with her people, our people, proud, prepared, purposeful and black, we will discover in them, those who have gone before us, our own wonderful selves. 

 

 

Circa 1912: Madam C. J. Walker by Addison Scurlock

Circa 1926: A'Lelia Walker

 Courtesy of  Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

1923: Mrs. Gordon H. Jackson

 Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

 

1955: A'Lelia Perry Bundles as a child with her parents,  A'Lelia Mae Perry Bundles,  and S. Henry Bundles 

 

 Courtesy of  Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

Ms. Bundles, the coed

 

Like remarkable historians who have come before, whether Stephen Birmingham, who wrote Certain People, David Levering Lewis, the author of When Harlem was in Vogue, or Gerri Major, who penned Black Society, A'Lelia Bundles is engaged in establishing a legacy too. 

 

 

 

2013 

 Ca. 1913: Incomparable A'Lelia Walker

 

 

 

Circa 1919: A'Lelia Walker by Addison Scurlock 

 

  

 1911: Turban with egret aigrette and turquoise jewel  by Paul Poiret

Circa 1911: A'Lelia Walker wearing brocade turban with egret aigrette by Paul Poiret. The innovative Paris couturier, who banished corsets, was a friend who A'Lelia Walker entertained.

 1927: A'Lelia Walker by James Latimer Allen

Circa 1930 

  

 A'Lelia Walker was born Lelia McWilliams in 1889.  Celebrated as Harlem's most chic Salonnière, the subject of a much anticipated new book by A'Lelia Bundles,  her great-granddaughter and namesake Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance.©,  she was Madam Walker's only child.  Once her mother died in 1919, a daughter and business partner never forgot the bad times. Perhaps, it was recalling the hurt and hardship of the Walkers' early life that made her so self indulgent? For much like white heiresses, between marring and divorcing three husbands, she gained a reputation as one of Harlem's, and one of New York's, foremost party givers. 

  

 

 Courtesy of  Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

 

 

That late great trailblazing historian from San Francisco, Eric Garber, wrote of A'Lelia's penchant for parties and gay people:

 

"Because A'Lelia adored the company of lesbians and gay men, her parties had a distinctly gay ambiance. Elegant homosexuals such as Edward Perry, Edna Thomas. Harold Jackman, and Caska Bonds were her closest friends. So were scores of white celebrities..."

 

Much earlier, novelist Marjorie Worthington remembered:

 

"We went several times that winter to Madame Allelia [sic] Walker's Thursday "at-homes" on a beautiful street in Harlem known as, Sugar Hill...." [Madame Walker's] lavishly furnished house was a gathering place not only for artists and authors and theatrical stars of her own race, but for celebrities from all over the world. Drinks and food were served, and there was always music, generously performed enthusiastically received."

Madam Walker, and especially her daughter A'Lelia, loved to fill their home with friends. Madam Walker's initial gala, a luncheon party for nearly 100, blacks and whites, was hosted in honor of the Hon. Emmett J. Scott, Special Assistant to the Secretary of War in September of 1918. President wilson, after first objecting, at last allowed blacks to fight in the World War, and Mr, Scott is the closest African Americans have to a cabinet officer. Madame Walker's guests lunched out on the terrace before entering the music room for musical entertainment. J. Rosamond Johnson, who wrote, "Lift Every Voice and Sing", "The African American National Anthem", eminent organist Melville Charlton and other musicians played and sang. It was a lovely afternoon, but not without purpose. Determined that like official entertaining at the White House, that her social gatherings contributed to political action, Madam Walker used this occasion to implore blacks to set aside differences, and support the war-effort. She also asked that Washington take note of black participation in the defence of democracy and outlaw lynching.

The Hon. Emmett J. Scott, Special Assistant to the Secretary of War

As for A'Lelia Walker, she was more easy.  Many recollections confirm her generous nature, her delight in enjoyment, and in providing pleasure as well.  By all accounts, everyone from chorus girls to artists to socialites to visiting royalty would come at least once to enjoy her engaging hospitality. Whether at the Dark Tower, 80 Edgecombe, or Villa Lewaro, wherever she was, though not named 'Laeticia', A'Lelia was the "joy goddess."

They say that whatever one's race, class, condition or sexuality today, that people are, on the whole, rather impatient.  If then you are an intrepid exception, and have made it this far: through over one hundred pages, numerous pictures and 8,176 words or so, besides offering my congratulations, I ought perhaps to summarize of my intent. Originalist ideologues, nostalgic for paternalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy notwithstanding, ever-changing America, has not changed enough. Justice delayed is, justice denied. Long ago, any landmark as significant to white history, as Villa Lewaro is to blacks, would have been made a museum.

Still beckoning and golden, the American Dream must not be allowed to become irrelevant. It is still so rich and real and robust, but for fewer and fewer, seems within reach. As America evolves to grow ever more diverse, opportunity and reward, ought to expand and not retract to enrich just some few at the top.

Madam C. J. Walker, her daughter A'Lelia Walker, both strove towards such an empowering and beneficial end. An outstanding relic of their faith in our country, Villa Lewaro, as much as Mount Vernon or Monticello, is a shrine that deserves to be on public view, as a museum dedicated to determination and the humanitarian impulse to help others.

 

  Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

Circa 1918: Villa Lewaro Guests

Madam Walker, and especially her daughter A'Lelia, loved to fill their home with friends. They included not only eminent blacks like the poet William Stanley Braithwaite and the composer and concert singer Harry T. Burleigh, but Walker beauty-shop operators. One guest, Enrico Caruso, coined the villa's name, using two letters from each name of Madam Walker's only child, A'lelia Walker Robinson. 

Lloyd and Edna Thomas

Edna was a great actress. A blunder-some miss-identification confuses her with another Edna Thomas, a white contemporary who sang Negro spirituals, as "the Lady from Louisiana". Although Harlem's Edna Thomas possessed a pleasant voice, she never sang professionally and started out as Madam Walker's social secretary. One of her jobs, according to Jimmie Daniels,  was to look up words Walker did not understand reading the newspaper. Regretting having only a  scant education, Madam Walker exploited any opportunity to enhance her knowledge.

Lloyd Thomas managed their 136th street beauty salon for the Walkers. In 1929, at a party given by A'Lelia, Lloyd introduced Edna to English aristocrat Olivia Wyndham. For the rest of their lives the women were a devoted couple 

A manservant for Mrs. and Mrs. Basil Rathbone, Edward Perry studied painting with Winold Reiss, before moving on to acting and stage management. Esteemed as Harlem's Elsa Maxwell, late in life he had a career as a party consultant 

1929: Harold Jackman by Richmond Barthe

Designated the "handsomest man in Harlem," London-born Harold Jackman, who had an unknown white English father and a black West Indian mother, was a high school teacher, model, actor, writer, and patron, with a life-long interest theater and in documenting African American cultural life. Gay in most every way, he nonetheless managed to have a daughter, with a white friend, to whom he left half his estate

Circa 1926: Carl Van Vechten. Music critic-novelist-photographer-party goer-host with the most, VanVechten's most important role was as an impresario who orchestrated the acceptable presentation of Afrcan American culture to, an at first wary, white public. His notorious novel Nigger Heaven, drawing heavily on his Harlem escapades, was viewed as a betrayal by some, but not by A'Lelia Walker, who vainly attempted to induce the affluent writer to buy Villa Lewaro. Twice married, but gay, he wrote "A thing of beauty, is a boy forever..."

1927: Spirited off as a young boy to England by an aristocrat who lived on London's Lilac Sweep, Caska Bonds grew to become a music coach, with attractive protegees of uneven talent. A particular friend of A'Lelia's he gained the lease of her apartment when she died. He lived there with a youth named Embry Bonner 

Cocaine-addict and Harlem lover Princess Violette Murat, was born Violette Jacqueline Charlotte Ney d'Elchingen. Writer Zora Neal Husrton called her "Princess Muskrat". Fortunately, as she was a lesbian, her husband, Bonaparte Prince Eugene Louis Michel Joachim Napoleon Murat, pre-deceased her by almost 40 years

Julius Lorenzo Cobb Bledsoe was a once-renowned, but now forgotten baritone, the first 'Joe' in "Showboat" and the first African American artist to gain regular employment on Broadway. None the less, finding legitimate operatic roles scare  in the States, he concertized to acclaim and profit in Europe. Here he met his well-to-do Dutch lover, sometime-diplomatic cultural attache, Adriain Frederick Huygens 

Ivor Novello, a Welsh composer, playwright, matanee and film star became one of the most popular British entertainers of the first half of the 20th century. Born into a musical family, his operatic-coach-mother Clara Davies, was the teacher of Caska Bonds. Norvello's  first big success was as a songwriter was the World War I favorite "Keep the Home Fires Burning"

Geraldyn Hodges Dismond, Harlem's 'Lady Nicotine', a inveterate journalist from Chicago, who in time, ditched her philandering husband, to become Gerri Major of Jet Magazine

The 'Night Hawk', Gerrie's husband, the college football star, World War I hero, Dr. Binga Dismond, a man said to have too much, of everything! 

  

Jimmie Daniels and Wallace Thurman shared a room as boarders  at 1890 Seventh Avenue on the north-west corner of 115th Street, in a cooperative unit owned by Edna and Lloyd Thomas.  Edna Thomas' white lesbian lover, English aristocrat Olivia Wyndham, who also lived here, is seen with in the picture above, with Edna, at the center.   Jimmie is on the far left, while Lloyd sits on the right, with 'It Girl' Blanche Dunn on his lap.

 

 

 

 

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VITAL VILLA LEWARO, MAKING THE CASE FOR AN ALL-AMERICAN SHOWPLACE

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

Masterful magnate, Madame C. J. Walker, 1867-1919, the hair-care-beauty specialist who built the most spectacular residence ever owned by an African American in 1917: Villa Lewaro! Not for a moment was there ever the least doubt for her, as to why she was building such a showplace. Villa Lewaro was a testament as to the ability and value of African American faith and enterprize, and every black in America knew it!  

 

Circa 1908 

Circa 1910

 

  

 

Circa 1912

 

 

 

1924: Villa Lewaro, Irvington-0n-Hudson, Walker beauty parlor franchise holders' convention outing. 

Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

1924: Villa Lewaro, Irvington-0n-Hudson, Walker beauty parlor franchise holders' convention outing. 

 

 

Why is it that a man, just as soon as he gets enough money, builds a house much bigger than he needs? I built a house at Akron many times larger than I have the least use for; I have another house at Miami Beach, which is also much larger than I need. I suppose that before I die I shall buy or build other houses which also will be larger than I need. I do not know why I do it – the houses are only a burden.…all my friends who have acquired wealth have big houses…Even so unostentatious a man as Henry Ford has a much bigger house at Dearborn than he really cares about. I wonder why it is …In a few cases, a big house is built just as an advertisement that one is rich; sometimes a big house is built so great entertainments may be given. But in most cases, and especially with men who have earned their own money, the house is just built and when it is done, no one quite knows why it was started…Henry Ford 1926, Men and Rubber; The Story of Business

There are only a few houses ever built in America that hold such significance that they become the very embodiement of the American Dream. Completed in 1918, Villa Lewaro is such a house.  Henry Ford may have been preplexed as to why he had built a big dwelling, but Madame Walker experienced no such confusion. Not for a moment was there ever the least doubt for her, as to why she was building a showplace. For her, Villa Lewaro was a testament as to the value of African American ability, faith and enterprize, and every black in America knew it!  

 

Circa 1789: West Front of Mount Vernon, by Edward Savage.

Distinguishing historical substance from symbolism is imperative. Taught that Washigton was incapable of telling a lie, that he valued liberty above all else, the life of slaves at his vast plantation, with meager rations, communal accomodation and twelve hour workdays, reveals a harsher truth. 

 

For those who are un-knowledgeable, a cursory glance mightn't leave much of a lasting impression.  For many examining the surface of things, the constituent elements, making an aesthetic evaluation, their final conclusion might be that they'd seen a conventionally 'nice' mansion, in well-kept, but not extensive grounds. They might determine that the house Sara Breedlove McWilliams Walker built at Irvington, New York, "Villa Lewaro", as nice as it is, is hardly exceptional.  

But from a better-informed vantage point, the Villa Lewaro, named a National Treasure this year by the National Trust, the grandest house ever built by an African American before 1960, is something else again. Howsoever 'modest' it might appear materially, in relation to grandiose abodes built by whites; placed in context, contrasted with the isolated and unequal conditions characteristic of African American life, it is as magical as the Summer Palace of China's dowager empress, as incomparable as the backdrop of the glittering court of the Sun King at Versailles. 

 

1858: Mount Vernon by Ferdinand Richardt 

By repeatedly expanding his father's existing one-and-a-half-storey farmhouse, over several decades, Washington created a structure with 11,028 square feet ! Mount Vernon dwarfed most dwellings in late 18th-century Virginia, which typically comprised one to two rooms, ranging in size from roughly 200 to 1200 square feet.

   

© 2004: Dinner at Mount Vernon by Pawinee McEntire 

Following George Washington's death, on the eve of a new century in 1799, his beloved Mount Vernon Plantation passed on to a succession of less capable heirs overwhelmed by its costly upkeep. Martha Washington's awareness had caused her to free slaves, otherwise freed by provision of her husband's will, upon her death.

Increasingly Mount Vernon fell into disrepair after a failed attempt by Washington’s great-great nephew John A. Washington to sell it to the United States or the Virginia Commonwealth in 1853. 

This prompted Ann Pamela Cunningham to establish the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, which began an unprecedented national campaign to purchase Mount Vernon and preserve it as a talisman of American history. This collaborative effort of patriotic and patrician white women from the north and the south alike, formed the nexus of the United State's historic preservation movement.

Every attempt was made to sanitize the memory of our foremost founding father. Acting to transform a bastion of white America's self-entitled wealth-through-oppression, into an icon of liberty, destroying the old slave quarters became the first imperative item of business before Mount Vernon was opened to the public as a shrine.  

 

Blenheim Palace, 1705-1722 by Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmore. Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England. 

Building one of the largest houses in Virginia, among the most commodious in the new nation, Washington had hardly sought to outdo the Dukes of Marlborough, whose house was one of the largest and grandiose in England. The Baroque masterpiece boast 175,000 square feet!

Monticello, 1769-1809 by Thomas Jefferson

Introducing the first dome on an American house, counting the cellars, Monticello has around 11,000 square feet of living space.

Ickworth, 1795-1830 designed by Mario Aspurcci, executed by Francis and Joseph Sandy, laocated at Horringer, Burry St. Edmunds. Suffolk, England

Not completed until well after the death of its builder, connoisseur collector Frederick Hervey, Bishop of Derry and 4th Earl of Bristol, in 1803, Ickworth, with its central rotunda and curving wings, was truly a temple of art. Monticello, by contrast, is not even as large as the servants' quarters here.

 

As an historian and a preservationist, one learns a good deal about where people stand, by looking at where, and how they live. A visit to historic Addisleigh Park, in Saint Albans, Queens, is a revelation. Billed as the 'suburban Sugar Hill,' in reference to black Harlem's elite address of the 1930's and 1940's, the spic-and-span community offers neat mock-Tudor and Colonial Revival houses surrounded by supremely manicured lawns.  Initially met by restrictive deed covenants that prohibited the sale of property to blacks, after 1945 the enclave rapidly became home to a score of celebrities, from Lena Horne and Ella Fitzgerald, to Jackie Robinson, Count Basie and Joe Louis. A few houses boast double lots. Four or five even had swimming pools and tennis courts. But at best, the biggest houses here had about two-thousand square feet of space for living large.

 

 "Hyde Park", 1895, by McKim, Mead & White

Just as America's founding fathers wasted little time attempting to emulate far richer nobles in England, neither did Madame Walker seek to 'compete' with the splendor of the nearby Frederick William Vanderbilt estate, or the even closer and equally palatial Rockefeller place, at Tarrytown.  With fifty rooms comprising 44,000 square feet and two hundred acres, "Hyde Park" was one of the Hudson Valley's most notable showplaces.

 

Meanwhile, out in Beverly Hills, California, the largest houses of the most celebrated white stars, averaged around ten-thousand square feet. Accessing the extent of success accorded the United State's most acclaimed African Americans, it's useful to keep such observations of dramatic inequality in mind.    

 

Whether with architecture or through prodigious philanthropy to black causes, paying as much attention to projecting as regal an image as any sovereign, Madam Walker utilized a saga as poignant and compelling as Lincoln's trek from a back-woods cabin to the White House. This was how she distinguished her brand from every other similar product on the market. As this ad shows, for Walker, the concept that beauty and success were synonymous was espoused as an alluring doctrine of faith.

 

Twenty-three years ago, Thursday, August 29, 1991, expertly edited by Yanick Rice Lamb, my article, A Mansion With Room for the Great and Humble, was published in the Home section of the New York Times. "MY great-great-grandmother meant for her four-acre estate to be a showplace for black Americans that would motivate them to realize their own dreams," related A'lelia Perry Bundles. Then a producer with ABC World News Tonight in Washington, Ms. Bundles was unknown to me. Now retired, as a philanthropist serving on the board of trustees of both Columbia University and the National Archives, my esteemed dear friend is more active and occupied than ever before. 

 

 

Lincoln Family log cabin, Sinking Spring Farm, Hodgenville, Kentucky  

This is reported to be the place where Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809.  Seven US presidents  were born in log cabins, including Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, and James Buchanan. Ironically, Whig contender William Henry Harrison, the son of a Virginia planter, hardly born in a log cabin, nonetheless  cynically appropriated this meager type of habitation as a symbol that he was a man of the people. Other candidates followed Harrison's example, making the idea of a log cabin, a background of modest means, a childhood spent overcoming the adversity of hard times, a recurring and classic campaign theme.

 

Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

 The Breedlove Family cabin at Delta, Louisiana

 A lowly log cabin has been a potent symbol of heroically-humble origins in US literature and politics since the early 19th century.

Restored and featured in innumerable pieces since 1991, Villa Lewaro is ever so slowly gaining recognition as a singular monument to the American dream. When my story appeared, even after Stanley Nelson's titanic Walker documentary, Two Dollars and a Dream appeared, this was not so.  

Designed by Ventner Woodson Tandy, New York State's second registered black architect after his partner George Washinton Foster, the neo-Palladian-style structure was built at Irvington-on-Hudson between 1916 and 1918. Close at hand are other larger historic houses on more ample acreage, that were built for famed whites. Several of these, writer Washington Irving's "Sunnyside", feared robber-baron Jay Gould's "Lyndhurst," and John D. Rockefeller's "Kykuit", are all operated as house museums and opened to the public. 'Why ought not this to be the case at Madame Walker's house?', I mused after my first visit to Villa Lewaro in 1988.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, America's bicentennial anniversary year, Villa Lewaro's then-owners, Ingo and Darlene Appel, greeted me warmly and welcomed my interest.  They had actually started exploring ways to make Madame Walker's house into a museum. As a result they'd engaged with several groups, including the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Madame C. J. Walker Committee of Westchester County.

"I think the time is right now," they were told by Steve Pruitt.  A government relations adviser, he was speaking on behalf of Representative Cardiss Collins of Illinois, who would introduce a bill calling for Federal funds to purchase and safeguard Villa Lewaro.  Historian Alex Haley of Roots fame, Oprah Winfrey and many others concurred. 

 

 "Cedar Hill", Anacostia, Southeast Washington, D.C.

Statesman Frederic Douglas lived in this respectable dwelling with his family from 1878 until his death in 1895. It's hardly a surprise learning that the largest contributor to save "Cedar Hill" prior to it being opened to the public, came from Madame Walker

 

I agreed too with this splendid idea.  So I was elated when a new 'Diversity Scholars' fund initiated by the Trust, picked up the tab for my airfare and hotel, enabling me to attend the nation's premiere preservation organization's annual conference at Miami Beach that autumn. This opportunity would give me a chance to ask Richard Moe, the Trust's new director, what he thought about the amorphous and tentative plans to make Madame Walker's house into a museum.

 

 Alonzo Herndon residence, 587 University Pl., NW, Atlanta, Georgia, 1910

 A former slave raised in a sharecropping family, after the Civil War Herndon owned and managed a string of barbershops. Investing profits into real estate, becoming the largest black property owner in Atlanta by 1900, Herndon next founded the Atlanta Life Insurance Company, to become Atlanta's first black millionaire. Maintained as a museum, W. E. B. Dubois praised Herndon’s Georgian Revival house as, ‘the finest residence in America owned by a Negro.’ At the time of this statement, naturally, Villa Lewaro had not yet been built.

 

 "Cultural Diversity" was the conference's theme. So why had it opened on Yom Kippur, the Jewish holy day of atonement? The seductive local ought to have further given me pause.  Why meet at Miami Beach? After local white politicians ignored recently freed Nelson Mandela durring his seven-city tour of America, black civil rights activists instituted a 1,000-day boycott against the local convention and tourism business. African American groups refusing to hold meetings or to book group tours in the region, meant an eventual loss of more than $50 million.

Still I stayed, undeterred, and had my chance to question Mr. Moe. Perfectly pleasant, he answered politely,

 "Under my tenure, I intend to lead the trust out of the business of collecting and opening the houses of the rich. We're past that..."

 

Protests that it might be a  fine idea, once the Trust saved and showed at least one rich person's house that had not been built by a white Christian man, were to no avail.

   

Number 1048 Simpson Road, (now Joseph E. Boone Boulevard ), Atlanta, Georgia, erected 1926 by the African American Aiken & Faulkner Construction Co. located on Auburn Avenue: demolished 1962

In 1926, the year he built this house, Theodore "Tiger" Flowers,  famed as the "Fighting Georgia Deacon" became the first black boxer to win the world middleweight championship. Less than a year later, cheated out of his title in a rigged bout, in November 1927, at thirty-two, Flowers died.  He died in Harlem, undergoing surgery to remove scar tissue above his eye. His magnificent house, featuring a plaster bas relief of a tiger's head above the drawing room door, was demolished in 1962

 

I'm in agreement with the stellar biographer Jean Strouse; no fabricated story can ever match history for drama, the unexpected, or valuable instruction. So I'm still convinced that Richard Moe's response to being cornered and confronted with a proposal that the Trust find some  way to acquire Villa Lewaro, was shortsighted, a missed opportunity.  For what an inspirational and encouraging tale can be told, examining the house that Madame Walker built.

 

Stylishly of its time, even the house architect-to-the-stars, Paul Revere Williams built for himself in Los Angeles, in 1951, fails to approach the opulence of Villa Lewaro

 

"Villa Lewaro was", A'Lelia Bundles reiterates, "a symbol of what my great-great-grandmother termed 'the wealth of business possibilities within the race to point to young Negroes what a lone woman can accomplish and to inspire them to do big things.' "

Ms. Bundles's portrait of her ancestor is titled  On Her Own Ground, The Life and Times of Madame C. J. Walker. Published by Scribner's in 2001, it quickly became a national bestseller. How superbly A'Lelia Bundles un-spools the saga. How affectingly it resonates, as part primer, part cautionary tale. What is it that makes it so moving and so timeless?  This is a question that's answered easily enough. For all the nuanced specificity of Madame Walker's distinctly American life, an incessant journey seeking truth and meaning, bravely facing defeat and boldly tracking down triumph: her story is universal, too. 

 

Adamantly a 'race woman', Madam Walker was hardly deterred by condescension; neither from whites who disdained her very presence, nor from elitist blacks who felt past poverty and deficient education made her unacceptable. In America, wealth seldom hurts.  But Madame Walker's assets exceeded wealth alone. This was why Booker T. Washington, who initially tried to thwart her ambitions as a civil rights activist, had ended by becoming her friend.

 

 

Edward T. Bedford estate, by Montrose Morris, 1910, Green's Farms, Connecticut. 

Especially impressed by two nearly identical country houses near New York, Tandy adopted their design with only slight modifications. At Villa Lewaro, for instance, he used the simpler Ionic order in place of Composite columns with fluted shafts

 

Edward T. Bedford estate, by Montrose Morris, 1910, Green's Farms, Connecticut. Mr. Bedford was president of Corn Products Refining Co. and a director of the Standard Oil Co.

Villa Rosa Terrace, S. Z. Puli residence by Brown & Von Beren, 1914, Woodmont, Conneticut

Italian immigrant Sylvester Zefferino Poli a theater magnate associated with William Fox in the Lowe’s-Poli theater chain, started out sculpting wax figures for sensational and historic displays. Named for his wife, their waterfront estate consisted of the main house, and ten cottages deeded to five children

How slightly Vertner Tandy seems to have bothered to differentiate Villa Lewaro from the two nearby sources of inspiration he found illustraited in architectural journals

Circa 1928: Villa Lewaro, the Irvington, New York 20,000 square feet country house of Madam C. J. Walker, from 1918 to 1919. Walker is believed to be the first African American woman self-made millionaire, through the manufacture and sale of  hair care and beauty products, made expressly for blacks.

 Circa 1923: Villa Lewaro. 

Constructed just after the Walker townhouse, between  1916 and 1918, Madam Walker's country retreat cost  an estimated $250,000, a vast fortune at a time when the average wage for a black New Yorker was only $800 yearly. The name Villa Lewaro was coined by a visitor and friend, Enrico Caruso. It was derived from the first two letters of each word in Lelia Walker Robinson's name.

 Were one Jewish a century ago, chances are that attempting to move into a neighborhood that was not already substantially Jewish, would meet with resistance. Blacks were more fortunate, in one tiny paticular.  For Negros, there was little fear of restrictive deed covenants, that prohibited the sell, or even a future sell, sometimes into perpetuity, to a 'Colored person'. The common supposition was that Negros could not afford to buy property in nice neighborhoods. For all practical purposes, this was all too true. 

 Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

Circa 1935: 

Unlike most mansions on the Hudson, which sit like castles on the Rhine, Villa Lewaro is best seen from Broadway, the main street of Irvington. A two-storey semicircular portico dominates the street facade.

Circa 1949 

  

In the 1980's the huge trees that first attracted Mme. Walker saved the house from a developer who wanted to erect condominiums. A tree ordinance protected the property.

 

The Villa Lewaro mansion Vertner Tandy designed for Madame Walker in exclusive Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, started to be restored in the 1980s by Ingo Appel. In the following decade this comendable undertaking was completed by Harold Doley, shown here with his wife Alma and their son. A native of New Orleans, Mr. Doley was the first black to buy an individual seat on the New York Stock Exchange. 

 

After establishing a foothold in the 'Negro promised land' at Harlem, building a combination town house-beauty college-salon, the Walkes set their sights on a hose in the country. Madame C. J. Walker's bid to live in Irvington-On-Hudson, near Livingstons, Goulds and Rockefellers, was in fact her second try at locating where the action was, in the very midst of the country's most affluent whites. In the New York Times, March 25, 1916, it was announced that Mrs. C. J. Walker, through Samuel A. Singerman, her lawyer, had acquired "Bishop's Court". The price was given as around $40,000. Vertner Tandy filed plans for a house not so different from Villa Lewaro, but missing the graceful semi-elliptical portico. Madame Walker's entre into sacred precincts had commenced. Or had it?

 

Courtesy Historic New England/ Photo by David Boh

2011: Villa Lewaro, the porte cochere. Tandy's triumphal arch-like shelter for protection from the weather when alighting from or entering an automobile, is topped off by a sleeping porch and balcony

 

Like the would-be buyer, the seller of the "old English design, brick and timber house", set on a plot, 200 X 300 feet, was also black. Most unusual! His house was located at the North East corner of State and North Pine Streets, in an exclusive section of Flushing. Born in Antigua, in 1843, the Right Rev. William B. Derrick had a white Scottish father and a black Caribbean-born mother. According to his Times obituary, in 1913, educated in England, this African, Methodist, Episcopal, Zion prelate's jurisdiction included the West Indies, South America and the Islands Beyond the Seas. For this reason the renowned preacher was much involved outside the US, in setting up churches in Panama for blacks working to dig the canal, for instance.  Having rushed back from Britain to enlist in the Civil War, becoming sought after as a king-maker, able to reliably rally Negros to vote for Republicans, he was rather busy at home as well. "Bishop's Court" was his reward for a well-lived, sober life. White residents had certainly not welcomed his arrival around 1896. They had felt powerless indeed to prevent it. Over the years his sedate style of living had caused them to thank providence that it had not been worse. They were however, not about to take the same risk to property and propriety twice. All were determined, the Negro, former wash woman, from the west, was not to be admitted to their community. A reprise almost occurred at Irvington. But this time, Tandy did not produce drawing until after the deed was recorded.

 

Madame Walker's ambitious mansion was designed by Striver's Row resident,Vertner Woodson Tandy. A native of Lexington, Kentucky, Tandy studied under Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. He finished his studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., where he was one of seven founders of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first black college fraternity. He was also the first black to pass the military commissioning exam, and eventually became a major in the New York National Guard. 

Following his partner George W. Foster, Tandy would become New York’s second black registered architect, and the first black member of the American Institute of Architects. Apart from Madame Walker's two houses, among many alterations to existing buildings, he designed St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Harlem. Sadly, among his oeuvre, he only planned about ten additional houses, most of which have been greatly changed or destroyed. 

Vertner Tandy died in 1949 at age 64. 

 

Villa Lewaro, which Madame Walker built as a country house, was Tandy's "masterpiece," said Roberta Washington, a Harlem architect, who discusses his career in depth in her forthcoming history of African American architects who practiced in New York State over the past century. "Yes, his work is derivative. He copied other people. Most designers did and do. But, just look at that novel way he introduced a light well, for the basement kitchen. The big terrace completely obscures the servants' area downstairs, giving them lots of light and air and privacy at the same time. That's good design in my book." 

 

 

Circa 1924: Durring the blaze of a 1920's summer, from Villa Lewaro's palm decked terrace, the Hudson might as well to have flowed into the Mederterainian.

   

 Courtesy Historic New England/ Photo by David Boh

From Villa Lewaro's garden elevation, where an elevator bulkhead seems to have been added to the roof-line, three terraces step down to the swimming pool. Very few houses had swimming pools as early as Villa Lewaro.

 

 

Circa 1926: Villa Lewaro, the sunken garden and pool.

 

Set at the center of a hedge-enclosed sunken garden, that swimming pool at the Walker estate originally was lined with black masonry, enabling it to effectively act as a decorative reflecting pool too. Taken in the midst of a festive house party, this photograph shows brightly colored paper lanterns strung down the center of the garden.

 

 

 Circa 1926: Villa Lewaro, the sunken garden and pool.

 

In addition to having a dark interior, the pool boasted a setting resplendent with perennials planted in herbaceous borders in raised beds, retained by bolder walls, that embowered guests with blooms and fragrance

 

 

 

 Today the pool's raised borders at Villa Lewaro only have grass

 

  Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.

 

A pergola, with a curving center bay once framing the river view, has been restored. As to the dramatic prospect of shimmering water that the Walkers were so justly proud of , that has long ago vanished behind the dense foliage of  untended trees 

 

 

 

The Window punched into the side of Villa Lewaro's upper terrace, indicates Madame Walker's gymnasium, while an archway led into the kitchen light well and a service entrance.  Surmounted by a colonnaded pergola, the lowest terrace at Villa Lewaro was economically and beautifully constructed from rubble stones excavated on the property. Nearby, Madame Walker's ample garage at the edge of the property, provided extra accomodation for staff outside of the main house's top floor and basment.

 

 

Manufactured by Grand Rapids' Berkey & Gay Furniture Co., the center table seen in Villa Lewaro's living room below, was based on 16th-century originals, like this example owned by great architect Stanford White 

 

1918: The Living Hall, or living room. Vertner Tandy's trabeated ceiling, as much as Righter & Kolb's custom-designed furniture, combined to give Villa Lewaro an authentic Renaissance atmosphere

 

 

 Aurora: Apollo in his chariot proceeded by Dawn, after Guido Reni, 1613-1614.

 

Even as a 19th century copy, this masterful Mannerist painting, reproducing a grand fresco with its vivid disonant color harmony, never failed to make an impact on Villa Lewaro visitors 

 

 

 

Skillfully devised by Tandy to facilitate flexibility when entertaining, the reception rooms grouped on the first floor of Villa Lewaro easily flow one into the next. Alternately offering a relatively open combined envelope, or more compartmentalized spaces, it is the ultimate gala party setting 

 

 

 

Entry into Villa Lewaro was carefully orchestrated to best dramatize festivities held here with a maximum sense of pomp and pageantry.  From the very instant one came inside everything was calculated to express that here was a realm apart. Leaving the entrance hall, two steps down, access into the Villa Lewaro living room was planned so that the arrival of each new guest, could be clearly observed by those assembled. Tandy was at pains to have a marble staircase, with all the splendor this implies.  But aware of his client's oopposition to extravagance, making reductions whever possible, he cut corners for Madame Walker, by providing a machine-forged metal balustrade, as opposed to a more expensive one, hand wrought from iron.  

  

 

Provided a needlework-covered Louis XIV-style rocking chair, Villa Lewaro's welcoming fireside, was immediately adjacent to a pierced grill of the Estey organ's sounding chamber. The table lamp has a pierced brass Middle Eastern-style shade, glittering with glass jewels and beaded fring. Lighted, it must have added as much ambiance, with its pattern of colored shadows, as the sonorous music

 

 

Flower-form Arts and Crafts andirons gracing the living room's Renaissance-style hooded mantelpiece, made of 'cast stone.' On the mantle shelf, Booker T. Washington's bust holds pride-of-place with two vases, formed from World War I German shell canisters, made of copper and silver loving cups, which attested to Madame Walker's generous philanthropy.

 

A bust of educator Booker T. Washington of the type pictured on the Villa Lewaro living room mantelpiece

The eclectic decor of Villa Lewaro was devised by Frank R. Smith, who apearently was employed by Righter & Kolb, the decorators of the Walker town house. The formal reception rooms, which open into one another along a straight line, form a series of contrasting areas. Neo-Renaissance in style, the great hall-living room and the barrel-vaulted dining room originally had furniture custom-made by Brekey & Gay. The Louis XV-style music room still retains an Estey player-pipe organ with speaker ducts, which let music be heard throughout the house.

 

 

Villa Lewaro's decorator, Frank R. Smith of Righter & Kolb, had previously appointed Walker's Harlem townhouse. As the rendering above shows, his ideas for decorating Villa Lewaro, sometimes were more lavish than Madame Walker was willing to pay for

 

Beyond formal entertaing spaces, the living room, dining room, library, music room and solarium, thirty additional rooms included accommodations for eight servants and as many guests, a nursery, billiard room, gymnasium and laundry.

As for so many other builders of pleasure domes, it was all over rather quickly. Madame Walker died in 1919. Her daughter found the role of Lady Bountiful somewhat confining. Villa Lewaro was for her a less stimulating environment than Harlem.

But when duty beckoned, the house was the backdrop for a party: Lady Mountbatten, Richard Bruce Nugent, Walker beauty-parlor girls and Pullman porters were all welcomed. In the 1920's A'Lelia Walker also let the house be used as a location for the black silent-movie classic "Secret Sorrow."

Even prior to A'Lelia Walker-Robinson-Wilson-Kennedy's death in 1931, an effort had been made to 'unload' costly-to-maintain Villa Lewaro. Two much-discussed auctions of its contents were staged.   In December of 1930, veteran dealer Benjamin Wise, with his force of black salesmen, conducted the first. It lasted three days. "White Buyers Strip Villa", screamed Harlem's Amsterdam New, newspaper, expressing something of the loss and heartache ordinary blacks felt, learning the news. A'Lelia's ormolu-mounted grand piano, Persian carpets, a French tapestry, a large spinach jade table lamp, beautifully bound sets of books, from a deluxe bible to the multi-volume memoirs of Casanova----all went under the hammer and were knocked down for a paltry $58,500! In light of prices payed to obtain these precious objects, just a little more than a decade earlier, this indeed represented pennies on the dollar.  But, all things considered, this was not such a bad result. Things went to hell in America after the debacle of November, 1929. Art and antique collectors once worth hundreds of millions, men like William Randolph Hearst or Clarence McKay, were forced to dispose of their treasures at department stores, for what really amounted to bargain basement prices, as well. In Newport, the ultra exclusive seaside summer resort, things were no better than at Irvington. "Marble House"was the palatial 'cottage' of Mrs. Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont, who as Mrs. Willie K. Vanderbilt had been the first social leader to divorce and remarry without sanction. Her 'cottage' is said to have cost $11,000,000.00 at the start of the 1890's! This is unlikely inasmuch as, well before the crash Mrs. Belmont challenged a property tax assessment based on a nearly $700,000.00 valuation. Indignant, she countered that around $400,000.00 was closer to the true value. Naturally, making this claim, she did not include the sumptuous contents of Marble House. Yet when she sold the four acre property in 1932, the house, lock, stock and barrel went for just a little over $100,000.00.

 

Courtesy of Half Pudding, Half Sause

1932

 

Even so, at Villa Lewaro, sufficient unsold remnants from six china dinner service, several sets of glassware, and other furnishings remained unsold to form the basis of a collection of Walker heirlooms that bring these figures to life, more vividly than anything that one could write.

Once A'Lelia passed away, Villa Lewaro was bequeathed to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which sold it in 1932 to the Annie E. Poth home for aged members of the Companions of the Forest in America, a fraternal organization. Under their care it remained largely intact for the next 50 years. 

  

The Annie Poth Home  was a refuge for the widows and orphans of the Frinds of the Forest Fraternal Society for over fifty years. 

 

 

1918: The vaulted dining room. Tablets among the ceiling's arabesque include the coupling of what appear to be a pair of same-sex lovers?

 

 

Robust cast plaster cornucopia fittingly ornament Villa Lewaro's dining room

 

A trumpet-shaped "brilliant cut' glass vase of the type seen on the Villa Lewaro sideboard, in the view above.

 

  

 Courtesy of  Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

 

A sugar basin from an English china dinner service still owned by A'Lelia Bundles

 

  

 

A Spode china service plate of the same pattern as one used at Villa Lewaro 

 

 

 Courtesy of   Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

Breaking with tradition, this silver flatware once owned by Madame Walker, was engraved with her second husband's initails

 

 

Table linen, owned by A'Lelia Walker, 'corectly' bears the monogram, AWR, for A'Lelia Walker Robinson 

 

 

 1904: The East Room at the White House offered inspiration for Villa Lewaro's music room and many other ballrooms, private and public: earning for its designers the new name of "McKim, White & Gold"

 

Circa1920: The Music Room

 

  Terpsichore 

 

 After her mother died A'Lelia Walker replaced the music rooms conventional Steinway piano for one with an 'art case' in the Louis XV mode, mounted in ormolu. These gilded ornamental articulations caused her Peck-Hardman & Co. instrument to be named 'the gold piano'. In the 1930 sale it fetched only $450.00

 

 

 A gilded harp of the type found at Villa Lewaro

 

Circa 1920: Righter & Kolb were so exacting, that in Villa Lewaro's music room even the Victrola phonograph had its cabinet customised. It was painted with pastoral scenes in keeping with the rooms Watteauesque Lunettes and Louis XV sensibility. In 1930 it brought around $46.00

 

 

WHAT WAS A NEF?

 

 

 

 

 

A nef was an extravagant ship-shaped table ornament centerpiece and container used in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance. Quite rarely made of glass, usually they were elaborately fashioned from silver, silver-gilt, or gold and often enameled and jewel-encrusted, Nefs were  placed in front of the most important person at table as a mark of their status. When not just used for decoration, it might hold salt, spices, napkins, cutlery or even wine.  For this reason some nefs had wheels to allow them to be rolled from one end of the table to the other, but most had legs or stood on pedestals. 

 

  

Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

 Posed, poised and privileged alongside a graceful bureau plat, raffinée A’Lelia Walker, gowned in dark lace, looks every bit the pampered heiress. Most extraordinary among the accoutrements lending this scene such élan, is her repousse silver nef, a fantastic object with billowing sails and a large crew of minute hands, each exquisitely differentiated from the next. Most likely a late 19th-century copy of a late 16th-century example made in Augsburg, even these command $20,000.00 and more nowadays

  

 

 

   Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

Circa 1930: A'Lelia Walker sits in a Louis XV-style bergere beside a porcelain kater on a porcelain pedestal. Behind her is a Louis XIV-style clock of great presence. Like the clocks above and below, it was made to seem to be a timepiece in a nebulous of clouds amidst which puti play, resting on a terminal plinth, overlain with gilt bronze arabesque and festoons. Instead, it is a tall case or grandfather's clock, the ormolu-mounted center panel, opening to reveal the pendulum and weights.

 Villa Lewaro's grand clock was a copy of the celebrated model made circa 1785 and attributed to Jean-Henri Riesener, now in the Louvre 

 

 

 

 

Villa Lewaro's $25,000 Estey Pipe organ

 

As with many others who gain great riches, the Walkers set great store by quality. The best, the brightest, the biggest, ever held great appeal for them. Universally, the millionaire of 100 years ago esteemed the ultimate status symbol of a hone pipe organ. Largest and most complex of musical instruments, organs  traditionally had only been found in churches and royal palaces. Then, in the mid-19th century, organs started to be installed in houses of the well-to-do. Certainly the music was soothing, but so too must have been knowledge that home organs cost as much as, and sometimes more than, an ordinary houses!

 

The Estey Organ Company, founded in 1852, went on to become the largest manufacturer of organs in the nation, with customers besides Madame Walker, including Henry Ford. Automatic player devices provided those who could afford them with a self-playing organ identified an elite among the elite. 

 

 

 

The Greek Slave 1848, Parian ware figutine by England's Minton's Pottery works. Parian, Minton's name for 'statuary porcelain', alludes to the white marble from the Greek isle, Paros.

 

The Greek Slave is a marble in Raby Castle, carved in Florence by American sculptor Hiram Powers in 1844.  Ostensibly it is merely a Grecian maiden, enslaved by Turks. But a cross and locket, amid the drapery, make it clear that she is a Christian, and betrothed.  

 

Powers intention was that one see her suffering, as transcendent, raised above outward degradation.  Innate purity and force of character bestow on her an uncompromising virtue that cannot be shamed. Many viewers on the eve of civil war, drew parallels between The Greek Slave and African American slaves in the South, with some abolitionists adopting the work, which was widely reproduced in ceramic reductions like Madame Walker's, as symbol. Compared with "the Virginian Slave", it was the subject of a John Greeleaf Whittier poem, inspiring as well a sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.  Lucy Stone, stopping to admire the statue broke into tears. For her it was emblematic of male misogyny. Thereafter, Stone included women's rights issues in her speeches.

 

 

 A bust of Beethoven like the one atop Madame Walker's organ console

 

 

 Circa 1935

 

  

 

1919: A Villa Lewaro bedroom 

 

 

Madame Walker initiated a dynasty, ambitious, socially conscious, bright, black and proud. A'Lelia Bundles part in the ensuing line of succession has been varied; filled with recognition and rewards for a groundbreaking career as a TV journalist, and that's quite wonderful.  Work for which she will most be remembered is quite different. One rarely grows rich writing history. But doing what A'Lelia has done and continues to do, with unstinting care and craft, one is granted the consolation of immortality!

Receiving such a warm reception with  On Her Own Ground, The Life and Times of Madame C. J. Walker, A'Lelia Bundles is continuing as she started.  She is in the final stages of rewriting, polishing her manuscript, well beyond the the superficial degree that others might. She is a perfectionist, like Walker women before her, and so will not be satisfied until her dulcet prose shines forth like a diamond.

Once she has finished, we will learn about all sorts of things long the cause of wonder. Was A'Lelia Walker's first husband, John Robinson, the hotel waiter, really the love of her life? Or, notwithstanding three tries tying the knot, was she also gay, like a score of her best friends, like several of her set who also married persons with a different gender than theirs?

We already know, that due to her industry, networking skills and keen instincts, that much of the success of the Walker Company was due to A'Lelia Walker. But far more awaits us, because once A'Lelia Bundles has completed her task, metaphorically, but still most magically, she will take us by the hand to the much changed world and times of her namesake. Guiding us into our recent history , like Dicken's spirit in A Christmas Carol, with but a touch of her gown, we'll be transported. Revealed will be a world familiar and foreign. Most surprisingly, we'll discover, that like our epoch, like our lives, it was hardly all bad, that many things were quite wonderful in fact. More amazing still, going back in time, communing with her people, our people, proud, prepared, purposeful and black, we will discover in them, those who have gone before us, our own wonderful selves. 

 

 

Circa 1912: Madame C. J. Walker by Addison Scurlock

Circa 1927: A'Lelia Walker

 Courtesy of  Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

1923: Mrs. Gordon H. Jackson

 Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

 

1955: A'Lelia Perry Bundles as a child with her parents,  A'Lelia Mae Perry Bundles,  and S. Henry Bundles 

 

 

Courtesy of  Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

 

Ms. Bundles, the coed

 

Like remarkable historians who have come before, whether Stephen Birmingham, who wrote Certain People, David Levering Lewis, the author of When Harlem was in Vogue, or Gerrie Major, who penned Black Society, A'Lelia Bundles is engaged in establishing a legacy too. 

 

 

 

2013 

 

 Ca. 1913: Incomparable A'Lelia Walker

 

 

 

Circa 1919: A'Lelia Walker by Addison Scurlock 

 

  

 

1911: Turban with Egret aigrette and turquoise jewel  by Paul Poiret

Circa 1911: A'Lelia Walker wearing brocade turban with egret aigrette by Paul Poiret. The innovative Paris couturier, who banished corsets, was a friend who A'Lelia Walker entertained.

 A'Lelia Walker by Berenice Abbott circa 1930 

 

 

Circa 1930 

  

   

 A'Lelia Walker was born Lelia McWilliams in 1889.  Celebrated as Harlem's most chic Salonnière, the subject of a much anticipated new book by A'Lelia Bundles,  her great-granddaughter and namesake Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance.©,  she was Madam Walker's only child.  Once her mother died in 1919, a daughter and business partner never forgot the bad times. Perhaps, it was recalling the hurt and hardship of the Walkers' early life that made her so self indulgent? For much like white heiresses, between marring and divorcing three husbands, she gained a reputation as one of Harlem's, and one of New York's, foremost party givers. 

  

 

 Courtesy of  Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

 

 

That late great trailblazing historian from San Francisco, Eric Garber, wrote of A'Lelia's penchant for parties and gay people:

 

"Because A'Lelia adored the company of lesbians and gay men, her parties had a distinctly gay ambiance. Elegant homosexuals such as Edward Perry, Edna Thomas. Harold Jackman, and Caska Bonds were her closest friends. So were scores of white celebrities..."

 

Much earlier, novelist Marjorie Worthington remembered:

 

"We went several times that winter to Madame Allelia [sic] Walker's Thursday "at-homes" on a beautiful street in Harlem known as, Sugar Hill...." [Madame Walker's] lavishly furnished house was a gathering place not only for artists and authors and theatrical stars of her own race, but for celebrities from all over the world. Drinks and food were served, and there was always music, generously performed enthusiastically received."

Madame Walker, and especially her daughter A'Lelia, loved to fill their home with friends. Madame Walker's initial gala, a luncheon party for nearly 100, blacks and whites, was hosted in honor of the Hon. Emmett J. Scott, Special Assistant to the Secretary of War in September of 1918. President wilson, after first objecting, at last allowed blacks to fight in the World War, and Mr, Scott is the closest African Americans have to a cabinet officer. Madame Walker's guests lunched out on the terrace before entering the music room for musical entertainment. J. Rosamond Johnson, who wrote, "Lift Every Voice and Sing", "The African American National Anthem", eminent organist Melville Charlton and other musicians played and sang. It was a lovely afternoon, but not without purpose. Determined that like official entertaining at the White House, that her social gatherings contributed to political action, Madame Walker used this occasion to implore blacks to set aside differences, and support the war-effort. She also asked that Washington take note of black participation in the defence of democracy and outlaw lynching.

The Hon. Emmett J. Scott, Special Assistant to the Secretary of War

As for A'Lelia Walker, she was more easy.  Many recollections confirm her generous nature, her delight in enjoyment, and in providing pleasure as well.  By all accounts, everyone from chorus girls to artists to socialites to visiting royalty would come at least once to enjoy her engaging hospitality. Whether at the Dark Tower, 80 Edgecombe, or Villa Lewaro, wherever she was, though not named 'Laeticia', A'Lelia was the "joy goddess."

They say that whatever one's race, class, condition or sexuality today, that people are, on the whole, rather impatient.  If then you are an intrepid exception, and have made it this far: through over one hundred pages, numerous pictures and 12,275 words or so, besides offering my congratulations, I ought perhaps to summarize of my intent. Originalist ideologues, nostalgic for paternalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy notwithstanding, ever-changing America, has not changed enough. Justice delayed is, justice denied.

Still beckoning and golden, the American Dream must not be allowed to become irrelevant. It is still so rich and real and robust, but for fewer and fewer, seems within reach. As America evolves to grow ever more diverse, opportunity and reward, ought to expand and not retract to enrich just some at the top.

Madame C. J. Walker, her daughter A'Lelia Walker, both strove towards such an empowering and beneficial end. An outstanding relic of their faith in our country, Villa Lewaro, as much as Mount Vernon or Monticello, is a shrine that deserves to be on public view, as a museum dedicated to determination and the humanitarian impulse to help others.

 

 

 

  Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

 Circa 1918: Villa Lewaro Guests

Madame Walker, and especially her daughter A'Lelia, loved to fill their home with friends. They included not only eminent blacks like the poet William Stanley Braithwaite and the composer and concert singer Harry T. Burleigh, but Walker beauty-shop operators. One guest, Enrico Caruso, coined the villa's name, using two letters from each name of Mme. Walker's only child, A'lelia Walker Robinson. 

 

Lloyd and Edna Thomas

Edna was a great actress. She started out as Madame Walker's social secretary. One of her jobs was to look up words Walker did not understand reading the newspaper. Regretting having only a  scant education, in this way she could learn and expand her vocabulary.

Lloyd Thomas managed their 136th street beauty salon for the Walkers. In 1929, at a party given by A'Lelia, Lloyd introduced Edna to English aristocrat Olivia Wyndham. For the rest of their lives the women were a devoted couple 

A manservant for Mrs. and Mrs. Basil Rathbone, Edward Perry studied painting with Winold Reiss, before moving on to acting and stage management. Esteemed as Harlem's Elsa Maxwell, late in life he had a career as a party consultant 

1929: Harold Jackman by Richmond Barthe

Designated the "handsomest man in Harlem," London-born Harold Jackman, who had an unknown white English father and a black West Indian mother, was a high school teacher, model, actor, writer, and patron, with a life-long interest theater and in documenting African American cultural life. Gay in most every way, he nonetheless managed to have a daughter, with a white friend, to whom he left half his estate

Spirited off as a young boy to England by an aristocrat who lived on London's Lilac Sweep, Bonds grew to become a music coach, with attractive protegees of uneven talent. A particular friend of A'Lelia's he gained the lease of her apartment when she died. He lived there with a youth named Embry Bonner 

Cocaine-addict and Harlem lover Princess Violette Murat, was born Violette Jacqueline Charlotte Ney d'Elchingen. Writer Zora Neal Husrton called her "Princess Muskrat". Fortunately, as she was a lesbian, her husband, Bonaparte Prince Eugene Louis Michel Joachim Napoleon Murat, pre-deceased her by almost 40 years

Julius Lorenzo Cobb Bledsoe was a once-renowned, but now forgotten baritone, the first 'Joe' in "Showboat" and the first African American artist to gain regular employment on Broadway. None the less, finding legitimate operatic roles scare  in the States, he concertized to acclaim and profit in Europe. Here he met his well-to-do Dutch lover, sometime-diplomatic cultural attache, Adriain Frederick Huygens 

Ivor Novello, a Welsh composer, playwright, matanee and film star became one of the most popular British entertainers of the first half of the 20th century. Born into a musical family, his operatic-coach-mother Clara Davies, was the teacher of Caska Bonds. Norvello's  first big success was as a songwriter was the World War I favorite "Keep the Home Fires Burning"

Geraldyn Hodges Dismond, Harlem's 'Lady Nicotine', a inveterate journalist from Chicago, who in time, ditched her philandering husband, to become Gerrie Major of Jet Magazine

The 'Night Hawk', Gerrie's husband, the college football star, World War I hero, Dr. Binga Dismond, a man said to have too much, of everything! 

  

Jimmy Daniels and Wallace Thurman shared a room as boarders  at 1890 Seventh Avenue on the north-west corner of 115th Street, in a cooperative unit owned by Edna and Lloyd Thomas.  Edna Thomas' white lesbian lover, English aristocrat Olivia Wyndham, who also lived here, is seen with in the picture above, with Edna, at the center.   Jimmy is on the far left, while Lloyd sits on the right, with 'It Girl' Blanche Dunn on his lap.

 

 

VILLA LEWARO! AN ALL-AMERICAN SHOWPLACE

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

Masterful magnate, Madame C. J. Walker, the hair-care-beauty specialist who built the most spectacular residence ever owned by an African American in 1917: Villa Lewaro! Not for a moment was there ever the least doubt for her, as to why she was building such a showplace. Villa Lewaro was a testament as to the ability and value of African American faith and enterprize, and every black in America knew it!  

 

 

 

 

 

Circa 1908 

Circa 1910

 

 

 

Circa 1912

Near her life's end, Madame C. J. Walker averrrd that African Americans were a race that " has watered your soil with its tears and enriched your soil with its blood". She made an impassioned plea that lynching be outlawed, stating :

 

"I am asking that this government enact a law that will make mob violence and lynching a federal crime, so that our women will not be hanged from trees in Georgia while they give birth to their babes and that our sons, and our fathers, and our brothers may not be chained to the stake in Tennessee and made human torches of, and parts of their bodies dismembered and taken away as souvenirs, and their heads severed from their charred bodies and thrown into the midst of our august bodies while they are in convention assembled."  

 

Racism, branding America's misbegotten black citizens as lazy, criminal and hedonistic, indifferent and willfully ignorant, is the height of irony.  For what group, doing all the tasks no one else would do, has worked harder, or longer towards amassing our country's great wealth? Who has better undertaken and mastered all we pursue, with greater brio and originality?  Which servants ever more faithfully enabled a sybaritic lifestyle for more exacting masters with discerning tastes for  luxury?

 

 

1924: Villa Lewaro, Irvington-0n-Hudson, Walker beauty parlor franchise holders' convention outing. 

 

Straight out of bondage some former slaves became doctors, teachers, artists and inventors. Others continued in essential, more menial tasks. Tilling the soil, refining ore, digging ditches, loading cargoes, cooking, nursing, cleaning---everything--- everywhere: We did that.  Were we ever well treated or properly paid? 

Today, still singled out, we disproportionately pay fines for minor infractions, and in this way and others continue to play a significant role economically.  Brilliantly batting, bouncing, driving, slicing, and catching balls, blacks are the unsurpassed gladiators of today's circus. The plaintive songs of black youth, desperate to be loved and admired, exuding bravado and sensuality, wistfully expressing a yearning to be fabulous, to be free, are our national sound track. Yet who, among us, has benefited to the degree of recording studio or ball team owners?

 

Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

1924: Villa Lewaro, Irvington-0n-Hudson, Walker beauty parlor franchise holders' convention outing. 

 

 

Nothing is as unbearably frightening as blackness.  So the controlling surveillance of black people, keeps employed mostly white forces of police and prison guards.  From New Orleans to Detroit and beyond, blacks inhabit and give value to substandard, otherwise valueless housing. Then comes the time, when our tax dollars contribute to policies that subsidise gentrification and our dispatch. There is no more dependable TV audience than African Americans. Blacks also prodigiously consume quantities of unhealthily food and drink. Hindered, hobbled, held back, kept perpetually poor and uneducated, all we do makes others rich.

Yet for all we have done, for all we do, unrelentingly we are our nation's scapegoat.  If blacks do not quite absolve the ineptitude of the man behind the curtain, reliably, African Americans are a wonderful distraction. Much as in Hitler's Germany, when Jews were systematically persecuted and denied participation in public life, ever-present ridicule and debasement in the media, literature, art, and texts, successfully served to dehumanize African Americas. Blacks were demonized to an extent that made oppression and unjustly punitive sanction accepted, as the distasteful, for some, but essential means of maintaining public order, as indeed, the means of preserving the norms of civilization.

Nowadays we face a subtler, more insidious sort of prejudice. But as the Doll Test shows, to be black in America, is to be dismissed as stupid, ugly and scary, is to be despised. My friend Adam Gopnik asserts further, that even in so enlightened a place as New York City, most comfortably-off, "Middle Class people are willing to dispense with a certain amount of civil liberty, in order to feel safe..." 

 

© "Yo Mama's Pieta, 1996" by Renee Cox, is just one of the arresting still images that illuminate Thomas Allen Harris’s  documentary, Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People 

 

In the past, political leaders such as William Edward Burghardt Du Bois and academicians like Alaine Locke,  helped to stage-manage the "Negro Renaissance". A skillful propaganda campaign of the 1920's, featuring African American cultural accomplishment via dancers, painters, actors, singers, writers and musicians, it was meant to show that blacks merited equality too.  'Race women,' like Madam C. J. Walker and her daughter A'Lelia, who dubbed as the Joy Goddess of Harlem, became a great personality of this period, also worked and lived to affirm the worthiness of African Americans. 

Because such efforts sadly remain necessary for black well-being and fulfilment, for black  survival, it's fortunate that young intellectuals, film makers and others are at work now to challenge black defamation. 

Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People, is Thomas Allen Harris’s extraordinary new documentary. Produced in collaboration with pioneering photography historian Debora Willis, it is a unique examination of the way black photographers selected and represented their subjects in a way that let them use cameras as a powerful weapon to fight back against alienating stereotypes.

 

Thomas Allen Harris’s  documentary, Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People, is a compelling examination of the way black photographers effected social change with prideful images

 

Blackbird, a new feature film made by Harlem's Patrik-Ian Polk, similarly explores how hate and alienation, particularly when internalized, can be terribly destructive. Polk's timely drama centers on a talented teenage singer troubled by adolescent conflict.

 

Even in a hip spot like Harlem, messages of intolerance and contempt for difference thrive. Uncontested they endanger our children, poisoning the psyche of kids who haven't even discovered who they are, with fear and self -loathing. Worse, they feed the insecurity of some and lead to harm, like the senseless murder of lovely Islan Nettles last year, that took place in broad daylight, in front of a police station. 

 

His faith, family, and friends all dictate that he adhere to a conventional identity acceptable in the sleepy Southern Baptist hamlet where he lives. Like the rest of us, he has to learn to accept and love himself. Turmoil only comes to an end once he stops allowing others to determine who that is. 

 

Begiling and beautiful newcomer Julian Walker, starring in Blackbird with Isaiah Washington and Mo'Nique, manifest the full diversity that enriches America.

 

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time...James Baldwin 1963

May 25, 1911: Laura Nelson and her 15-year-old son L.D. Nelson  were lynched in Okfuskee County, Oklahoma. In their day, they were Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown.

Eager to have lynching outlawed, just prior to her death, Madame C. J. Walker pledged $5,000, then the cost of a Cadillac touring car, to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's anti-lynching fund. The Tuskegee Institute has recorded 3,446 blacks and 1,297 whites being lynched between 1882 and 1968

 

Ever-present danger of degradation, humiliation and physical harm, has long constrained the black condition. Much as in Hitler's Germany, when Jews and others were systematically persecuted and denied participation in public life, ridicule and debasement; in the media, literature, art and texts, successfully served to dehumanize African Americas to an extent that made oppression and unjust punishment, accepted as the distasteful, to some, but essential means of maintaining public order, and indeed, the norms of civilization.

 

 

A century ago Madame Walker and others faced a world in which black advancment was threatening to many. African American aspiration and assimilation were caricatured as unknowing impudence.

Today, some contend that racism has evolved, that social strife is based merely on class instead of the color of one's skin. However, as always, with a majority of African Americans experiencing disparate and inferior outcomes compared to whites, class-based biases are a distracting distinction, without difference. Too many examples of discrimination and ill-treatment toward blacks, irrespective of their education, income or attainment, exist to suggest that even now, class trumps race. Indeed, much as with charter schools, where the chosen few are better educated at the expense of the most poorly prepared-many, black success is in fact, often transformed into an indictment. Based on the evidence of the few who beat the odds, those who fail, are frequently condemned as indolent. 

 

 

1902: Aida Ovweton Walker's anthem of upward mobility was savagely parodied as, "A Colored Declaration of Blue Blood"

 

 

As exemplified by Madame C. J Walker, or the trendsetting Broadway artist, Aida Overton Walker, (no relation), who preformed before white socialites, British royalty and aristocrats as well as large and appreciative black audiences, Negro High Society, has always constituted a meritocracy. Ancestry per-se, apart from white ancestry, was never accorded the same importance attached to education and enterprise. 

 

Why is it that a man, just as soon as he gets enough money, builds a house much bigger than he needs? I built a house at Akron many times larger than I have the least use for; I have another house at Miami Beach, which is also much larger than I need. I suppose that before I die I shall buy or build other houses which also will be larger than I need. I do not know why I do it – the houses are only a burden.…all my friends who have acquired wealth have big houses…Even so unostentatious a man as Henry Ford has a much bigger house at Dearborn than he really cares about. I wonder why it is …In a few cases, a big house is built just as an advertisement that one is rich; sometimes a big house is built so great entertainments may be given. But in most cases, and especially with men who have earned their own money, the house is just built and when it is done, no one quite knows why it was started…Henry Ford 1926, Men and Rubber; The Story of Business

 

One can usually get a pretty good result approaching history as one might an over-sized portrait by Pearlstein or a pointillist painting by Seurat. Only finding the proper perspective does apparent chaos coalesce into discernible order. This is how two observations, from different eras, written by two quite different men, converge to perfectly explain a most improbable house.

 

Circa 1789: West Front of Mount Vernon, by Edward Savage.

Distinguishing historical substance from symbolism is imperative. Taught that Washigton was incapable of telling a lie, that he valued liberty above all else, the life of slaves at his vast plantation, with meager rations, communal accomodation and twelve hour workdays, reveals a harsher truth. 

 

For those who are un-knowledgeable, a cursory glance mightn't leave much of a lasting impression.  For many examining the surface of things, the constituent elements, making an aesthetic evaluation, their final conclusion might be that they'd seen a conventionally 'nice' mansion, in well-kept, but not extensive grounds. They might determine that the house Sara Breedlove McWilliams Walker built at Irvington, New York, "Villa Lewaro", as nice as it is, is hardly exceptional.  

But from a better-informed vantage point, the Villa Lewaro, named a National Treasure this year by the National Trust, the grandest house ever built by an African American before 1960, is something else again. Howsoever 'modest' it might appear materially, in relation to grandiose abodes built by whites; placed in context, contrasted with the isolated and unequal conditions characteristic of African American life, it is as magical as the Summer Palace of China's dowager empress, as incomparable as the court of the Sun King at Versailles. 

 

1858: Mount Vernon by Ferdinand Richardt 

By repeatedly expanding his father's existing one-and-a-half-storey farmhouse, over several decades, Washington created a structure with 11,028 square feet ! Mount Vernon dwarfed most dwellings in late 18th-century Virginia, which typically comprised one to two rooms, ranging in size from roughly 200 to 1200 square feet.

  

© 2004: Dinner at Mount Vernon by Pawinee McEntire 

Following George Washington's death, on the eve of a new century in 1799, his beloved Mount Vernon Plantation passed on to a succession of less capable heirs overwhelmed by its costly upkeep. Martha Washington's awareness had caused her to free slaves, otherwise freed by provision of her husband's will, upon her death.

Increasingly Mount Vernon fell into disrepair after a failed attempt by Washington’s great-great nephew John A. Washington to sell it to the United States or the Virginia Commonwealth in 1853. 

This prompted Ann Pamela Cunningham to establish the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, which began an unprecedented national campaign to purchase Mount Vernon and preserve it as a talisman of American history. This collaborative effort of patriotic and patrician white women from the north and the south alike, formed the nexus of the United State's historic preservation movement.

Every attempt was made to sanitize the memory of our foremost founding father. Acting to transform a bastion of white America's self-entitled wealth-through-oppression, into an icon of liberty, destroying the old slave quarters became the first imperative item of business before Mount Vernon was opened to the public as a shrine.  

 

Blenheim Palace, 1705-1722 by Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmore. Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England. 

Building one of the largest houses in Virginia, among the most commodious in the new nation, Washington had hardly sought to outdo the Dukes of Marlborough, whose house was one of the largest and grandiose in England. The Baroque masterpiece boast 175,000 square feet!

Monticello, 1769-1809 by Thomas Jefferson

Introducing the first dome on an American house, counting the cellars, Monticello has around 11,000 square feet of living space.

Ickworth, 1795-1830 designed by Mario Aspurcci, executed by Francis and Joseph Sandy, laocated at Horringer, Burry St. Edmunds. Suffolk, England

Not completed until well after the death of its builder, connoisseur collector Frederick Hervey, Bishop of Derry and 4th Earl of Bristol, in 1803, Ickworth, with its central rotunda and curving wings, was truly a temple of art. Monticello, by contrast, is not even as large as the servants' quarters here.

 

As an historian and a preservationist, one learns a good deal about where people stand, by looking at where, and how they live. A visit to historic Addisleigh Park, in Saint Albans, Queens, is a revelation. Billed as the 'suburban Sugar Hill,' in reference to black Harlem's elite address of the 1930's and 1940's, the spic-and-span community offers neat mock-Tudor and Colonial Revival houses surrounded by supremely manicured lawns.  Initially met by restrictive deed covenants that prohibited the sale of property to blacks, after 1945 the enclave rapidly became home to a score of celebrities, from Lena Horne and Ella Fitzgerald, to Jackie Robinson, Count Basie and Joe Louis. A few houses boast double lots. Four or five even had swimming pools and tennis courts. But at best, the biggest houses here had about two-thousand square feet of space for living large.

 

 "Hyde Park", 1895, by McKim, Mead & White

Just as America's founding fathers wasted little time attempting to emulate far richer nobles in England, neither did Madame Walker seek to 'compete' with the splendor of the nearby Frederick William Vanderbilt estate, or the even closer and equally palatial Rockefeller place, at Tarrytown.  With fifty rooms comprising 44,000 square feet and two hundred acres, "Hyde Park" was one of the Hudson Valley's most notable showplaces.

 

Meanwhile, out in Beverly Hills, California, the largest houses of the most celebrated white stars, averaged around ten-thousand square feet. Accessing the extent of success accorded the United State's most acclaimed African Americans, it's useful to keep such observations of dramatic inequality in mind.    

Despised and rejected enough, assailed by sorrows and grief, a little more than a century ago, Madame C. J. Walker surly appreciated the notion of "black rage". But as with some other subjects of outstanding success stories, she determined early on to subdue and submerge fury, translating any inner anger into a passion to succeed. 

 

Whether with architecture or through prodigious philanthropy to black causes, paying as much attention to projecting as regal an image as any sovereign, Madam Walker utilized a saga as poignant and compelling as Lincoln's trek from a back-woods cabin to the White House. This was how she distinguished her brand from every other similar product on the market. As this ad shows, for Walker, the concept that beauty and success were synonymous was espoused as an alluring doctrine of faith.

 

Twenty-three years ago, Thursday, August 29, 1991, expertly edited by Yanick Rice Lamb, my article, A Mansion With Room for the Great and Humble, was published in the Home section of the New York Times. "MY great-great-grandmother meant for her four-acre estate to be a showplace for black Americans that would motivate them to realize their own dreams," related A'lelia Perry Bundles. Then a producer with ABC World News Tonight in Washington, Ms. Bundles was unknown to me. Now retired, as a philanthropist serving on the board of trustees of both Columbia University and the National Archives, my esteemed dear friend is more active and occupied than ever before. 

 

 

Lincoln Family log cabin, Sinking Spring Farm, Hodgenville, Kentucky  

This is reported to be the place where Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809.  Seven US presidents  were born in log cabins, including Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, and James Buchanan. Ironically, Whig contender William Henry Harrison, the son of a Virginia planter, hardly born in a log cabin, nonetheless  cynically appropriated this meager type of habitation as a symbol that he was a man of the people. Other candidates followed Harrison's example, making the idea of a log cabin, a background of modest means, a childhood spent overcoming the adversity of hard times, a recurring and classic campaign theme.

 

Restored and featured in innumerable pieces since 1991, Villa Lewaro is ever so slowly gaining recognition as a singular monument to the American dream. When my story appeared, even after Stanley Nelson's titanic Walker documentary, Two Dollars and a Dream appeared, this was not so.  

Designed by Ventner Woodson Tandy, New York State's second registered black architect after his partner George Washinton Foster, the neo-Palladian-style structure was built at Irvington-on-Hudson between 1916 and 1918. Close at hand are other larger historic houses on more ample acreage, that were built for famed whites. Several of these, writer Washington Irving's "Sunnyside", feared robber-baron Jay Gould's "Lyndhurst," and John D. Rockefeller's "Kykuit", are all operated as house museums and opened to the public. 'Why ought not this to be the case at Madame Walker's house?', I mused after my first visit to Villa Lewaro in 1988.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, America's bicentennial anniversary year, Villa Lewaro's then-owners, Ingo and Darlene Appel, greeted me warmly and welcomed my interest.  They had actually started exploring ways to make Madame Walker's house into a museum. As a result they'd engaged with several groups, including the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Madame C. J. Walker Committee of Westchester County.

  

Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

 The Breedlove Family cabin at Delta, Louisiana

 A lowly log cabin has been a potent symbol of heroically-humble origins in US literature and politics since the early 19th century. 

 

"I think the time is right now," they were told by Steve Pruitt.  A government relations adviser, he was speaking on behalf of Representative Cardiss Collins of Illinois, who would introduce a bill calling for Federal funds to purchase and safeguard Villa Lewaro.  Historian Alex Haley of Roots fame, Oprah Winfrey and many others concurred. 

 

 "Cedar Hill", Anacostia, Southeast Washington, D.C.

Statesman Frederic Douglas lived in this respectable dwelling with his family from 1878 until his death in 1895. It's hardly a surprise learning that the largest contributor to save "Cedar Hill" prior to it being opened to the public, came from Madame Walker

 

I agreed too with this splendid idea.  So I was elated when a new 'Diversity Scholars' fund initiated by the Trust, picked up the tab for my airfare and hotel, enabling me to attend the nation's premiere preservation organization's annual conference at Miami Beach that autumn. This opportunity would give me a chance to ask Richard Moe, the Trust's new director, what he thought about the amorphous and tentative plans to make Madame Walker's house into a museum.

 

 Alonzo Herndon residence, 587 University Pl., NW, Atlanta, Georgia, 1910

 A former slave raised in a sharecropping family, after the Civil War Herndon owned and managed a string of barbershops. Investing profits into real estate, becoming the largest black property owner in Atlanta by 1900, Herndon next founded the Atlanta Life Insurance Company, to become Atlanta's first black millionaire. Maintained as a museum, W. E. B. Dubois praised Herndon’s Georgian Revival house as, ‘the finest residence in America owned by a Negro.’ At the time of this statement, naturally, Villa Lewaro had not yet been built.

 

 

 "Cultural Diversity" was the conference's theme. So why had it opened on Yom Kippur, the Jewish holy day of atonement? The seductive local ought to have further given me pause.  Why meet at Miami Beach? After local white politicians ignored recently freed Nelson Mandela durring his seven-city tour of America, black civil rights activists instituted a 1,000-day boycott against the local convention and tourism business. African American groups refusing to hold meetings or to book group tours in the region, meant an eventual loss of more than $50 million.

Still I stayed, undeterred, and had my chance to question Mr. Moe. Perfectly pleasant, he answered politely,

 "Under my tenure, I intend to lead the trust out of the business of collecting and opening the houses of the rich. We're past that..."

 

Protests that it might be a  fine idea, once the Trust saved and showed at least one rich person's house that had not been built by a white Christian man, were to no avail.

 

  

Number 1048 Simpson Road, (now Joseph E. Boone Boulevard ), Atlanta, Georgia, erected 1926 by the African American Aiken & Faulkner Construction Co. located on Auburn Avenue: demolished 1962

In 1926, the year he built this house, Theodore "Tiger" Flowers,  famed as the "Fighting Georgia Deacon" became the first black boxer to win the world middleweight championship. Less than a year later, cheated out of his title in a rigged bout, in November 1927, at thirty-two, Flowers died.  He died in Harlem, undergoing surgery to remove scar tissue above his eye. His magnificent house, featuring a plaster bas relief of a tiger's head above the drawing room door, was demolished in 1962

 

I'm in agreement with the stellar biographer Jean Strouse; no fabricated story can ever match history for drama, the unexpected, or valuable instruction. So I'm still convinced that Richard Moe's response to being cornered and confronted with a proposal that the Trust find some  way to acquire Villa Lewaro, was shortsighted, a missed opportunity.  For what an inspirational and encouraging tale can be told, examining the house that Madame Walker built.

 

Stylishly of its time, even the house architect-to-the-stars, Paul Revere Williams built for himself in Los Angeles, in 1951, fails to approach the opulence of Villa Lewaro

 

"Villa Lewaro was", A'Lelia Bundles says, "a symbol of what my great-great-grandmother termed 'the wealth of business possibilities within the race to point to young Negroes what a lone woman can accomplish and to inspire them to do big things.' "

Ms. Bundles's portrait of her ancestor is titled  On Her Own Ground, The Life and Times of Madame C. J. Walker. Published by Scribner's in 2001, it quickly became a national bestseller. How superbly A'Lelia Bundles un-spools the saga. How affectingly it resonates, as part primer, part cautionary tale. What is it that makes it so moving and so timeless?  This is a question that's answered easily enough. For all the nuanced specificity of Madame Walker's distinctly American life, an incessant journey seeking truth and meaning, bravely facing defeat and boldly tracking down triumph: her story is universal, too. 

 

 

 

Adamantly a 'race woman', Madam Walker was hardly deterred by condescension; neither from whites who disdained her very presence, nor from elitist blacks who felt past poverty and deficient education made her unacceptable. In America, wealth seldom hurts.  But Madame Walker's assets exceeded wealth alone. This was why Booker T. Washington, who initially tried to thwart her ambitions as a civil rights activist, had ended by becoming her friend.

Supporting the burgeoning National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's agenda of empowerment, eager to benefit from the growing circulation of Du Bois' The Crisis, Walker signed on as one of the magazine's earliest advertisers, advising potential customers in a half-page ad: "Your hair will not be beautiful unless it is healthy."

In 1917, following yet another unwarranted assault of blacks by whites, this time in East St. Louis, Walker and James Weldon Johnson were in a small delegation sent to the White House, pleading with President Woodrow Wilson to make lynching a federal crime.

"We should protest until the American sense of justice is so aroused that such affairs as the East St. Louis riot be forever impossible,"

Walker said.

On July 28, heeding Walker's exhortation, the N.A.A.C.P. staged a "Silent Protest" parade in New York that attracted 8,000 participants marching in silence to the staccato tattoo of drums up Fifth Avenue, arm-in-arm, dressed in white, they did then, what people in Freguson, Missouri are still doing today.

The protest was organized by the Rev. Dr. Hutchens Chew Bishop; the rector of St. Philip's Episcopal Church. In the same year the NAACP was founded, St. Philip's vestry, made up of some of the city's most distinguished African American residents, had sold their church building on West 25th Street.

By 1911 they completed a new Neo-Gothic-style church, at 214 West 134th Street, also designed by architect Vertner Woodson Tandy, in partnership with Cooper Union-trained, George Washington Foster the first African American architect lisenced in New York State . At the same time, eager to participate in the creation of a black Mecca at Harlem, St. Philip's acquired ten six-storey new-law tenement buildings at

 

107-145 West 135th Street. Costing $640,000, these apartments where filled with white occupants, who were evicted to make way for blacks.  This action was envisioned as an investment that would generously endow the 'nation's richest colored church' for generations to come. By far the transaction was the most extensive, involving black capital, up until that date. Currently valued at 20 times their appraisal in 1910, these structures now belong to the Rose Smart Growth Investment Fund, which plans to make them both environmentally friendly and affordable.

Confined to her bed due to failing health, on May 5, 1919, a critically-ill Madame Walker sent word to the NAACP's Anti-Lynching Conference at Carnegie Hall:

She would pledge $5,000 to the group's efforts to combat mob violence. This largest pledge the Association had ever received created a sensation.  Madame Walker's announcement electrified 2,500 assembled delegates, inspiring over the course of the convention, primarily from black delegates, $4,400 in additional pledges. Three weeks later, on May 25, says her great-great-granddaughter and biographer A'Lelia Bundles, Walker died at her imposing estate at Irvington-on-Hudson, Villa Lewaro.

Reading of her earlier travels as a sales person, to Cuba, the Caribbean, and in Central America, one marvels at Madame Walker's stamina. Attempting to follow her cross-country progress from Mississippi to St. Louis, to Denver, to Pittsburgh, before settling and building her factory in Indianapolis, Indiana, all in the space of less than a decade, is downright exhausting. Walker's Vegetable Shampoo, Wonderful Hair Grower, Temple Grower, Glossine and a prepairation called Tan-Off, the inevitable skin bleach, were produced at the Mme. C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company factory in Indianapolis. In response to orders cases were shipped for distribution by a wide network of sales agents and beauticians. The arrangement worked  wonderfully for Madame Walker. Reportedly, she was happy living in Indianapolis as well. Why then, did she leave?

 

 How adroit, for Vertner Tandy, Madame C. J. Walker and her daughter, A'Lelia Walker Robinson, to do just what whites would have maintained they were incapable of.  Employing what a century ago was regarded as the epitome of "good taste", exercising disciplined restraint, they used Charlston's renowned Nathaniel Russell house and Boston buildings built from the 1790's through the early 1800's as the model for their hybrid Walker townhouse-salon, that combined home and business long before it was ever considered at Bergdorf-Goodman or Elizabeth Arden. 

 

Ambition and opportunity were half of what had moved her. Her only child, Lelia was the other part of the equation. The woman who became famous as A'Lelia Walker always came first where her mother was concerned. Frequently she was cross about her extravagance, yet, repeatedly, Madame Walker indulged her child. She was also ambitious for Lelia, for whom she desired to provide all that she had missed, including Paris hats, travel abroad and an education. That rarest of rarities, a Negro heiress, her mother was right to fear that some would attempt to take advantage of her daughter. However, her daughter also made Madame Walker proud. Neither possessing the requisite fragility, fair skin, or delicate features to be regarded as a beauty in her day, tall and statuesquely handsome Lelia always made an impressive, even a striking appearance. Moreover, true intelligence and common sense underlay Lelia's impulsiveness and occasional self-indulgence. Always, not unlike Sportin Life in Porgey n' Bess, the bright lights and good times of the big city beckoned alluringly to Madame Walker's child. In 1913 she had bade her mother to relocate with her to the new Negro 'promised land' of Harlem,  a quarter with as many dance halls, cabarets and salons as churches, hundreds! The women attending church and bars mightn't be the same women, but Lelia pointed out, that all hundred thousand wanted to get their hair done before they went there. 

So off to Harlem they ventured.  According to historian Christopher Gray, in 1913 and 1915 Madam Walker bought two old-style brownstones at 108 and 110 West 136th Street. In 1915 she filed plans to completely rebuild the two houses as one and give them a new front, in the same way that many midtown and East Side rowhouses were being reconstructed

Window in blind arch at the Nathaniel Russell house

 

On the second floor, the main level of Madame Walker's residence. drawings show a double-size drawing room stretching the full width of the building. Three "chambres" occupied the remainder of the second floor. A billiard room and other additional bedrooms were found on the third floor.

When the Walkers next decided to build a country house, neighbors were horrified, first seeing 'the dressed up Negresses with their comically aloof airs in a chauffeur-driven automobile' pull up. But her white lawyer had secured the deed for Villa Lewaro's acreage, fair and square! 

 

 

 

Ultimately, devising a combination residence-spa-beauty salon-school for the Walkers, Vertner Tandy took his cue from the townhouse of Percy Rivington Pyne, II, Esquire. Bowing to the Federal style prevailing during the early republic, it is a picture of WASP decorum and rectitude. Planned by McKim, Mead & White and completed in 1911, it stands on the north-west corner of Park Avenue, at 68th Street, serving as the Americas Society.

  

Madam C. J. Walker's business acumen was prodigious. Living large, projecting as fabulous an image and aura as she could afford, she appreciated that this was a shrewd advertising strategy.  Her  distinguished 108-110 West 136th Street beauty salon-residence was designed by black architect Vertner Woodson Tandy.  

By combining her home and business in two converted brownstone houses, made into a single building, Tandy  maximized the grandeur of both.  

 

Madame C. J. Walker's residence, numbers 108-110 West 136th Street, with the Walker chauffeur-driven Lincoln touring car.

Once A'Lelia Walker moved to a one-bedroom apartment at 80 Edgecombe Avenue, she transformed her mother's grand abode into a deluxe catering hall, the storied Dark Tower, where the best parties were always the ones she gave.  

The Reception Room of the Walker Beauty Parlor, College and Spa.

 

Two photographs staged to show styling, care and wig making techniques in the Walker's Lelia Beauty College manual.

In reality, the Walker's clients were groomed and styled in private, curtained booths. While awaiting an appointment, one could take tea or play a hand of cards. 

Drawing room, Madame C. J. Walker residence

For bedrooms and other lesser interiors, architect Vertner Tandy economically retained the configuration and old-fashioned Victorian woodwork original to the two 1890's row houses combined to form the Walker townhouse-beauty salon. However, for this space and other formal reception rooms, every component was newly built.

A grand piano, an 18th-century French tapestry fragment and an allegorical statuette were among the elegant elements of decorators, Righter & Kolb's chic decor. 

Madame Walker and her daughter so admired this depiction of  Terpsichore, the muse of dance and chorus, that it was moved and given place of honor in Villa Lewaro's white and gold music room   

 

Equipped with a Chickering piano, a phonograph and serviceable, comfortable tufted-leather seat-furniture, including a platform rocking chair, the Walker's living room was meant for relaxation.

 

Retaining Victorian mahogany wood work, complimented by richly colored walls, the Walker living room also prominently displayed a tapestry depicting a battle scene from African history

  

 A'Lelia Walker's 136th Street bedroom

 

Although the old original mantelpiece and architraves were kept here, Righter & Kolb, much like Stanford White at the Ogden Mills' estate, made them 'modern', with cream colored paint, matching the painted Louis XVI-style furniture 

  

 

A bust of educator Booker T. Washington of the type pictured in A'Lelia Walker's 136th Street bedroom, later moved to the Villa Lewaro living room mantelpiece

 

Initially disdainful of Madame Walker, as he and many were, of all women seeking political influence, Washington's rebuffs provoked Walker's equivalent of Sojourner Truth's Ain't I A Woman? speech. Learning in this way of Walker's wealth and charity, the most notable black man in America soon conceded that Madame Walker was surly the nation's foremost black woman.

 

Walker's retort on being discouraged from addressing the National Negro Business League Convention, over which Washington presided in 1912, might to have been etitled "And, Am I Not an Unqualified Success!?" It went in part, 

 

“I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations….I have built my own factory on my own ground...” 

 

  

1928: The Dark Tower, by James Vanderzee

 

Already living at her 80 Edgecombe Avenue apartment by the mid-1920's, to better utilize the living space at 110 West 136th Street, A'Lelia Walker rented several rooms for private social and civic events, calling this enterprise, "The Walker Studio". At a dinner featuring spaghetti, for which she was acclaimed, Walker announced to assembled artists, who included Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurmon, and Richard Bruce Nugent, that she would inaugurate a gathering place for them, a club-tea shop. It was to be called the "Dark Tower", in reference to Countee Cullen's evocative poem. In due course a local sign painter emblazoned the drawing room walls with the Cullen poem, as well as Hughes' "The Weary Blues". Unfortunately, although a popular venue for parties hosted by the well-off, Harlem artists could neither afford the rent, nor, according to Nugent, even the price of refreshments.      

 

 

 

Skyscraper bookcase, by Paul T. Frankl, first produced in 1924

 

A Viennese furniture designer and maker, an architect, painter, and writer, one of Walker's  numerous acquaintances from Greenwich Village parties, Frankl contributed to the Dark Tower's decorative scheme. Both a variant of his well-known bookcase and the gold-stenciled light shade, represent his smart handiwork. 

 

   Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

1926: A'Lelia Walker is shown in a cassock's uniform she purchased at Wanamaker's in New York, for a costume party at Webster Hall

 

 

Number 80 Edgecombe Avenue 

  

Her mother ill, soon to die, A'Leia Walker had been about to remarry in 1919.  She planned to move to a corner house she'd acquired for her new husband, Dr. Willey Wilson, at 138th Street on Strivers' Row. Even subsequent to her third  failed marriage, A'Lelia Walker-Robinson-Wilson-Kennedy instead lived here, in a one bedroom walk-up apartment with her friend, driver and companion, Mayme White 

 

 

 

 

Even Madame Walker's heiress daughter was adversely impacted by the Great Crash in 1929. Forthwith, 108-110 was leased to the city, for a much needed Harlem health clinic. A year later, it was sold outright. By 1947, the one-time home to the rollicking Dark Tower, was no more. It was replaced by a public library branch, ironically, named for A'Lelia Walker's friend, poet Countee Cullen. 

How much, one dares to wonder, might it take to restore, on the outside, Vertner Tandy's elegant architecture of such rare refinement?

  

The trek from Reconstruction, to the dawning of the "The New Negro" and the "Negro Renaissance," had been one  long sojourn, from far away.  One sometimes wonders, having been treated as bestial, or as child-like property, just how did former slaves and their young, learn to live and think and thrive in the world; to be human again, like our ancestors?  Most of all one is filled with wonderment, that so many who started as field hands, accomplished so much.

Sara Breedlove, born December 23, 1867, to sharecroppers, Owen and Minerva Breedlove, had a youth filled with hardship. Her girlhood home, a ramshackle cabin at Delta, Louisiana, lay just across the Mississippi from the bustling port of Vicksburg. Her parents and siblings were slaves on Madison Parish Plantation owned by Robert W. Burney. Alone among them, her parents, sister and five brothers, Sara was born 'free'.  Orphaned at the age of six, her sister and her sister's husband, Willie Powell, had taken her in. At age fourteen, she married a much older Moses McWilliams, a move motivated in part, out of eagerness to escape the cruelty of her wicked brother-in-law.  Her daughter Lelia McWilliams (A'Lelia Walker) was born three years later. Only twenty, Mrs. McWilliams' husband died, prompting a move to St. Louis where three of her brothers lived, working as barbers. What limitations women endured. Black women, like black gay men, constituted a 'double negative.' The Widow McWilliams' brothers were barbers, but she could only manage to obtain employment as a lowly washer woman.  Yet it was in this capacity, as a laundress, that she was exposed to luxury at an early age: her arduous work took her inside some of the South's most stately houses. 

Edward T. Bedford estate, by Montrose Morris, 1910, Green's Farms, Connecticut.

Mr. Bedford was president of Corn Products Refining Co. and a director of the Standard Oil Co.

 

Long after her escape from poverty, Madame Walker enthralled audiences with her recollections of perseverance and faith. She would recall how she had asked herself while laboring over a washtub: "What are you going to do when your back gets stiff and you are old? Who is going to look after your little girl?"

She said the answer came in a dream in which a secret hair-conditioning formula was revealed to her. This had all occurred with the World's Fair as a backdrop, circa 1905. Not long after she became a sales agent, offering products on commission for African American hair care entrepreneur Annie Malone, she also remarried.  Charles Joseph Walker was a Denver newspaper advertising salesman. 

Walker wasted no time in persuading his wife to go into business for herself. Paralleling Helena Rubinstein, as Madam C. J. Walker, she trained other women, working for her, to become "beauty culturists" and as she had done, and to master the art of selling. Traveling throughout the southern and eastern United States with her husband, Madame Walker rapidly expanded her business. Once Walker became complacent and self-satisfied, his wife reluctantly left him behind.

Retaining the name her hard work had made into a brand, Madame Walker was inspired by the model of the National Association of Colored Women, to organize her sales agents into local and state clubs. By 1917 she convened her first annual conference of the Madam Walker Beauty Culturists in Philadelphia.

  

Edward T. Bedford estate, by Montrose Morris, 1910, Green's Farms, Connecticut. 

 

Especially impressed by two nearly identical country houses near New York, Tandy adopted their design with only slight modifications. At Villa Lewaro, for instance, he used the simpler Ionic order in place of Composite columns with fluted shafts

Already providing black women with something difficult to imagine, interesting work with good pay, that allowed creativity, and an alternative to the limited options of nursing, prostitution, teaching or domestic service, she now gave more. Prizes were awarded, but not only to the women who had sold the most products and brought in the most new sales agents.  Those who had contributed the most to charity and to their communities, were rewarded as well. 

Walker's business instincts were brilliant: she realized that black women, while welcoming a way to adapt their hair to the prevailing fashion, were nevertheless proud of their racial identity. She always advertised her hair straightener as a "hair grower." Through Walker College, she offered opportunities that not only increased company profits but trained hundreds of women to take control of their destinies.

 

 

Edward T. Bedford estate, by Montrose Morris, 1910, Green's Farms, Connecticut.

Villa Rosa Terrace, S. Z. Puli residence by Brown & Von Beren, 1914, Woodmont, Conneticut

Italian immigrant Sylvester Zefferino Poli a theater magnate associated with William Fox in the Lowe’s-Poli theater chain, started out sculpting wax figures for sensational and historic displays. Named for his wife, their waterfront estate consisted of the main house, and ten cottages deeded to five children

How slightly Vertner Tandy seems to have bothered to differentiate Villa Lewaro from the two nearby sources of inspiration he found illustraited in architectural journals

 

Circa 1928: Villa Lewaro, the Irvington, New York 20,000 square feet country house of Madam C. J. Walker, from 1918 to 1919. Walker is believed to be the first African American woman self-made millionaire, through the manufacture and sale of  hair care and beauty products, made expressly for blacks.

 Circa 1923: Villa Lewaro. 

Constructed just after the Walker townhouse, between  1916 and 1918, Madam Walker's country retreat cost  an estimated $250,000, a vast fortune at a time when the average wage for a black New Yorker was only $800 yearly. The name Villa Lewaro was coined by a visitor and friend, Enrico Caruso. It was derived from the first two letters of each word in Lelia Walker Robinson's name.

 Were one Jewish a century ago, chances are that attempting to move into a neighborhood that was not already substantially Jewish, would meet with resistance. Blacks were more fortunate, in one tiny paticular.  For Negros, there was little fear of restrictive deed covenants, that prohibited the sell, or even a future sell, sometimes into perpetuity, to a Colored person. The common supposition was that Negros could not afford to buy property in nice neighborhoods. For all practical purposes, this was all too true. 

 Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

Circa 1935: 

Unlike most mansions on the Hudson, which sit like castles on the Rhine, Villa Lewaro is best seen from Broadway, the main street of Irvington. A two-storey semicircular portico dominates the street facade.

Circa 1949 

  

In the 1980's the huge trees that first attracted Mme. Walker saved the house from a developer who wanted to erect condominiums. A tree ordinance protected the property.

 

The Villa Lewaro mansion Vertner Tandy designed for Madame Walker in exclusive Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, started to be restored in the 1980s by Ingo Appel. In the following decade this comendable undertaking was completed by Harold Doley, shown here with his wife Alma and their son. A native of New Orleans, Mr. Doley was the first black to buy an individual seat on the New York Stock Exchange. 

 

Madame C. J. Walker's bid to live in Irvington-On-Hudson, near Livingstons, Goulds and Rockefellers, was in fact her second try at locating where the action was, in the very midst of the country's most affluent whites. In the New York Times, March 25, 1916, it was announced that Mrs. C. J. Walker, through Samuel A. Singerman, her lawyer, had acquired "Bishop's Court". The price was given as around $40,000. Vertner Tandy filed plans for a house not so different from Villa Lewaro, but missing the graceful semi-elliptical portico. Madame Walker's entre into sacred precincts had commenced. Or had it?

 

 

Courtesy Historic New England/ Photo by David Boh

2011: Villa Lewaro, the porte cochere. Tandy's triumphal arch-like shelter for protection from the weather when alighting from or entering an automobile, is topped off by a sleeping porch and balcony

 

 

Like the would-be buyer, the seller of the "old English design, brick and timber house", set on a plot, 200 X 300 feet, was also black. Most unusual! His house was located at the North East corner of State and North Pine Streets, in an exclusive section of Flushing. Born in Antigua, in 1843, the Right Rev. William B. Derrick had a white Scottish father and a black Caribbean-born mother. According to his Times obituary, in 1913, educated in England, this African, Methodist, Episcopal, Zion prelate's jurisdiction included the West Indies, South America and the Islands Beyond the Seas. For this reason the renowned preacher was much involved outside the US, in setting up churches in Panama for blacks working to dig the canal, for instance.  Having rushed back from Britain to enlist in the Civil War, becoming sought after as a king-maker, able to reliably rally Negros to vote for Republicans, he was rather busy at home as well. "Bishop's Court" was his reward for a well-lived, sober life. White residents had certainly not welcomed his arrival around 1896. They had felt powerless indeed to prevent it. Over the years his sedate style of living had caused them to thank providence that it had not been worse. They were however, not about to take the same risk to property and propriety twice. All were determined, the Negro, former wash woman, from the west, was not to be admitted to their community. A reprise almost occurred at Irvington. But this time, Tandy did not produce drawing until after the deed was recorded.

 

Madame Walker's ambitious mansion was designed by Striver's Row resident,Vertner Woodson Tandy. A native of Lexington, Kentucky, Tandy studied under Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. He finished his studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., where he was one of seven founders of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first black college fraternity. He was also the first black to pass the military commissioning exam, and eventually became a major in the New York National Guard. 

Following his partner George W. Foster, Tandy would become New York’s second black registered architect, and the first black member of the American Institute of Architects. Apart from Madame Walker's two houses, among many alterations to existing buildings, he designed St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Harlem. Sadly, among his oeuvre, he only planned about ten additional houses, most of which have been greatly changed or destroyed. 

Vertner Tandy died in 1949 at age 64. 

 

  

Villa Lewaro, which Madame Walker built as a country house, was Tandy's "masterpiece," said Roberta Washington, a Harlem architect, who discusses his career in depth in her forthcoming history of African American architects who practiced in New York State over the past century. "Yes, his work is derivative. He copied other people. Most designers did and do. But, just look at that novel way he introduced a light well, for the basement kitchen. The big terrace completely obscures the servants' area downstairs, giving them lots of light and air and privacy at the same time. That's good design in my book." 

 

 

Circa 1924: Durring the blaze of a 1920's summer, from Villa Lewaro's palm decked terrace, the Hudson might as well to have flowed into the Mederterainian.

   

 Courtesy Historic New England/ Photo by David Boh

From Villa Lewaro's garden elevation, where an elevator bulkhead seems to have been added to the roof-line, three terraces step down to the swimming pool. Very few houses had swimming pools as early as Villa Lewaro.

 

 

Circa 1926: Villa Lewaro, the sunken garden and pool.

 

Set at the center of a hedge-enclosed sunken garden, that swimming pool at the Walker estate originally was lined with black masonry, enabling it to effectively act as a decorative reflecting pool too. Taken in the midst of a festive house party, this photograph shows brightly colored paper lanterns strung down the center of the garden.

 

 

 Circa 1926: Villa Lewaro, the sunken garden and pool.

 

In addition to having a dark interior, the pool boasted a setting resplendent with perennials planted in herbaceous borders in raised beds, retained by bolder walls, that embowered guests with blooms and fragrance

 

 

 

 Today the pool's raised borders at Villa Lewaro only have grass

 

  Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

Circa 1935 

 

  Courtesy Historic New England/ Photo by David Boh

 

A pergola, with a curving center bay once framing the river view, has been restored. As to the dramatic prospect of shimmering water that the Walkers were so justly proud of , that has long ago vanished behind the dense foliage of  untended trees 

 

 Courtesy Historic New England/ Photo by David Boh 

 

The Window punched into the side of Villa Lewaro's upper terrace, indicates Madame Walker's gymnasium, while the archway leads into the kitchen light well and a service entrance.

 

 Courtesy Historic New England/ Photo by David Boh 

 

  Courtesy Historic New England/ Photo by David Boh 

  

Surmounted by a colonnaded pergola, the lowest terrace at Villa Lewaro was economically and beautifully constructed from rubble stones excavated on the property. 

 

  Courtesy Historic New England/ Photo by David Bol

Madame Walker's ample garage at the edge of the property, provided extra accomodation for staff outside of the main house's top floor and basment.

 

 

1918: The Living Hall, or living room. Vertner Tandy's trabeated ceiling, as much as Righter & Kolb's custom-designed furniture, combined to give Villa Lewaro an authentic Renaissance atmosphere

 

 

 

 Aurora: Apollo in his chariot proceeded by Dawn, after Guido Reni, 1613-1614.

 

Even as a 19th century copy, this masterful Mannerist painting, reproducing a grand fresco with its vivid disonant color harmony, never failed to make an impact on Villa Lewaro visitors 

 

 

 

Skillfully devised by Tandy to facilitate flexibility when entertaining, the reception rooms grouped on the first floor of Villa Lewaro easily flow one into the next. Alternately offering a relatively open combined envelope, or more compartmentalized spaces, it is the ultimate gala party setting 

 

 

 

 

Manufactured by Grand Rapids' Berkey & Gay Furniture Co., the center table in Villa Lewaro's living room was based on 16th-century originals, like this example owned by great architect Stanford White 

 

 

 

Two steps down, entry into the living room from the entrance hall was planned so that the arrival of each new guest joining a group, could be clearly observed.

 

At pains to have a marble staircase, with all the splendor this implies, Tandy cut corners for Madame Walker, by providing a machine-forged metal balustrade, as opposed to a more expensive one, hand wrought from iron  

  

 

Provided a needlework-covered Louis XIV-style rocking chair, Villa Lewaro's welcoming fireside, was immediately adjacent to a pierced grill of the Estey organ's sounding chamber. The table lamp has a pierced brass Middle Eastern-style shade, glittering with glass jewels and beaded fring. Lighted, it must have added as much ambiance, with its pattern of colored shadows, as the sonorous music

 

 

Flower-form Arts and Crafts andirons gracing the living room's Renaissance-style hooded mantelpiece, made of 'cast stone.' On the mantle shelf, Booker T. Washington's bust holds pride-of-place with two vases, formed from World War I German shell canisters, made of copper and silver loving cups, which attested to Madame Walker's generous philanthropy.

 

The eclectic decor of Villa Lewaro was devised by Frank R. Smith, who apearently was employed by Righter & Kolb. The formal reception rooms, which open into one another along a straight line, form a series of contrasting areas. Neo-Renaissance in style, the great hall-living room and the barrel-vaulted dining room originally had furniture custom-made by Brekey & Gay. The Louis XV-style music room still retains an Estey player-pipe organ with speaker ducts, which let music be heard throughout the house.

 

 

Villa Lewaro's decorator, Frank R. Smith of Righter & Kolb, had previously appointed Walker's Harlem townhouse. As the rendering above shows, his ideas for decorating Villa Lewaro, sometimes were more lavish than Madame Walker was willing to pay for

 

 

Thirty other rooms included accommodations for eight servants and as many guests, a nursery, billiard room, gymnasium and laundry.

As for so many other builders of pleasure domes, it was all over rather quickly. Madame Walker died in 1919. Her daughter found the role of Lady Bountiful somewhat confining. Villa Lewaro was for her a less stimulating environment than Harlem.

But when duty beckoned, the house was the backdrop for a party: Lady Mountbatten, Richard Bruce Nugent, Walker beauty-parlor girls and Pullman porters were all welcomed. In the 1920's A'Lelia Walker also let the house be used as a location for the black silent-movie classic "Secret Sorrow."

Even prior to A'Lelia Walker-Robinson-Wilson-Kennedy's death in 1931, an effort had been made to 'unload' costly-to-maintain Villa Lewaro. Two much-discussed auctions of its contents were staged.   In December of 1930, veteran dealer Benjamin Wise, with his force of black salesmen, conducted the first. It lasted three days. "White Buyers Strip Villa", screamed Harlem's Amsterdam New, newspaper, expressing something of the loss and heartache ordinary blacks felt, learning the news. A'Lelia's ormolu-mounted grand piano, Persian carpets, a French tapestry, a large spinach jade table lamp, beautifully bound sets of books, from a deluxe bible to the multi-volume memoirs of Casanova----all went under the hammer and were knocked down for a paltry $58,500! In light of prices payed to obtain these precious objects, just a little more than a decade earlier, this indeed represented pennies on the dollar.  But, all things considered, this was not such a bad result. Things went to hell in America after the debacle of November, 1929. Art and antique collectors once worth hundreds of millions, men like William Randolph Hearst or Clarence McKay, were forced to dispose of their treasures at department stores, for what really amounted to bargain basement prices, as well. In Newport, the ultra exclusive seaside summer resort, things were no better than at Irvington. "Marble House"was the palatial 'cottage' of Mrs. Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont, who as Mrs. Willie K. Vanderbilt had been the first social leader to divorce and remarry without sanction. Her 'cottage' is said to have cost $11,000,000.00 at the start of the 1890's! This is unlikely inasmuch as, well before the crash Mrs. Belmont challenged a property tax assessment based on a nearly $700,000.00 valuation. Indignant, she countered that around $400,000.00 was closer to the true value. Naturally, making this claim, she did not include the sumptuous contents of Marble House. Yet when she sold the four acre property in 1932, the house, lock, stock and barrel went for just a little over $100,000.00.

 

Courtesy of Half Pudding, Half Sause

1932

 

Even so, at Villa Lewaro, sufficient unsold remnants from six china dinner service, several sets of glassware, and other furnishings remained unsold to form the basis of a collection of Walker heirlooms that bring these figures to life, more vividly than anything that one could write.

Once A'Lelia passed away, Villa Lewaro was bequeathed to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which sold it in 1932 to the Annie E. Poth home for aged members of the Companions of the Forest in America, a fraternal organization. Under their care it remained largely intact for the next 50 years. 

  

The Annie Poth Home  was a refuge for the widows and orphans of the Frinds of the Forest Fraternal Society for over fifty years. 

 

Villa Lewaro, the living room in recent years

 

1918: The vaulted dining room. Tablets among the ceiling's arabesque include the coupling of what appear to be a pair of same-sex lovers?

 

 

A trumpet-shaped "brilliant cut' glass vase of the type seen on the Villa Lewaro sideboard, in the view above.

 

 

 

 

  

 Courtesy of  Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

 

A sugar basin from an English china dinner service still owned by A'Lelia Bundles

 

 

 

A Spode china service plate of the same pattern as one used at Villa Lewaro 

 

 

 Courtesy of   Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

Breaking with tradition, this silver flatware once owned by Madame Walker, was engraved with her second husband's initails

 

 

Table linen, owned by A'Lelia Walker, 'corectly' bears the monogram, AWR, for A'Lelia Walker Robinson 

 

 

Robust cast plaster cornucopia fittingly ornament Villa Lewaro's dining room

 

 Villa Lewaro, dinning room in recent years

 

 

Villa Lewaro, the library

 

 

 1904: The East Room at the White House offerd inspiration for Villa Lewaro's music room and many other ballrooms, private and publi: earning for its designers the new name of "McKim, White & Gold"

 

Circa1920: The Music Room

 

 After her mother died A'Lelia Walker replaced the music rooms conventional Steinway piano for one with an 'art case' in the Louis XV mode, mounted in ormolu. These gilded ornamental articulations caused her Peck-Hardman & Co. instrument to be named 'the gold piano'. In the 1930 sale it fetched only $450.00

 

 

 A gilded harp of the type found at Villa Lewaro

 

Circa 1920: Righter & Kolb were so exacting, that in Villa Lewaro's music room even the Victrola phonograph had its cabinet customised. It was painted with pastoral scenes in keeping with the rooms Watteauesque Lunettes and Louis XV sensibility. In 1930 it brought around $46.00

 

 

WHAT WAS A NEF?

 

 

 

 

 

A nef was an extravagant ship-shaped table ornament centerpiece and container used in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance. Quite rarely made of glass, usually they were elaborately fashioned from silver, silver-gilt, or gold and often enameled and jewel-encrusted, Nefs were  placed in front of the most important person at table as a mark of their status. When not just used for decoration, it might hold salt, spices, napkins, cutlery or even wine.  For this reason some nefs had wheels to allow them to be rolled from one end of the table to the other, but most had legs or stood on pedestals. 

 

  

Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

 Posed, poised and privileged alongside a graceful bureau plat, raffinée A’Lelia Walker, gowned in dark lace, looks every bit the pampered heiress. Most extraordinary among the accoutrements lending this scene such élan, is her repousse silver nef, a fantastic object with billowing sails and a large crew of minute hands, each exquisitely differentiated from the next. Most likely a late 19th-century copy of a late 16th-century example made in Augsburg, even these command $20,000.00 and more nowadays

  

 

 

   Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

Circa 1930: A'Lelia Walker sits in a Louis XV-style bergere beside a porcelain kater on a porcelain pedestal. Behind her is a Louis XIV-style clock of great presence. Like the clocks above and below, it was made to seem to be a timepiece in a nebulous of clouds amidst which puti play, resting on a terminal plinth, overlain with gilt bronze arabesque and festoons. Instead, it is a tall case or grandfather's clock, the ormolu-mounted center panel, opening to reveal the pendulum and weights.

 Villa Lewaro's grand clock was a copy of the celebrated model made circa 1785 and attributed to Jean-Henri Riesener, now in the Louvre 

 

 

 

 

Villa Lewaro's $25,000 Estey Pipe organ

 

As with many others who gain great riches, the Walkers set great store by quality. The best, the brightest, the biggest, ever held great appeal for them. Universally, the millionaire of 100 years ago esteemed the ultimate status symbol of a hone pipe organ. Largest and most complex of musical instruments, organs  traditionally had only been found in churches and royal palaces. Then, in the mid-19th century, organs started to be installed in houses of the well-to-do. Certainly the music was soothing, but so too must have been knowledge that home organs cost as much as, and sometimes more than, an ordinary houses!

 

 

The Estey Organ Company, founded in 1852, went on to become the largest manufacturer of organs in the nation, with customers besides Madame Walker, including Henry Ford. Automatic player devices provided those who could afford them with a self-playing organ identified an elite among the elite. 

 

 

 

The Greek Slave 1848, Parian ware figutine by England's Minton's Pottery works. Parian, Minton's name for 'statuary porcelain', alludes to the white marble from the Greek isle, Paros.

 

The Greek Slave is a marble in Raby Castle, carved in Florence by American sculptor Hiram Powers in 1844.  Ostensibly it is merely a Grecian maiden, enslaved by Turks. But a cross and locket, amid the drapery, make it clear that she is a Christian, and betrothed.  Powers intention was that one see her suffering, as transcendent, raised above outward degradation.  Innate purity and force of character bestow on her an uncompromising virtue that cannot be shamed. Many viewers on the eve of civil war, drew parallels between The Greek Slave and African American slaves in the South, with some abolitionists adopting the work, which was widely reproduced in ceramic reductions like Madame Walker's, as symbol. Compared with "the Virginian Slave", it was the subject of a John Greeleaf Whittier poem, inspiring as well a sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.  Lucy Stone, stopping to admire the statue broke into tears. For her it was emblematic of male misogyny. Thereafter, Stone included women's rights issues in her speeches.

 

 

 A bust of Beethoven like the one atop Madame Walker's organ console

 

 

 Circa 1935

 

 

 2012

 

 1995

 

 

From the music room, through the door into the Villa Lewaro solarium, can be glimpsed stained glass windows added to make the demilune space into a chapel

 

 Circa 1935

  

 

1919: A Villa Lewaro bedroom 

 

 

 

 Villa Lewaro's master bedroom today

 

Madame Walker initiated a dynasty, ambitious, socially conscious, bright, black and proud. A'Lelia Bundles part in the ensuing line of succession has been varied; filled with recognition and rewards for a groundbreaking career as a TV journalist, and that's quite wonderful.  Work for which she will most be remembered is quite different. One rarely grows rich writing history. But doing what A'Lelia has done and continues to do, with unstinting care and craft, one is granted the consolation of immortality!

Receiving such a warm reception with  On Her Own Ground, The Life and Times of Madame C. J. Walker, A'Lelia Bundles is continuing as she started.  She is in the final stages of rewriting, polishing her manuscript, well beyond the the superficial degree that others might. She is a perfectionist, like Walker women before her, and so will not be satisfied until her dulcet prose shines forth like a diamond.

Once she has finished, we will learn about all sorts of things long the cause of wonder. Was A'Lelia Walker's first husband, John Robinson, the hotel waiter, really the love of her life? Or, notwithstanding three tries tying the knot, was she also gay, like a score of her best friends, like several of her set who also married persons with a different gender than theirs?

We already know, that due to her industry, networking skills and keen instincts, that much of the success of the Walker Company was due to A'Lelia Walker. But far more awaits us, because once A'Lelia Bundles has completed her task, metaphorically, but still most magically, she will take us by the hand to the much changed world and times of her namesake. Guiding us into our recent history , like Dicken's spirit in A Christmas Carol, with but a touch of her gown, we'll be transported. Revealed will be a world familiar and foreign. Most surprisingly, we'll discover, that like our epoch, like our lives, it was hardly all bad, that many things were quite wonderful in fact. More amazing still, going back in time, communing with her people, our people, proud, prepared, purposeful and black, we will discover in them, those who have gone before us, our own wonderful selves. 

 

 

Circa 1912: Madame C. J. Walker by Addison Scurlock

Circa 1927: A'Lelia Walker

 Courtesy of  Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

1923: Mrs. Gordon H. Jackson

 Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

 

1955: A'Lelia Perry Bundles as a child with her parents,  A'Lelia Mae Perry Bundles,  and S. Henry Bundles 

 

 Courtesy of  Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

 

Ms. Bundles, the coed

 

Like remarkable historians who have come before, whether Stephen Birmingham, who wrote Certain People, David Levering Lewis, the author of When Harlem was in Vogue, or Gerrie Major, who penned Black Society, A'Lelia Bundles is engaged in establishing a legacy too. 

 

 

 

2013 

 

 

It is all like the birthday party a minor royal prince staged for his beloved daughter and only child, a century or so ago.The widespread gardens where the event was celebrated were strewn with an endless, but tangled length of silken ribbon. The beginning was placed in the girl's expectant hand and she followed it, until she came upon a pile of rose petals. Hidden at the bottom she discovered a diamond ring. Uphill and down, the ribbon continued. Intermittently it led to new hiding spots, each revealing its bijoux; from necklace to bracelets, from rubies, to emeralds, the connection continued, with each new discovery, more precious than the last.  

 

After A'Lelia Bundles, perhaps Nichelle Gainer is our most recent precious prize?  For her wonderful blog posts have already let us know just how marvelous her soon-to-be delivered book, Vintage Black Glamour  is certain to be.

 Ca. 1913: Incomparable A'Lelia Walker

 

 

 

Circa 1919: A'Lelia Walker by Addison Scurlock 

 

  

 

1911: Turban with Egret aigrette and turquoise jewel  by Paul Poiret

Circa 1911: A'Lelia Walker wearing brocade turban with egret aigrette by Paul Poiret. The innovative Paris couturier, who banished corsets, was a friend who A'Lelia Walker entertained.

 A'Lelia Walker by Berenice Abbott circa 1930 

 

 

Circa 1930 

  

  

 A'Lelia Walker was born Lelia McWilliams in 1889.  Celebrated as Harlem's most chic Salonnière, the subject of a much anticipated new book by A'Lelia Bundles,  her great-granddaughter and namesake Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance.©,  she was Madam Walker's only child.  Once her mother died in 1919, a daughter and business partner never forgot the bad times. Perhaps, it was recalling the hurt and hardship of the Walkers' early life that made her so self indulgent? For much like white heiresses, between marring and divorcing three husbands, she gained a reputation as one of Harlem's, and one of New York's, foremost party givers. 

  

 

 Courtesy of  Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

 

 

That late great trailblazing historian from San Francisco, Eric Garber, wrote of A'Lelia's penchant for parties and gay people:

 

"Because A'Lelia adored the company of lesbians and gay men, her parties had a distinctly gay ambiance. Elegant homosexuals such as Edward Perry, Edna Thomas. Harold Jackman, and Caska Bonds were her closest friends. So were scores of white celebrities..."

 

Much earlier, novelist Marjorie Worthington remembered:

 

"We went several times that winter to Madame Allelia [sic] Walker's Thursday "at-homes" on a beautiful street in Harlem known as, Sugar Hill...." [Madame Walker's] lavishly furnished house was a gathering place not only for artists and authors and theatrical stars of her own race, but for celebrities from all over the world. Drinks and food were served, and there was always music, generously performed enthusiastically received."

Madame Walker, and especially her daughter A'Lelia, loved to fill their home with friends. Madame Walker's initial gala, a luncheon party for nearly 100, blacks and whites, was hosted in honor of the Hon. Emmett J. Scott, Special Assistant to the Secretary of War in September of 1918. President wilson, after first objecting, at last allowed blacks to fight in the World War, and Mr, Scott is the closest African Americans have to a cabinet officer. Madame Walker's guests lunched out on the terrace before entering the music room for musical entertainment. J. Rosamond Johnson, who wrote, "Lift Every Voice and Sing", "The African American National Anthem", eminent organist Melville Charlton and other musicians played and sang. It was a lovely afternoon, but not without purpose. Determined that like official entertaining at the White House, that her social gatherings contributed to political action, Madame Walker used this occasion to implore blacks to set aside differences, and support the war-effort. She also asked that Washington take note of black participation in the defence of democracy and outlaw lynching.

The Hon. Emmett J. Scott, Special Assistant to the Secretary of War

As for A'Lelia Walker, she was more easy.  Many recollections confirm her generous nature, her delight in enjoyment, and in providing pleasure as well.  By all accounts, everyone from chorus girls to artists to socialites to visiting royalty would come at least once to enjoy her engaging hospitality. Whether at the Dark Tower, 80 Edgecombe, or Villa Lewaro, wherever she was, though not named 'Laeticia', A'Lelia was the "joy goddess."

They say that whatever one's race, class, condition or sexuality today, that people are, on the whole, rather impatient.  If then you are an intrepid exception, and have made it this far: through over one hundred pages, numerous pictures and 12,275 words or so, besides offering my congratulations, I ought perhaps to summarize of my intent. Originalist ideologues, nostalgic for paternalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy notwithstanding, ever-changing America, has not changed enough. Justice delayed is, justice denied.

Still beckoning and golden, the American Dream must not be allowed to become irrelevant. It is still so rich and real and robust, but for fewer and fewer, seems within reach. As America evolves to grow ever more diverse, opportunity and reward, ought to expand and not retract to enrich just some at the top.

Madame C. J. Walker, her daughter A'Lelia Walker, both strove towards such an empowering and beneficial end. An outstanding relic of their faith in our country, Villa Lewaro, as much as Mount Vernon or Monticello, is a shrine that deserves to be on public view, as a museum dedicated to determination and the humanitarian impulse to help others.

 

 

 

  Courtesy of Ms. A'Lelia Bundles/aleliabundles.com 

 Circa 1918: Villa Lewaro Guests

Madame Walker, and especially her daughter A'Lelia, loved to fill their home with friends. They included not only eminent blacks like the poet William Stanley Braithwaite and the composer and concert singer Harry T. Burleigh, but Walker beauty-shop operators. One guest, Enrico Caruso, coined the villa's name, using two letters from each name of Mme. Walker's only child, A'lelia Walker Robinson. 

Lloyd and Edna Thomas

Edna was a great actress. She started out as Madame Walker's social secretary. One of her jobs was to look up words Walker did not understand reading the newspaper. Regretting having only a  scant education, in this way she could learn and expand her vocabulary.

Lloyd Thomas managed their 136th street beauty salon for the Walkers. In 1929, at a party given by A'Lelia, Lloyd introduced Edna to English aristocrat Olivia Wyndham. For the rest of their lives the women were a devoted couple 

A manservant for Mrs. and Mrs. Basil Rathbone, Edward Perry studied painting with Winold Reiss, before moving on to acting and stage management. Esteemed as Harlem's Elsa Maxwell, late in life he had a career as a party consultant 

1929: Harold Jackman by Richmond Barthe

Designated the "handsomest man in Harlem," London-born Harold Jackman, who had an unknown white English father and a black West Indian mother, was a high school teacher, model, actor, writer, and patron, with a life-long interest theater and in documenting African American cultural life. Gay in most every way, he nonetheless managed to have a daughter, with a white friend, to whom he left half his estate

Spirited off as a young boy to England by an aristocrat who lived on London's Lilac Sweep, Bonds grew to become a music coach, with attractive protegees of uneven talent. A particular friend of A'Lelia's he gained the lease of her apartment when she died. He lived there with a youth named Embry Bonner 

Cocaine-addict and Harlem lover Princess Violette Murat, was born Violette Jacqueline Charlotte Ney d'Elchingen. Writer Zora Neal Husrton called her "Princess Muskrat". Fortunately, as she was a lesbian, her husband, Bonaparte Prince Eugene Louis Michel Joachim Napoleon Murat, pre-deceased her by almost 40 years

Julius Lorenzo Cobb Bledsoe was a once-renowned, but now forgotten baritone, the first 'Joe' in "Showboat" and the first African American artist to gain regular employment on Broadway. None the less, finding legitimate operatic roles scare  in the States, he concertized to acclaim and profit in Europe. Here he met his well-to-do Dutch lover, sometime-diplomatic cultural attache, Adriain Frederick Huygens 

Ivor Novello, a Welsh composer, playwright, matanee and film star became one of the most popular British entertainers of the first half of the 20th century. Born into a musical family, his operatic-coach-mother Clara Davies, was the teacher of Caska Bonds. Norvello's  first big success was as a songwriter was the World War I favorite "Keep the Home Fires Burning"

Geraldyn Hodges Dismond, Harlem's 'Lady Nicotine', a inveterate journalist from Chicago, who in time, ditched her philandering husband, to become Gerrie Major of Jet Magazine

The 'Night Hawk', Gerrie's husband, the college football star, World War I hero, Dr. Binga Dismond, a man said to have too much, of everything! 

 

Jimmy Daniels and Wallace Thurman shared a room as boarders  at 1890 Seventh Avenue on the north-west corner of 115th Street, in a cooperative unit owned by Edna and Lloyd Thomas.  Edna Thomas' white lesbian lover, English aristocrat Olivia Wyndham, who also lived here, is seen with in the picture above, with Edna, at the center.   Jimmy is on the far left, while Lloyd sits on the right, with 'It Girl' Blanche Dunn on his lap.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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AT HOME, IN HARLEM?

 

 

 

 

Sometimes we're lucky and get exactly what we want. Yet there's a limit to good fortune, Norval White or not. No, I'm not expressing regret over a duplex at the top of River House; I'm only lamenting a sad irony. For a century, tauted as the world's "African American Cultural Capital!", Harlem, ever more rapidly, is slipping through the fingers of black New Yorkers.

For many, it's been much like a bad, but long tolerated, marriage to someone additcted to crack. Forever, it seems, one has endured every privation and heaps of abuse. But for the sake of the kids, for the sake of love, remembering what once was, good times proceeding protracted deterioration, one has remained true.

Finnaly, slowly, but surely, they start to get it together. Only it's as fidelity means nothing as one's guilty spouse, who you always proped up and kept afloat, who ask you to leave and kicks you out. With little warning, a relationship one had imagined capable of limping along forever, instead ends abruptly. Yor ex cleverly manages to charm the court and keeps every asset, to produce for some new, an untested, less faithful partner, luxury beyond all you'd ever dreamed of. Your kids show you pictures on face book. You shake your head in disbelief, almost unable to recognize your old place, filled with potential but so shabby, done up with a marble mosaic shower stall and granite counter tops.

This is the breakup awaiting many. For the longest time, it bothered me terribly, my apprehension concerning the userpers. The palpable unease I feel seeing more and more whites venturing homeward in the hood, pushing space-age perambulators and heavily laden with Fairway bags, troubled me greatly. After all, am I not, Mr. Diversity, extolling the many charms Harlem boast to offer to any discerning lover? Are not half of my best friends white? Yes. So it took me a while to get over my guilt at wanting to preserve Harlem for myself and others who have suffered unspeakable trials through the bad days and now hope to enjoy the good at last.

Ridiculously cheap, my upper-Manhattan aerie is still unaffordable for this busy but poorly compensated writer-historian-activist. Unfortunately, unemployed for a year after I moved in, I fell deeply in debt. Begging and browing, last year I paid off half. Five grand reamain.

"You might want to try a roommate?" suggested my building's diligent attorney at Housing Court. She wore the most amazingly clear and brilliant emerald-cut diamond ring, weighing roughly ten carats, I'd estimate. Genuinely sympathetic, notwithstanding unwavering professionalism, she readily trumped protest that I'd only one bedroom with, "I understand about having just one bedroom, but better a roommate than becoming homeless?"

 

Who among us is in a position to argue with such indisputable logic? And how poignant too, that lonely and longing for the company of someone so nice to come home to: the elusive boyfriend, Mr. Right, shacking-up is now offered as the answer to my problems. Only it's impossible? Those few dear friends, friends fond enough to successfully happily coexist within a limited space, mostly felled by Aids, are already long dead.

In any case if my building's lawyer was perfectly fair, though without great empathy.

 

 

the lady judge was, by contrast, a holdover from the epoch of the divine right of kings and landlords. Unlike my case, for what insignificantly trivial sums are people thrown into the streets with nowhere to go. What is the good of a city with more billionaires and multi-million dollar bonuses than any other, if every day people can lose everything for no substantive reason and often due to circumstances utterly beyond their control?

I love my tiny lower Convent Avenue hideaway. I've been quite happy here for the past two years. Built in 1909, the St. Agnes Apartments was designed by the prolific, mostly commercial architect, Henri Fouchaux. The Madams of the Sacred Heart, whose convent school between 129th and 135th Streets, gave the avenue its name, selling the lots for a full block of apartments named for different saints, stipulated that they could not be owned or occupied by "Negros." Uniquely the St. Agnes Apartments boasts a mammoth double height, partly barrel-vaulted entrance and lobby. Embellished with refined gout-Grec ornament, it was an evocatively eerie setting for the hit film Single White Female.

If it lacks accommodation for guests, a terrace, a working fireplace or marble walls, inspired by drawings I've made of fanciful imaginary interiors it nevertheless possesses all there is that I truly require. 

 

 

 

I'm surrounded by delightful images by special artists like Grace Williams, Arnold Rice, Michael Mc Collom, Marvin Smith and Ruben Roncallo. Architectural fragments, relics of lost landmarks are another notable element of the decoration. Some chairs were discovered in junk shops, while a steel desk and two tables were retrieved from the from the street. 

 

Every wall, and even the doors, display views of old houses in Harlem, 
New York, Newport and Akron, Ohio, where I grew up. Colorful curtains made from sheets, quaint candlesticks in the form of fish, porcelain, silver, old mirrors and old furniture combine to create a stimulating atmosphere in a perpetually dark apartment that I hope is as welcoming to others as it is full of sparkle.

 

The bath

 

The kitchen

 

My room

 

Above all else what most contributes to my well-being here are photographs of family and my dearest, oldest friends. Old or new, books, housed mostly in the solitary bedroom with my indispensable computer, are perhaps the best and most faithful 'friends' to be had. Moreover, like everything else in my treasured home they form a likeness of who I really am better than any other representation ever could.

 

Certainly, there's nothing like soft candle light to make almost anything look more attractive.

 

 

 

 

 

Follow Michael Henry Adams on Twitter: www.twitter.com/harlemhellion

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Harbor Hill; Hauteur and Hurt From the Gilded Age: Part VI

 

 

 

 

 

It's much to be regretted, not being able to locate photograps of any of Harbor Hill's twenty or so bedrooms, except for Katherine Mackay's. Even with the private sanctum of the queen, nothing new has been uncovered, at least no so far as locating new images beyond the few which have been reprinted repeatedly. 

 

Harbor Hill's superb oak staircase, like the wainscoting, far, far darker than shown here, occupied the entirety of the lower levels of the south-east pavilion. No more so than in the great hall, with its pendant ornamented molded plaster ceiling, did the staircase, with parapets of luxuriantly scrolling, pierced arabesque, remotely reference "Louis XIV and Henri II precedents." Instead, it had an English pedigree,  derived from seventeenth century Sudbury Hall and Cassiobury Park.

Depicting King Herod's slaughter of the inocents, the large Flemish Tapestry seen in this image dated to the late sixteenth century. François Boucher, the celebrated French painter who lived from 1703 to 1770, as director of the Gobliens' factory, sometimes supplied cartoons for tapestries. No "Boucher tapestry", could possibly have been made, before his birth. That would be required, if this had been a "Boucher tapestry", as Wilson and Craven both say  

 Sudbury Hall's early seventeenth century staircase, along with the late seventeenth century stair from Cassiobury Park, were models for what was done at Harbor Hill. The latter stairway is today installed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

January 28, 1906: The New York Times.  Difficult to make out, the heraldic tapestry showing the Bourbon arms, was on the order of the one shown below. French and dating to the eighteenth century, it indeed might have been designed by Boucher. Whether it was or not, this must be the tapestry mentioned in a number of letters by the creators of Harbor Hill

French heraldic tapestry, 1760's 

1904 

 

What's new then and rather exciting, is a fresh knowing look and analysis of what many have gazed on, seemingly, without seeing.

Our journey to this sacred precinct begins downstairs.   How clever of Katherine to have so imposing a grand staircase erected. What a picture she must have made, in her graceful descent, dressed in some filmy silken stuff, flashing with jewels.  Thanks to the upper windows, more than abundant light made the spot at the foot of the stairs, perfect as a place to grow plants.  Ferns and palms were used mostly. The plain antique oak of the wainscot, undecorated except by a simple Virtruvian scroll, half-way up, was a wonderful foil for the virtuoso carving of the stair's parapet. Similarly, the velvet-weave, deep-pile carpet, with a damask pattern, running along the entrance and up the many treads, the same claret color as the curtains, related beautifully to the important tapestry always hung here. What trouble Katherine had caused, attempting to change the color to green after it had already been approved, woven and laid. Victor Twiss, who lived on 144th Street near Hamilton Terrace, saved Davenport & Co. through the careful paper trail of authorization he was able to produce. Such thorough record keeping, no doubt, he leaned was an essential strategy for surviving, when working for the Mackays.

 

 

1902

 

 

Absent to begin with, by 1909 more and more armor was placed here abouts. Across from a formidable mounted suit of jousting armor, stationed at the start of the staircase, was the discreet door into the electric lift. Provided with a cushioned seat and lined in mauve silk with a large panel of mirrored glass, here heralded by Katherine's signature color, was ones initial intimation of some special destination above. 

 

Circa 1910 

The armor of a jousting knight placed at the bottom of Harbor Hill's staircase  

Executed by H. F. Davenport & Co. the Harbor Hill staircase was a tour de force of virtuoso carving. Where is it now, or was it destroyed?
  

1902  

 

Is anyone ever fully happy with their lot in life?  Marie Antoinette, the anointed queen of France, in pursuit of the wholesome existence advocated by Rousseau, was only really following the folly of fashion. The cows she and her ladies milked, had been pre-washed, curried and combed in anticipation to royal ministrations. The dairy where they clotted cream, to eat with wild strawberries, were marble lined.  The containers they used, were made from Sevres porcelain.  Katherine Mackay, was in more ways than one, the tragic French consort, in reverse. She rellished the balls and social ritual that queen had disdained. Queen Marie Antoinette had a low-ceiling suite of private, intimate, cozy rooms in which to live. Even the king asked permision to visit her there. Returning daily to act out the public spectacle which ritualize each aspect of royal life, to apartments of state, she lived to momentarily escape the duty of decorum that was the destiny she was born to. By Contrast, Katherine reveled in reliving the games of her childhood come true. She'd happily taken her ease on a thrown-like divan, elevated on a dais, draped in regal ermine. She bathed in a sunken tub, carved from a single block of marble. Her's were all apartments of state. She slept on a bed raised on a platform and her chest of drawers were on platforms as well.

 

1902: The ante room into Katherine Mackay's suite  

1903: Dressed in an ermine collared tea gown, Katherine Mackay assumes the affect of a queen, enthroned on a chaise, elevated on a dais in her orchid colored boudoir  

Imported highly figured French walnut boiseries, with furniture supplied by Allard en-suite, were both upholstered with panels of  mauve damask, woven with a custom pattern of cherubs disporting amongst flowers.  Vessels  as desperate as small steins, Chinese baluster vases and cut glass beakers, mounted in gold, all held bouquets of the orchids that Katherine adored.   

Orchids and a photograph of a mother with her daughters. Katherine Mackay once ordered what a newspaper called the most expensive photographic ever made. Showing the two Katherine's, mother and baby daughter, framed, the photograph measured five x seven feet!

An orchid in a small vase and silken cherubs at play  

Among photographs of friends, gold writing implements and potted ferns, were still more orchid

 

Besides the romantic games of girlhood, that Cinderella named Alva Vanderbilt must have encouraged Katherine's  fascination with royal fantasy. At Marble House, Alva's palace by the sea in Newport, she had just the sort of bedroom Katherine dreamed of inhabiting. Designed by Richard Morris Hunt, it was produced by Allard, who would construct Katherine's rooms at Harbor Hill. It boast the same sort of bed upon a dias and lavender-colored figured silk wall hangings Katherine would use. But, as to the French walnut furniture and the polar bear rug, one must search further afield for that precedent.

 

1902

 

Visiting London in 1900, the Mackays had stayed mostly at Carlton House Terrace, with Clarie's mother. However, they were also entertained by and asked to stay with, the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. Examining the duchess' bedroom, imagining the ceiling height reduced, by half, how much Katherine's room at Harbor Hill resembles it. The fur rug, the 'royal' platforms, the dark shining rocco furniture, so many parallels, hardly seem coincidental.  Then, quite suddenly, by 1905, it had all changed! Why?

 

Circa 1899: The room redone by the Ninth Duke of Marlborough for his rich American bride, prepared more in terms of his ideas of suitable surroundings for a future duke's birth, than a young bride's comfort 

 

A glimpse of the bedroom mantelpiece 

A dias for everything  

Alva Vanderbilt's bedroom at Marble House in Newport, prefigured Katherine Mackay's at Harbor Hill also, in part, probably influenced its alterations

 

For just what reason was Kathrine's room completely changed, with new wall hangings, no daises and all that beautifully finished French walnut, walls and furniture alike, painted over, a cream color, in 1905?  Most likely these drastic steps had been motivated by an article published by House Beautiful, early in the new year. The piece was the second in a series.  The first had dealt with the Bradly Martins' eclectic townhouse, where it was complained that expensive and exquisite art works, sat side-by-side with gleanings from the junk shop. The scathing series, frankly described as "sermons", were entitled "The Poor Taste of the Rich ". Singled out for especial scorn, was the queenly suite of Katherine Mackay.   Of her bed room the journalist concluded:

It is fussy and trifling. It shows that a room may be luxurious and yet lacking in comfort: that it may contain costly things, and yet be commonplace. There is nothing livable about the apartment and it is devoid of charm. Individuality, on the one hand is absent and historical accuracy on the other. It fails lamentably from both aspects...

 

1905: Transformation! If the fitting out of Katherine Mackay's room, had first been influenced by the Duchess of Malbrough's, Katherine's 1905 renovations, that scrapped exalting platforms and brightened her orchid-colored palette overall, seems to have been copied in turn, by the duchess! Please observe below 

 Circa 1910: The Duchess of Marlborough's  bedroom at Blenheim 

 

Grisaille painting of cherubs in overdoors similar to Katherine's at Harbor Hill

 

Katherine's bath drew even harsher disparagement:

If the bedroom is a notable example of poor taste what can be said of the bath and dressing room---rather what cannot be said of it!  This astonishing room room must cause the presiding genius of house decoration hours of anguish...It is, properly speaking, not a bath-room, but an over-decorated and over-furnished room in which a bath-tub has been placed. Puzzel: Find the tub! 

The bath-dressing room floor was  covered in a carpet made from mountain sheep pelts.  The space contained a fireplace, dressing table, chaise lounge, books potted palms and a sunken tub. Difficult for the House Beautiful writer to locate, the three-feet deep tub, carved from a single block of marble  had alone cost of $6, 300,00  

Cracked glass! Had this picture frame been thrown? 

Clareie and Kitty  

A bisquite clock is introduced  

How many carved rosewood Chinese tables were there at Harbor Hill? 

 

A reported commented on the gold toiletries arrayed on tables in Katherine's bath 

She had prided herself so far as matters of the best taste were concerned. Yet, the artistic sensibility for which she was frequently complemented, had been questioned.  All the lovliness of her queenly abode was belittled as "common place"  So Katherine took action. In her bath, beyond a new paint job and new hangings, plants and books with fine bindings, were swept away.  Still other alterations, substituting dark velvet walls, new carpets and old tapestries were to come later, until finally. Katherine had gone herself. 

 

1905 

In terms of decoration at least, she would seem to have accomplished, all she'd set out to. Was this not enough? No, of course it had'nt been. Next we will consider the question of the inquiring: Why? 

 

TO BE CONTINUED... 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Harbor Hill; Hauteur and Hurt From the Gilded Age: Part II

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Harbor Hill; Hauteur and Hurt From the Gilded Age: Part V

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contained in a separate wing, built at a smaller more human scale, more familiar to us today, the service wing at Harbor Hill, truly was a realm apart, across a slender line.

 

  

Four footmen. Their silken liveries are ornamented by silver buttons and their shoes, by silver buckles 

 
From an extraordinary article written by Grace Fowler entitled, 'The Servant Question at Harbor Hill', published in 1904, in Harper's Bazaar, we know an amazing amount about the first rate service facilities provided at The Mackay‘s country house. Servants are indispensable for the smooth operation of the house. But due to technology, the staff comprising around 103, is far smaller than the retinue required to keep up the admittedly larger chateau it was modeled after a couple centuries earlier.

 

Not surprizingly, the silver miner's son had masses of plate and flatware. To retard oxidation it was stored in felt-lined drawers and boxes, and on shelves behind heavy felt curtains

After 1920, when Clarence Mackay's mother moved to Harbor Hill to act as his hostess, she brought with her the famed Mackay, Tiffany & Co. silver.  Her husband had sent a half-ton of ore from his own mine for it. Awarded a prize when exhibited at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1878, the dinner and desert service for 24, comprised, 250 pieces.  It included as well hollowware and centerpieces.  Flower-encrusted with thistles, shamrocks, and blossoms native to American, the unique creation took two years and 200 craftsmen to complete

 

We have arrived at a date when an internal and outside telephone network were found to be useful. Electrically powered lighting, elevators, mangles and refrigeration are also a given, at least in so affluent a household. A central vacuum-cleaning system, gas fueled clothes’ dryers and fireplace ‘logs’, are similarly, standard equipment.

Outside gasoline powered lawn mowers, rollers, water hoses and sprinklers save on labor. So do hoses and drains in the stable, a grease pit and turntable for cars, in the garage. Coal, for heating and for cocking, burned by the freight train car-load, have not yet been dispensed with however. In a house dedicated almost entirely to princely hospitality, there is always a great deal of preparation, clean up and service that’s demanded of the staff. Much as the garage has twelve cars, two vans and three trucks, in the big house, the sun around which all activity revolves, there are a dozen guests rooms and twenty-two bathrooms. Bed room water pitchers and wash basins, fireside hip-baths and chamber pots, may have all disappeared, but an unending amount of work in at so enormous an establishment, remains to be done.

 

Like a diminutive separate domain, Harbor Hill's service wing was made compact by fitting four rooms and more, into the space occupied by one in the main house. To further obscure this vital necessity, from guests and employers who felt that the most superior service, was all-but invisible,  behind a screen of shrubbery, the service wing was sunken into a well for deliveries.    

Four levels devoted to the enterprise of service, disguised as  two 

 

At the time of her girlhood, in the 1870’s and 1880’s, men servants with whiskers, butlers dressed in their ‘dress suit’ during the day and gentlemen wearing black and white waistcoats interchangeably with evening clothes, had all been acceptable. However now, even at the White House and at many other elegant houses, rules about watch chains and mustaches, have come to be relaxed to such a degree, they are not even remembered. 
  
“In fashionable houses, the butler does not put on his dress suit until six o’clock. The butler’s evening dress differs from that of a gentleman in a few details only: he has no braid on his trousers, and the satin on his lapels (if any) is narrower, but the most distinctive difference is that a butler wears a black waistcoat and a white lawn tie, and a gentleman always wears a white waistcoat with a white tie, or a white waistcoat and a black tie with a dinner coat, but never the reverse.

Unless he is an old-time colored servant in the South a butler who wears a “dress suit” in the daytime is either a hired waiter who has come in to serve a meal, or he has never been employed by persons of position; and it is unnecessary to add that none but vulgarians would employ a butler (or any other house servant) who wears a mustache! To have him open the door collarless and in shirt-sleeves is scarcely worse!

Emily Post naturally, discusses race very little regarding servants. That’s because, in the communities she frequented, like their employers, most servants were white. After the Civil War among New York's bon ton, African American servants had been increasingly, deliberately, avoided. There were of course conspicuous exceptions. Customarily black household help were paid much lower wages than their white counterparts. Few love a bargain as much as the rich. Yet outside of the South, in lavish establishments like the Astors’, Vanderbilts’, or the Mackays’, more costly white servants, who were mostly Irish and other European immigrants, where hired for the greater cachet they conveyed.

At their Newport ‘cottage’, "Sherwood Lodge", for instance, southerners Mr. and Mrs. Pembroke Jones, always engaged black help. Proficient at expertly preparing 'down-home' delicacies, their cook indeed, was by far more widely renowned than the French chefs of the area’s most deluxe households. But more typically, nearby at the "Breakers", Anderson Cooper’s great grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, kept only white servants, with the sole exception of their laundresses.  Living and working in a sequestered laundry building on the grounds, never seen by family or guests, these black women were responsible for the most arduous job there was associated with running an exacting and elite household.  The luxury of fresh linen damask bed sheets daily, new napkins nearly a yard-square for dinners, for each person at each meal, and three changes of what one wore, every day, for everyone in the household, including servants, was not easily achieved.

 

The immaculate kitchen, with a gleaming Gustavino vaulted ceiling and a coal range imported from France 

Copper pots and vessels for every preparation possible. Note the top row's molds for mouses, souffles, ices and aspics 

 

One observer marveled over Katherine Mackay’s punctilious practice of having a daily change of fresh bed linen. If a look at her Harbor Hill household as enumerated by the United States Census in 1910 is instructive, unfortunately, it fails to reveal which of fourteen women working in the great house was responsible for laundering mountains of wash weekly. None at any rate are African American and like their male counterparts they are mostly classified with the vague designation “servant.”

 

 

Despite a phalanx of copper-ware, a battered enameled tin pot still has its place

 

Near the bottom of the heap in the pecking order was Edward Tumblin, the ‘odd man’. Born in New York, he was forty-years old. Englishmen, William Warndy at thirty-six was near the top of the heap. He was the fastidious Anglophile Clarence Mackay’s valet. Only identified as ‘house servants’ the other young Englishmen in the household might to have been footmen. There was twenty-three-year old Edwin Frost Agate, twenty-six-year old William H. Hulse, twenty-one year old Arthur Tuppen and twenty-four-year old John Walker. Henry Schlagel, thirty-two, was a New Yorker. Where employing a French chef was thought to be the ne plus ultra so far as providing for the pleasure of guests at one’s table, the Mackay’s cook, twenty-eight-year old John Domenico, was Portuguese, though assuredly French-trained.

 

 

Harbor Hill's servant's hall, where meals were taken and breaks spent 

The dining room reserved for the small group of upper servants with supervisory responsibilities

 

At forty, Catherine Thompson, born in Scotland was the housekeeper. This was a time when whether married or not, housekeepers were addressed for the sake of their dignity and authority, as Mrs.---. At Harbor Hill in 1910, there are thirteen women servants who fall under her supervision. Elizabeth Prondboot twenty-nine and Isabella Macintyre twenty five, are also from Scotland. Twenty-five-year old Margaret Mcluse was born in Ireland. Theresa Stafutti, born in Austria, is twenty-one and Agusta Wesner from Germany, was thirty-seven. Rudolpha Rigelson, twenty-two years old, hailed from Belgium. Margaret Sweeney, thirty-six, is the only one of these women born in New York. Minnie Carson, a chambermaid is twenty and like thirty-six-year old Hilda Olsen, she was Swedish.

 

 

The butler's den. On the left, notice a cast-off rattan chair and whitw painted settee from the glass piazza

 The housekeeper's bed-sitting room. Her bed sheilded behind a screen, the housekeeper had plenty of space for a comfortable office-sitting room, with plants, floers and a pet bird in her quarters 

 

 

Cedar-lined, the linen room had glass doored shelves that made it possible to readily inspect the supply available

  

 

Away from the more boisterous servants hall, maids could sit talking together doing mending in the top lit sewing room 

 

A maid's room at Harbor Hill.  Only in the servant's rooms did wash basins and slop jars presist

 

 

 

 

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Harbor Hill; Hauteur and Hurt From the Gilded Age: Part II

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Clarence Mackay’s father habitually had given his mother orchids. This was an epoch when a regular workman earned a dollar per day. American Beauty Roses also commanded a dollar. But a single exotic, flamboyantly showy orchid cost five dollars: nearly an entire weekly wage, as much as dinner for two with champagne at the Plaza. Charmingly imitating his father, by showing his wife and the world how he felt with expensive orchids, Clarence Mackay was well matched by Katherine Duer. During their courtship, when he wagered he could give her more orchids than she could wear, he’d lost. Becomingly, after pining bunches to her waist and bodice, she ornamented her hat with the remainder. By the time she married, Katherine Mackay adopted the orchid as her personal talisman.

 

With an 80,000-square foot interior, Harbor Hill ended up costing $830,000.00. This figure is exclusive of the remarkable art collection, painstakingly gathered to fill it, like important and historic gem stones, meticulously gathered and matched, to fill an exquisite new platinum setting by Cartier. Contemplating and accessing the lost value of a 1900 dollar however, is rather complicated. To multiply by one hundred is often useful.  A skilled laborer, working on the construction of Harbor Hill, eared $2.00 per day, unskilled, $1.00. Were they earning the equivalent of $100-$200.00 per day? No.  Did a dollar have the purchasing power of $100.00 then, at the grocery store? No again.   It seems reasonable, to imagine that one could reproduce a house like Harbor Hill today, for $ 83-million. But, the $5.00 or so the finest a la Carte dinner at Sherry’s Restaurant cost, that seems preposterous now, at $500.00? Perhaps, a nice wine is included?

 

 

1902

 

1924

 

Why, one might wonder, was this great house ever built?  The answer to this question has to do with the ambition and self-image of the patrons who commissioned and oversaw its painstaking execution.  An exceptional dwelling, Harbor Hill, is a place some have called, "Heartbreak House".  From completion, to destruction, it lasted just forty-five years!

 

 

 

Like others before, and since, they captured the public's imagination.  Gertrude and Harry Whitney, Nancy and Charles Gibson, Linda and Cole Porter, Constance and Kirk Askew, Ernesta and Samuel Barlow, Eleanore and Archibald Brown, Amanda and Carter Burden, Katherine and Clarence Mackay.  They were their epoch's golden couple.  

Clarence Hungerford Mackay, Esquire, (1874-1938), was a gentleman-sportsman-farmer-philanthropist-captain-of-industry-connoisseur.  He surely saw his beautiful wife as a thoroughbred. Her children, his children, would be thoroughbreds too. Katherine Alexander Duer, (1880-1930), was allied to the city’s oldest and most prominent families. As a spirited girl, she’d been a darling of the ‘best society.’ As his wife, he would crown her, queen of New York. He would give her the world and build a castle befitting of her loveliness, a palace worthy of the wealth and wisdom that made him invincible. He envisioned Harbor Hill as a dynastic seat, one which, thanks to Stanford White’s genius and his careful supervision, would be as stately as any historic pile in far-off England, or in France. By distinction, Harbor Hill, in addition to a superb setting and the requisite collection of priceless treasures, was to be outfitted with every technological marvel, every provision for convenience and comfort, conceivable.

It would be passed on to Mackays, generation after generation. And, in the fullness of time, matured, mellowed, further refined, burnished ever more brightly, to a wonderfully satisfying glow, its fame would shine down through the ages. As Clarence Mackay pictured his house, for centuries to come, from Harbor Hill would emanate a portion of the Mackay family’s lustrous stature for all the world to admire.

 

 

 

 

 
Exposed to the elite, to thoroughbreds, aristocrats and blue-bloods, all his life, despite great affluence and a fine education, Mackay had always just missed fully belonging to the ‘best society.’ For her part, his wife, by birth, was fully a creature of that world. But she’d also been painfully aware of the limitations imposed upon her, for lack of great means, to fully enjoy all her world afforded.

So if Clarence Mackay had intended for Harbor Hill to be a show place on a summit, a castle where she would be a queen, while he benignly ruled, Katherine Mackay was in perfect accord with such a vision.

 

 

1904: In her bid to join the Roslyn School Board, Katherine Mackay entertained 500 local children and their parents at a fete that became an annual event for a time 

 

Why then, one wonders, did she not covert, and become a Roman Catholic? At the time of her engagement it was much talked about in the papers. There were suggestions that she was taking instruction, from a Jesuit priest, that her embrace by ‘the church,’ was imminent. Conversely, well aware that the Episcopal faith, was the religion of English-speaking aristocrats everywhere, why had Clarence Mackay insisted on rearing their children as Catholics? Certainly, for his father, religion had never been any imperative whatever. But his mother on the other hand, French heritage made the Catholic church more central to her. Having survived crushing poverty, distress and want, in large part through the sustenance and comfort availed of a God-focused life, she’d endeavored to make Catholicism important to her children too. As for the younger Mackay’s faith, in the long run, as events would reveal, to them, orthodoxy was more symbolic and affiliation more flexible, than any youthful adamancy might have indicated.

 

 

 

 

 

Clarence Mackay, was the second son of John William Mackay, one of the four men, famous as the Bonanza Kings, who struck it rich with the discovery of an expansive and remarkably pure vein of silver and gold ore. It was known as the Comstock Lode. Joining forces with James Gordon Bennett, John Mackay parlayed his windfall into the Commercial Cable and Postal Telegraph Company, laid cables across the Atlantic, and broke the Western union monopoly, to amass still more millions!

 

 

This was how his son had become a box-holder, patron and chairman of the Metropolitan Opera, a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Philharmonic. A decorated layman of the Roman Catholic Church, Mackay used every advantage at his command, to make himself into a full-length portrait of the prefect gentleman.

With a wedding gift of six hundred rolling acres from his father to Katherine, joining various Vanderbilts, Whitneys, Morgans, and others with names synonymous with ‘many millions,’ the Mackays proceeded to build. The idea of their group was to transform the sleepy farming community round about Roslyn, in Nassau County, into a realm of privilege and pleasure for their rarefied class, not so different from parts of Sussex. Their headquarters would be the Piping Rock Country Club, although many provided sports facilities on their properties, graced with houses and gardens based on villas, Colonial neo-Palladian houses, chateaux and manors, exceeding the offerings of any club. Among all their grand houses, it was readily acknowledged that Harbor Hill was unsurpassed for luxury. Of all the fine places from this period, along the north shore of Long Island’s ‘Gold Coast,’ Harbor Hill was held by many to be the most opulent and beautiful. Sadly, this coterie which built landed estates meant to endure through the ages, enjoyed but the briefest optimistic season before their gilded dream came crashing down around them.

 

 

If costly clipped bay trees, requiring wintering in a cold green house,  were widely employed as a status symbol, orange trees like these were only found at the most palatal places

 

  

 

 

Who today is comparable? The young, lovely and impulsive Gloria Vanderbilt comes to mind, so does Stephanie Seymour, Paris Hilton and even Kim Kardashian. She was so very young, so very rich, so resolute, to have what she wanted, how she wanted it, when she wanted it.  Katherine Mackay had posted over one hundred, mostly commanding, letters to Stanford White, to make sure, that he knew what she wanted too. Clarence Mackay, with fewer, more tactful memoranda sent to both of the principal collaborators with whom he created Harbor Hill, White and Katherine, kept things in check.  

What sort of dwelling would the Mackay castle on a hill be? Katherine was adamant on the subject: “a very severe house…based on Louis XIV and Henri II precedents…”   It fell  to Clarence to alternately agree to all sorts of alluring extras, seductively suggested by Stanford White, only to then demur, complaining, once he had grasped just how much the game trophies proposed for the billiard room, or a sunken bath, carved from a single block of marble, would cost. In repeated missives he was at pains to remind White about money being a serious consideration, once even going so far as to remonstrate with White, ‘ I will tell you right here that I would not think of paying such an absurd price as 100,000 francs for any mantelpiece, unless I had the income of a Rockefeller or a Carnegie!..’  Of course, in a way, he did have such an income! To be sure, in fairness, only after his father's death, in 1902, was a stupendous income his absolutely.  But, before then, his close relationship with his parents was such, that he had had access to all the Mackay  money, as much as if it had already been his.  That this availability was not at first official, allowed Mackay to play a kind of game. Nor did it help that he was well aware of Whites insolvency.

 

 

 

 

September 4, 1904: Katherine Mackay leaving Harbor Hill to arrange for the fair she staged there, for the benefit of the Nassau Hospital

 

Few houses Stanford White designed are as straightforward, so seemingly conventional as this, his last house. Some are quick to dismiss Harbor Hill as a result of the derivative nature of its facade from the specific source of Masions-Lafitte. What such un-analytical critics fail to perceive is how much in adaptation, White has refined, manipulated and otherwise striven to 'improve' his model. He has admirably transformed something grandiloquent and overblown, not suitable at all, as a setting for the family and social life of early twentieth century inhabitants, into a gracious residence. In stripping away extraneous ornament and elements meant merely to overawe, he left what's essential to evoke the famous chateau, minus its burdensome excesses decreed by courtly convention and etiquette. Today of course, someone seeking to do likewise, as adeptly, would be reduced to adapting Harbor Hill's water tower, on just ten acres as a country retreat. None the less, what White accomplished, was to transfigure Mansart's work in such a way as to made it like New York neo-Renaissance style towers admired by Corbusier: "better", more functional, taunt and disciplined, than the original.  

 

 

Misleadingly the date "1902", does not refer to the disposition of Harbor Hill, but only to the time it was deemed "complete."The cause of tremendous confusion, this is a revised floor-plan, made for the publication of Mckim, Mead & White's monograph, in 1915.  The large room in the south-west pavilion, with three windows, on both the south and the west, was, from 1902, to about 1905, the library, Harbor Hill's French oak paneled-principal living room. Transformation of this space into the"stone room", a salon that served exclusively as a space for entertaining, required that the billiard room, be made into a new, more intimate library. By 1925, thanks to Joseph Duveen finding a nearly  complete French gothic room, the new library was redone, a third time and rechristened, the "gothic room". Twenty years earlier, the billiard room had been relocated, in the casino. 

 

None of the dramatic mystery, with which Sir Edwin Lutyens invigorates his erstwhile conventional houses, with the unexpected, is present. Instead, one entered-into a broad long gallery, twenty feet-high and one hundred feet long, that acted as the entrance hall.     

 

1904

Harbor Hill's interiors, conceived by the Mackays and White, working together, were realized by three different well established firms of decorators.   A. H. Davenport & Co., with showrooms in Boston and New York, had worked with Stanford White since his start in the office of Henry Hobson Richardson. Due to exacting skill shown over a long association, they participated in many Mckim, Mead & White projects, including the White House 'restoration'.  In 1914, the firm merge with Irving & Casson, continuing in business until 1974.

Beginning his salutary career working for Herter Brothers, not surprisingly William Baumgarten, in establishing his own firm, continued to be patronized by the bon ton.

Jules Allard et Fils, a flourishing concern in Paris since Louis Philippe‘s reign, was another supplier of “complete furnishing, decorations, cabinetry, sculpture, seats, tapestry and drapes.” Jules Allard’s son Fernand Allard maintained the company until 1919.  Allard’s collaboration with ’showplace’ builder Richard Morris Hunt, starting in 1880, led to his phenomenal success in America. It was following Hunt’s advice that Allard opened an office in New York, where the demand for aristocratic surroundings from the decorator of the Emperor of France, knew no bounds.  Coordinated by White, his decorators and an army of subcontractors, miraculously formulated a harmonious result.

 

Lengthy, lofty, utterly impersonal when newly completed, Harbor Hill's entrance suggested the elegantly arid anonymity of some rather smart, public accommodation, like the Ritz. Some enthusiasts of great houses from the period of of Harbor Hill, find fault with most of its interiors for this reason, characterizing its rooms as "unappealing, with a heavy Edwardian grand hotel..." cast.

 

1927

It's instructive then to examine both the long gallery-entrance hall and Harbor Hill's other interiors, over the course of the house's evolution.  From the start, no matter how complete, nor even how handsome some room might be, as my post strives to show, all rooms and their details were subject to the whims of the Mackays' and repeated alteration.  In the case of the entrance hall, what a difference and warming effect, the introduction of shining armor, colorful banners and richly detailed tapestries made. 

 

1930 

Mediated only by a columnar screen, Harbor Hill's impressive great hall occupied most of the center of the house. No more so than the staircase, with parapets of luxuriantly scrolling, pierced arabesque, derived from seventeenth century English examples at Sudbury Hall and Cassiobury Park, does either room reference solely “Louis XIV and Henri II precedents…” Each space instead was articulated by pilasters, corresponding to the composite columns of two screens. Leading at either end into the great hall, they de-marked the entrance hall and front door and the passage separating the library and dining room, with a 'back door' exit onto the south terrace.  Their capitals, were hung with pendant garlands, a feature not unknown in the seventeenth century, but in 1900, by far, more associated with Louis Seize mode, the revival of which, was coming to the forefront of architectural fashion.

1930 

By means of vivid word pictures, photographs and numerous drawings, White effectively bewitched the Mackays into making of their house and its enormous great hall, thirty-eight feet high, forty-eight feet wide and eighty feet long, far more than even they had dared imagine.  The rendering below, replete with antique choir stalls, silken heraldic banners and an array of armor, indicates what he had had in mind. It shows the same sort of historicist and highly atmospheric, but eclectic flair for which White was famous. It was a personal style that Incorporated many fashion status symbols of the time, lion, tiger and polar bear rugs, potted palms, antique furniture, lustrous textiles and flowers and ornaments in profusion. Concurrently, for the Mackay's Roslyn neighbor and friend, William Collins Whitney, at his palatal Fifth Avenue house, White was completing rooms that epitomized his style. The Mackays knew the Whitney project well and frequently referenced it, hoping for something similarly fine.  

Certainly Clarence Mackay, who, the legendary art dealer, Joseph Duveen, helped to further infect with the collecting bug, was susceptible to inducement, to build better than he'd set out to. The merchant of masterpieces who became baron Duveen of Milbank, wrote of their mutually beneficial association, 

Visiting Clarence Mackay at his manor, Harbor Hill, in Roslyn, soon after making his acquaintance, my gaze took in certain tapestries on the walls. Those tapestries, my dear Mr. Mackay, are very good, but they are not good enough for you. I can't bear you to have them in your chateau. I'll buy them from you, as I have a customer they're good enough for. I'll pay you thirty-five thousand dollars for them...

 

His host, agreed, without hesitation. Duveen's check arrived promptly the next day as Mackay incredulously shipped off the tapestries, for which he had only paid a fraction of what the dealer offered.

Duveen in fact, had had no client awaiting the hangings. They went directly into storage in the vast basement of his showroom. Yet through this sound investment, Mackay had been ensnared, to became one of Duveen's best customers. Moreover, in cultivating Mackay's taste,  Duveen was able to help him to elevate his house, a house as good as the John S, Phipps' place at Westbury, to the stratispheric aesthetic level of Mrs. Gardner's Fenway Court. 

 Stanford White's compelling illustration of his intentions for Harbor Hill's great hall, amply justified his assurances to Clarence Mackay, that he would be getting a house which, with the exception of Hunt's Biltmore, was without peer

 

One might easily imagine that the four, Four Season Arras tapestries in the following pictures, are the ones Joseph Duveen disparaged?  Acquired in Paris for his clients by White, identified as of Gobelin manufacture, the early eighteenth century allegorical works had come from the collection of the Princesse de Sagan. Enhancing the provenance, attribution and manufacture of artwork and objet de vertu, was nothing unusual for high-end purveyors like White and Duveen. In all events, Clarence Mackay having zeroed in on making the great hall the focal point of the interior of his home, led to change. He sought to give it greater cohesion and continuity, telling his architect in 1902, 'My heart is wrapped up in making a success of that hall...' This meant, tapestries appropriate to the ballroom the great hall seems to have started out as, were moved.

 

1902  

'Summer'.   Removing the Season tapestries into the salon, which made it better accord to the first state room at Blenheim Palace, also made the hall more purely an expression of fused medieval and Renaissance tastes. This might be seen as a promotion as it were, but eventually, the Arras tapestries were relegated to Katherine's boudoir, before being sold. The two smaller panels from the set, Summer and Autumn, ended up in Akron Ohio, at the estate of rubber baron, F. A. Seiberling, Stan Hywet Hall. 

1902  

Harbor Hill's prized pierced and repousse brass Venetian lantern. Soon enough, the time would come for its banishment

The great hall's gallery, above the entrance hall, acted as the second floor's  cross corridor. Pierced strap-work, reminiscent of a purdah screen, helped to supply light into room

 

Designation of Harbor Hill's hall as a showcase for fifteenth through the seventeenth century armor, also called for removal of the entryways' green Connemara columns with white marble bases and capitals. What trouble and discord they had caused. Angelo Fucigna, the stone mason, in the end was unable to supply either monoliths, or the perfectly matching shafts specified. Yet foolishly, he had installed them anyway, leading to rejection, and, for him at least, ruinous litigation.  Piccirilli Brothers did the job properly. But the changed direction of the hall meant that their columns too were removed, replaced by Davenport & Co., with fluted oak pillars that matched the pilasters they had also made.

1902  

Viewed between the lost columns, the front door's 'cantonniers' or valances, were made from the fruit and flower festooned top and side borders of a 17th century Flemish tapestry.  One of two, by 1914, they had made their way from in the great hall at Harbor Hill, to the Stan Hywet Hall's music room in Akron, Ohio

Stan Hywet Hall, Akron, Ohio, the residence of rubber baron Frank A. Seiberling, showing the music room stage, framed by a 'cantonnier' from Harbor Hill. A large house with sixty-five rooms comprising nearly 50,000  square feet, Stan Hywet, as the photograph indicates, lacks Harbor Hill's more monumental scale   

  

Following White's unexpected death in 1906 and Katherine Mackay's equally abrupt 1914 flight to Paris to her husband's friend and doctor, the Harbor Hill hall grew ever more elaborate and filled furniture and armor.  Always, in the hall as well as the rest of the house, there was a process of the weeding out of the indifferent and upgrading at work. In this way, a formerly much esteemed Venetian lantern, Davenport lounge chairs, floridly carved rosewood Chinese stools, used as plant stands and other unremarkable accumulations were displaced by arms and armament, paintings, sculpture and furniture of the highest order.

 

1908 

Circa 1915

A rare Levantine shield that once helped to form a trophy of arms in Harbor Hill's great Hall 

 

Circa 1925  

Circa 1925

Circa 1930: Harbor Hill's hall chimney-piece, composed from sixteenth century elements    

 

Mackay would gather together the world's finest private armor collection

 

Finally, just as White would have wished Clarence Mackay, whom he had helped to tutor, was acclaimed as a major connoisseur.  His collection of superb Medieval tapestries, was as celebrated as his armory, praised by visitors as diverse as Edward, Prince of Wales and the great art critic and friend of Stanford White, Royal Cortissoz.   In the December 1929 issue of the International Studio, the critic's tribute was fulsome"

 

I cannot forbear glancing at the character of Harbor Hill as a whole.  Across the threshold one steps into a corridor that runs almost the length of the house.  Traversing it the visitor finds himself in a vast hall or chamber of lordly dimensions, with a ceiling more than thirty feet high. Gothic tapestries enrich the walls.  Against them are ranged some of the most famous suits of armor in the world... Vast shadowy and splendid, the whole room breathes of history, as it does of consummate art and craftsmanship.  Color is everywhere, in the rosy glow of the Chaumot tapestries, in those faintly moving banners, and in scattered incidents of ruby velvet.  And the marvelous thing is the manner in which the myriad objects here assembled from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance all "pull together," making one superb effect and creating one harmonious atmosphere.  It is the atmosphere of beauty.  It was an axiom of Stanford White's that the work of any period would go with the work of any other period---if both were of superlative quality.  Mr. Mackay has worked on the same conviction, maintaining the high standard which validates it... This Collector has not only specialized in architecture, painting, sculpture, tapestry and furniture but has specialized in so fusing them as to produce a collection in itself a work of art..."

1927: Miss Katherine O'Brien in the Great Hall at Harbor Hill, Sir John Lavery ( 1856-1941). The sitter was the Mackay's granddaughter

 

With a 'backdoor', opening onto the south terrace, the passage between the library-'stone room' room and the dining room, faced the hall, to which it was an extension. For a time, it obviously acted as an auxiliary sitting room. As such, it was comfortably furnished by Katherine, with easy chairs, tables laden with new books and magazines, glass lamps, with pictorial paper shades and potted ferns. Assisted by Joe Duveen, so adept in locating more loot, Clarence Makay soon made it back into a formal space. It proved ideal for the display of his outstanding parade armor and stuffed steeds dressed in the proper trapping of the tournament .

  

 January 28, 1906: The New York Times 

Circa 1925: Harbor Hill's south passage

A German knight's Maximilian Armor, made in 1525 and seen at the feft, in the passageway photograph above  

 

To begin with, the salon at Harbor Hill was an almost perfunctory Allard & Sons rendition of Louis Quinze taste. There was no great glistening central chandelier, no pile carpet on the basket-weave parquetry floor.  The only memorable feature in fact, was the life-size, full-length portrait of an eighteen-year Katherine, painted by Edmund Cartran. Desire for authentic, pristine, important French furniture has not yet been prompted in 1902, so Allards reproductions will do.  

 

1902: Harbor Hill's salon

Clarence Mackay’s eighteen-year old fiancée was painted by Edmund Cartran holding an orchid in her hand. Still others ornamented the corsage of her white satin dress and more still, a cascading coiffure. In short order, Mrs. Clarence Mackay, a socialite-celebrity, due to wealth, beauty, literary ambitions, philanthropy, her work on the local school board and for the suffragist's cause, came to write in purple ink, on pink, lavender and orchid-colored letter paper. In building Harbor Hill, she’d employed her favored mauve thoroughly, in the color scheme of her suite of rooms upstairs, while here, in the salon, the bright white walls were softened with mauve lines

Had discontent with the notion of a largely 'gilt-free', pristinely white, salon, occurred once the Mackays saw the state rooms at Blenheim Palace, that Allard probably had had a hand in redecorating?

1904: Blenheim Palace, the first state room

 

Redecorated with other 'show rooms' by the ninth duke of Marlborough immediately following his marriage to Katherine Mackay's friend, Consuelo Vanderbilt, Blenheim's first state room probably inspired the introduction of a carpet and tapestries in the salon at Harbor Hill. 

 

January 28, 1906: The New York Times , Harbor Hill's salon

Was the decision to move and then sell their Four Season tapestries, based on the Mackays purchasing a finer set, four silk and wool panels of Gobelins manufactory, made between 1770 and 1773? With a narrative the exploits Don Quixote, based on the highly popular romance novel by Miguel de Cervantes, the designs were derived from paintings by Charles-Antoine Coypel.

Sancho’s Feast on the Isle of Barataria from The Story of Don Quixote series, 1770–72, woven at the Gobelins Tapestry Manufactory  now owned by the J. Paul Getty Museum, it had come from the collection of  Clarence Mackay. This tapestry and three related hangings, perhaps hung in Harbor Hill's salon.

Frustraitingly, the ability to only find two images of this room, seperated by just four years, makes it difficult to say how it changed. It's facinating to considor the changes that occured over those few early years. Were they indicative of any subsequent rethinking, the salon might have come to look dramatically different. The tapestry above, like the chair below, could not have easily been in other rooms at Harbor Hill. Unfortunately however, they would have suited the townhouse he acquired at number three East 75th Street quite well.  

One of a set of six exceptional Louis XV fauteils with tapestry covers that were owned by Clarence Mackay. Today in the collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, they were a bequest of Mackay's friend Forsythe Wicks

 

 In the era prior air-conditioning, an important provision for any country house, be it cottage or summer palace, was a shaded porch, piazza or terrace. At Harbor Hill, naturally, one might enjoy all three. Because the 'glass piazza' had double-pane wondows, in addition to serving as a summer living room, it also acted as a lush winter garden, filled with palms, ferns and blooming plants, including prized orchids. 

 

 

Having moved to New York, the innovative Valencian architect and builder, Rafael Guastavino, was granted a US patented for his “Tile Arch System” for making structural vaults, in 1885.  Such ceilings were capable of supporting a load much greater than ordinary wooden joists. Using interlocking terracotta tiles, laid in a herringbone pattern, with layers of mortar, they’d  been appropriated from traditional Roman building. The system formed taunt, resilient, fire-proof, thin and light-weight ceilings that  White’s firm exploited often to form unobstructed spaces.  

Used in the casino, for the plunge and other rooms, Guastavino vaults were extensively employed in Harbor Hill’s service wing as well, for pantries, the two servant’s halls and most notably, for the gleaming kitchen. The only application in the ‘show’ part of the house, was in the ‘glass piazza, where the tiles formed a shallow saucer dome that seemed weightless.     

 

In 1902 an attraction of the Mackay's glass piazza was a ping pong table. That year the fast-paced past time had taken the nation by storm.  However, after November of 1904,  the conservatory-like 'glass piazza,' gained a far more unusual  item of interest.  Traveling in style, in his client-friend's private railway car, White and Clarence Mackay had visited the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis. When too red-blooded club-men attend a world's fair together, one has no idea just what is liable to strike their fancy. For Mackay and perhaps for White too, it was a brazen whore, beautifully made up and bedecked with a quantity of gold colored barbaric jewelry, including a necklace of tiger's claws.

 

 

January 28, 1906: The New York Times  

"Cornith" portraying a priestess of Venus, a ritual prostitute, is a late work of the  painter and sculptor Jean-Leon Gerome. Whether depicting the first Thanksgiving, a victor in the Roman arena, Christian martyrs or orientalists scenes of fantasy, his oeuvre was academically researched and polished, sensual and imbued with theatrical bravura.  White had known the artist, who'd just died. He owned at least two of Gerome's history paintings.  The son of a goldsmith, Gerome had only taken up sculpture after turning fifty. After a while, causing great controversy, using wax bases pigments, in the manner of the ancient Greeks, he began tinting his marble figures. Hence the popular title the 'Tinted Venus.'   Done in several variations, much regarded as the artist’s “Most spectacular testament,” it was also his last creation.

November 1, 1908: New York Tribune

One of several variations, this version of French painter and sculptor Jean-Leon Gerome's 'Cornith,' is owned by the Getty Museum.  But lacking a jewel-mounted bracelet, it is not likely to be the sane one Clarence Mackay brought home from the 1904 World's Fair. 

Famous for helping clients to disavow their youthful folly, had Duveen been able to banish Mackay's Gerome? All things considered, as focal point of the conservatory, it must have been disconcerting for many much as the portrait of his wife, Stephanie Seymour, that Peter Brant commissioned. More than anything, one wonders, what did Katherine think?

 

By the late 1920's Harbor Hill's west portico was enclosed by glass to provide still more space for entertaining 

 

On the first floor, the large room occupying Harbor Hill's south-west pavilion, had three windows, on both the south and the west sides. This in part, it what makes it possible, to positively assign it, in a house where change was not infrequent.  From 1902, to about 1905, as accords with the drawing below, dated 1899, this was the library, Harbor Hill's principal living room, paneled in French oak, outlined in old gilt. Its woodwork, chimney-piece, curtains, wall hangings, carpet and furniture, were supplied by Allard and Sons.

 

 

 

They are magnificent books.  The breath and depth of new research undertaken by Wayne Craven with his, Stanford White: Decorator in Opulence and Dealer in Antiques, published by the Columbia University Press, in 2005 and Professor Richard Guy Wilson's more recent offering, Harbor Hill: Portrait of a House, produced by the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities, through the auspices of the Norton Press, in 2008, is absolutely prodigious. Quite little of what I relate here would have been possible without the great help and many clues to the history of Harbor Hill both contain. I have not had the advantage of personally plowing through the hundreds and hundreds of letters, invoices, drawings, news clippings and other varied materials related to this history.

 

 

 

Even doing research from journals, photographs and newspapers on-line, together with consulting their work, as well as Elizabeth and Sam White's, Paul Baker's and Mosette Broderick's, has been daunting. How, might one order, organize and keep un-jumbled, so much information and a host of imperative dates? Invariably, almost unavoidably, despite all one's fine plans, writing a book, on gets something, not quite entirely right. Mr. Craven and Professor Wilson have, as regards Harbor Hill's short-lived, original library.  

 

1902: Harbor Hill's original library. This image is from a Mckim, Mead & White office album owned by the New York Historical Society. Wayne Craven contended; "The library at Harbor Hill was located on the first floor, directly behind the main hall, although for unknown reasons it does not appear in the plans."  

Reading this,  made perfect sense, as no illustrations showing a room with book shelves appears in the 1915 monograph. The photo above however was used in articles published to announce Harbor Hill's completion. They include one from the New York Herald on Sunday, August 10, 1902 and  "The Founding Of An American Estate" in  the August 16, 1902 issue of Town and Country magazine. The 'stone room,' is nowhere to be seen, but, perhaps the library could have been behind the hall. Where would the service wing's stores and offices have been located though, if that had been so? It's the laws of physics make this explanation impossible

 

Their error is easily understood. Given the state of records concerning White's firm, located in three different institutions, given the changeable nature of the Mackays, one can hardly see how it came about.  Indeed the discovery that something was amiss, only occurred due to their worthy efforts. Foremost, the culprits are Katherine and Clarence Mackay. 

 

 Professor Richard Guy Wilson, like Wayne Craven, shows no illustration of Harbor Hill's libraries, one and two in his book, only the billiard room. He's definite enough about the billiard room metamorphosing into the library, but discusses the library-'stone room,' as a contest between the strong wills of Katherine and Clarence.  In his telling of the saga of this room, Clarence Mackay wins, but it seems that events unfolded differently

 

It is very difficult to believe indeed, that a pair who so often complained about escalating costs, the disruption of changes and the inconvenience of construction, could have done it. There was their fine library, complete, comfortable, homey and welcoming, outfitted in strict accordance with the the express, detailed, wishes of Mrs. Mackay and after just two years, it was completely redone!  

What had been her directives?  With much the same vehemence shown in determining the style and form of her house, she had decreed a Louis Quatorze style library. Just a few of Katherine's requirements included a high wainscot, of carved French oak, highlighted with gold. Green silk covered the walls above the wainscoting. It was to be a velours, woven with alternating velvet and satin stripes. The chimney breast was also paneled in oak, but the modillion bracketed cove at the top of the walls, that appears to be oak, was not. Just as the marble cove of the dining room at marble house, was not marble, here a  trompe l'oeil painted finish skillfully imitated oak.  Allard's estimates of 1899 outline many of these particulars, shown in the photographs that follow:

We will hang the walls with green stripe velours as per sample submitted, we will manufacture and put up window draperies, as per design submitted, using same velours as for walls... We agree to furnish and put up eight electric brackets---Louis XIV, Two ceiling fixtures as per design submitted... 

 

1902: Harbor Hill's gemütlich library 

 

There are the gilded bronze light brackets, shaded and recalling an hotel.  In a house with few chandeliers of any kind, not surprisingly, the ceiling fixtures seem to have been eliminated. Indeed, all about the room, along with pairs of shaded candlesticks, glass kerosene lamps with pictorial paper shades are found. Used latter in the passage between this room and the dining room, which Katherine furnished as a sitting room, they'd been electrified, although rather than drilling the glass cords dangled from the sockets. Of little intrinsic value, might these lamps have belonged to Katherine's mother, who had died so soon after her marriage?

Very like the drawing room mantel of her girlhood friend, Cornelia Martin, who became the Countess of Craven, the red veined marble Louis XIV style mantelpiece had been much discussed. It was not to have a shelf, on this Katherine was most definite.

 

The fireside in Harbor Hill's original library 

A portrait of the founder of Harbor Hill's sybaritic feast, Clarence Mackay's father, John William Mackay. had a prominent place of honor above the library's shelf-less mantelpiece.  The ornate gilded frame was carved by an Allard craftsman 

 1902: The velvet draped writing table 

Was it nostalgia that caused candles and kerosene lamps to be used in Harbor Hill's first  library?   

A wedding gift often given by grand friends, not rich or intimate enough to give jewels, was gold; objects such as gold vases, like the two unmatched beakers on this bureau plat. One can just glimpse as well, a leg of the tiger skin hearth rug

Confusing as hell, but understandable, was the tendency of those involved in transforming the 'private' Harbor Hill library in a 'public' space, meant for display and entertaining, to persist in referring to it as the. 'library', well after every book had been removed.  Till now, this has tricked every scholar examining the house. Both the billiard room and the new 'stone room' had antique stone mantelpieces. Wilson, in speaking of the billiard room's alterations, tells how: "Robert Fisher's carvers modified the original, antique mantle and placed on it a bust of Voltaire copied by Piccirilli Brothers from Jean-Antoine Houdon's famous portrait." This did all occur of course, only, not in the billiard room, but the 'stone room.'

 

It is difficult to picture the 'stone room's' bust of Voltaire, surmounted by a painting of John William Mackay, as Professor Wilson and Wayne Craven outline discussing the evolution of Harbor Hill's library

Voltaire, by Jean Antonine Houdon

Although other work, in anticipation of the elimination of Harbor Hill's original library might have already started, the over-mantle design drawing shown above, with other plans for the 'stone room,' are dated 1904, two years after the house was officially completed 

January 28, 1906: The New York Times: Harbor Hill's 'stone room,' first appears in the press

Both Craven and Wilson when speaking of tapestries and an order that "no color" be introduce into "my library," instead should have been discussing the 'stone room'. "I will not have tapestry anywhere but in the library...hung on the windows as I said and i wish it hung this week," Katherine stressed, meaning, the former library that was becoming the 'stone room'.  Clarence Mackay himself clears things up, writing to White: "I wish some time you would take a run down to Harbor Hill in your automobile and see how that new room is progressing.  It is a very important piece of work, and I should be very much obliged if you would..." The "new room" mentioned, is not the new library, progressing in the former billiard room, but the new 'stone room', made from the former library. 

As instructed by Katherine Mackay tapestry hangings framed the 'stone room' openings

 

One intrusion of color into the 'stone room', was provided by a second portrait of Katherine Mackay.  

One of the qualities of Katherine Mackay which perennially drew praise, was her originality. Her costume for the fancy dress ball of James Hazen Hyde, was no exception. Called the ball of the century, in January of 1905, it caused a maelstrom of controversy, such was its extravagance. Katherine Mackay’s costume however prompted delight in all, even Stanford White.

At a great fete meant to evoke the charm an ancien régime
court at Versailles, Katherine assured distinction by portraying Adrienne Lecouvreur, the famous actress of the eighteenth century. Only, she did not powder her hair and wear a ruffled gown, as others did. Instead, she was Adrienne in her great role of the mythical Greek queen, Phedre from Racine’s play.

1906: Katherine Mackay as "Phedre", by John W. Alexander

 
Her dress was of silver cloth studded with turquoises, with a silver tunic and skirt. From her shoulders fell a long train of silver cloth. It was carried by two young black page boys in costumes of pink brocade with sandals. She wore a tiara of turquoises and pearls, a necklace of the same jewels and carried a crystal scepter in her hand. Her little pages followed her everywhere throughout the evening. But they do not appear in her portrait by John W. Alexander, commemorating a night of social triumph. Stanford White designed a Renaissance style frame for this work destined for the ’stone room’.

 Stanford White designed a Renaissance style frame for John W. Alexander's portrait

1908

Circa 1920: The 'stone room' has a chandelier as well as tapestry at the door 

 

Rhapsodizing about Harbor Hill and its sumptuously appointed great hall, art critic Royal Cortissoz had not neglected the 'stone room', by now dubbed the Renaissance room, writing:

The same glamour envelopes the stately Renaissance room in which most of the pictures are housed.  

Among the most cherished objects in Mackay's collection, was this celebrated painted terracotta bust of Lorenzo de' Medici, made in Florence at close of the 15th, or at the start of the 16th century, probably after a model by Andrea del Verrocchio and Orsino Benintendi. Today owned by the National Gallery, in the photograph found below, de Medici has displaced the reproduction bust of Voltaire 

Circa 1924: Purchased in 1920 for a staggering $40,000.00 Clarence Mackay's Mannerist chest, discussed below, can be seen in the image above, positioned to the left of Renaissance room's door 

 

Being cheated is perhaps the worst fear of the rich.  Fashioned by some brilliant but unknown French workshop in about 1580, this monumental, intricately decorated cabinet had cost Mackay $40,000.00. Some questioned its authenticity and he was desperate to know for sure. Finally, on the advice of a leading expert, Mackay returned it to Duveen. The dealer was furious, but abided by a policy that today only exist at luxury retailers like Bergdorf Goodman, a dissatisfied customer, may return anything, at any time, for a credit equal to an item's purchase price.  Mackay's rejection made the mannerist masterpiece impossible to sell.  The Getty Museum got it on most reasonable terms.  Their research however determined that, while it does indeed include late-19th-century additions, on the whole, the cabinet that was sent back, is quite genuine.

 

A Mannerist French cabinet, made circa 1580 from Walnut, oak, paint, brass, and iron; with a linen-and-silk lining

Velvet hangings, velvet sofas and easy chairs, oak wainscoting and a trabeated ceiling all contributed to making a bastion of masculinity. But what really imparted a a sense that this was an exclusively male preserve where the ranks of elk and stag hunting trophies that encircled one with with unblinking stares. A leaping fire, old brandy and cigars are all that's left to start the tall tales and braggadocio flowing and Clarence Mackay and Stanford White have provided for each.

 

1902: Harbor Hill's original billiard room

Transformation of the library, into the"stone room", a salon that served exclusively as a space for entertaining, had required that the billiard room, be made into a new, more intimate library. These first adjustments had been rather restrained.  The ceiling, with molded plaster panels between oak beams was retained.  So were the curtains, wainscot and velvet wall hangings. The Times photograph from 1906 shows how initially at least, even the hanging light fixture over the billiard table with four fringed pleated silk shades, was kept, to light the central library table. The costly hunting trophies, whereby which the room gained much of its character also stayed in place at first.  

  

January 28, 1906: The New York Times 

Bigger interventions were in store. The billiard room's Italian Renaissance chimney piece moved to the dining room, while the silver sconces around that room's walls, came here. The panoply of stuffed heads vanished, recalled by but four elk sculls. A portrait of daughter Kay and some majestic Louis XV seat furniture rounded things out. 

 

Circa 1920  

By 1915, the dining room's silver sconces moved to the library

What mantelpiece was used here, the dining room's antique mantle, the old library's Louis XIV style example? Over the course of events incremental change saw the reuse of a two tiered table from the first library here.  

 A two tiered Allard table from the first library

CIRCA 1906: Clarence Mackay with his daughters, Ellin and Katherine in Harbor Hill's second library which had formerly served as the billiard room. He is seated in a reused billiard room chair. Behind him atop the hastily improvised glazed bookcases, are the mantle clock and candelabra originally in thr dining room, To the right is a two-tiered table that Allard had supplied for the first library.

 

 By 1925, thanks to Joseph Duveen coming upon an available and nearly complete French gothic room, from a church in Burgundy, the new library was redone a third time. The introduction of Duveen's Medieval salvage required that the library by rechristened, the "gothic room". Twenty years earlier, the billiard room had been relocated, in the casino. 

 

There is, for example, a little gem of a room at the end of the corridor aforesaid, a Gothic room with ancient boiserie and stained glass, and a renowned group of marble pleurants sending the imagination straight back to the heroic tombs of Phillippe le Hardi and Jean sans Ouer at Dijon, in the heart of the old Burgundian tradition.  It is a distinctly individualized key.  But it is, in its beauty, akin to... the Sassetti, some more armor and divers other treasures, one is conscious of the unity to which I have referred, of an organized purpose seeking the perfection in the specific object and in the grand alliance of all the objects together.  Exacting taste tells in every detail of arrangement, even to the placement of a bowl of yellow roses before just the sculpture that invites its presence.

 

 

Circa 1926: The Gothic room

1927: Tea Time in the Gothic Room at Harbor Hill, Sir John Lavery ( 1856-1941). Clarence Mackay, his son John William Mackay, and his mother, Louise, Mrs. John William Mackay take tea. Long a noted society leader in London and Paris, in 1920 Mrs. Mackay moved back to the US.  Living with her son, at Harbor Hill, Palm Beach and on East 75th Street, she acted as his hostess and as a chaperon for her grandchildren

The flamboyant door into the Gothic room from the entrance hall 

 

Like the billiard room as originally built, architecturally, Harbor Hill’s dining room was hardly striking. The molded plaster ceiling and oak wainscot made the room seem vaguely Elizabethan. Otherwise, an antique continental marble mantelpiece, that was exchanged soon enough, dominated the enormous space. Dinner for forty, was not uncommon. Size gave the dining room versatility. Two round tables of twenty-five were used for dinner in 1907, one of several, over the years, where the Duchess of Marlborough was guest of honor. The centers of the glistening white damask cloths displayed masses of roses and orchids, partly enveloped maiden hair fern and bathed in soft light from shaded candles. Six delectable courses, expertly prepared by the Mackay’s French chef, were passed by the butler assisted by nine footmen.

1902

 

Contemplating such an occasion, let’s turn the clock back, to 1904-1929. Step through the front door of Harbor Hill, follow the elegantly liveried butler. He’s leading to the west terrace, before the fountain where four allegorical bronze equestrian figures represent ever flowing rivers, the Rhine, Seine, Volga and Mississippi. Or perhaps we’re being taken to the ‘stone room’, to sit beside the fire? In any case, once there, we’ll meet the family and be given an aperitif. After a little while it’s time to link arms and with our hosts and fellow guests, enter the glowing dining room. Here, at last, we will fully experience the consummation of Harbor Hill and all such places.

1904

 

Why had the charming Mrs. Clarence Hungerford Mackay been so impatient. Demanding that a chateau materialize, she’d insisted that it ought appear overnight and be perfect. Partly, she was motivated by the example of her friend Consuelo, Duchess of Marlborough’s mother. A dynamo of intelligence, determination and ambition, Alva Erskine Smith was born in Mobil. She’d been as focused acting to escape the genteel poverty of her girlhood as Katherine was to escape her far less dire situation. Marrying a Vanderbilt, then divorcing him, forcing her daughter Consuelo into a loveless match with one of England’s premier nobles, Alva Vanderbilt had next established an important president. Marring a second rich husband, Oliver Belmont, she managed something no one had believed to be possible. In the process of remarrying, though divorced, she’d ably managed to maintain her lofty position as a social force.

 

 

After 1920, when Clarence Mackay's mother moved to Harbor Hill to act as his hostess, she brought with her the famed Mackay, Tiffany & Co. silver.  Her husband had sent a half-ton of ore from his own mine for it. Awarded a prize when exhibited at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1878, the dinner and desert service for 24, comprised, 250 pieces.  It included as well hollowware and centerpieces.  Flower-encrusted with thistles, shamrocks, and blossoms native to American, the unique creation took two years and 200 craftsmen to complete

 

In between, and afterward as well, to assert her position as Mrs. Vanderbilt and then as Mrs. Belmont, she had entertained. In Fifth Avenue’s first house worthy of any claim of being comparable to the finest residences of London or Paris, in Newport at lavish “Marble House”, she hosted dinners, dances, teas and luncheon parties.  The thing each entertainment she gave shared, was the attention she paid to detail. No cost was spared.  Her meals were more delicious, beautifully presented and indeed in every way, better than anyone else’s.   So was the orchestra chosen for a dance, the flowers selected for a lunch table.  

 1927

One of a serries of 'grotesque' late seventeenth century Beauvais tapestries, 'The Offerings of Bacchus' that  formed an apropos decoration for Harbor Hill's dining room

 

Katherine had observed how after coming to New York unknown, that Alva Smith had fashioned for herself, a station of  invincibility. Marshaling the Vanderbilt fortune entreating, she identified and created an important role for herself, as a leading hostess. With Mrs. Belmont and her mother-in-law as role models, Katherine Mackay was anxious to start having guest in the impressive setting of Harbor Hill, and in doing so, to create a well-lived life of her own. 

A properly laid dinner table of the sort that persisted at Harbor Hill until the end

 

 1904: Harbor Hill footmen

 

 TO BE CONTINUED...

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Whether large, or less large, many of America’s greatest country houses, have become victims of changing times and diminished discernment. Having lost purpose in our more informal time, some of the most remarkable, have been unceremoniously razed to the ground. This turn of events, most often inspired by ignorance and greed, occurs still, even though it might seem that the public’s consciousness has been elevated and that there far remain too few examples of irreplaceable houses to allow their destruction.

The fine qualities of these places, with the power to transport one outside of the ordinary were numerous and varied. “Whitemarsh Hall” possessed a sublime poetry, comparable to a Bach cantata. Edith Rockefeller McCormick’s lakeside “Villa Turicm,” was Charles Adams Platt’s masterpiece! “Villa Rosa, ” by Ogden Codman, like “Little Ispwich,” by Delano & Aldrich, was elegance itself. “Rose Terrace,” represented the perfected distillation of a French ideal. “Casa Bendita,” embodied the escapist romance that was Palm Beach. “Pepper Hill,” in Montecito, David Adler’s adaptation of the Venetian church, Chiesa di Santo Stefano, had a heavenly view. What country house better than “Chestertown”, contrasted the disarming combination of reticence and luxury so characteristic of what is termed ’good taste’ in America?  Which ‘Gold Coast’ estate was more reminiscent of ‘Manderly’ , than “Inisfada”?

 

 

 

Among the many casualties to today’s sometimes indifferent sensibility, which loss was greater than the senseless destruction of Harbor Hill? Did any property better combine a sylvan landscape, beautifully graced by formal gardens as well as ancillary dependencies as quaint Marie Antoinette’s miniature farm? Was more magisterial architecture ever realized as the faultless setting for an unparalleled collection of art and fine furniture?

Built from 166,000 tons of granite, faced with blue Indiana limestone, Harbor Hill was as big as “The Breakers”. These blocks of load bearing walls, were largely salvaged from the twenty-eight foot thick walls of New York City’s Murray Hill Reservoir. An Egyptian Revival monument, the looming reservoir stood on four acres, at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, where the library and Bryant Park are. Harbor Hill’s salvaged masonry points to a series of mostly meaningless economies, that also contributed to the building of this extravagant house.

Certainly the great concern that Katherine and Clarence Mackay, the house’s builders, expressed in voluminous correspondence, objecting at every turn, lest they be cheated, contributed to a massive record. “Perhaps no razed mansion in America is better documented than Harbor Hill…” enthused Eve Kahn in her lengthy Period Home review a couple of years ago, in reference to archives filled with bills, blueprints, drawings, photographs and letters. Her exuberance was inspired by, Harbor Hill: Portrait of a House. This commendable work was written by Richard Guy Wilson, the esteemed architectural history professor at the University of Virginia. Although expanding the burgeoning scholarship of Long Island Gold Coast, Gilded Era houses, like Monica Randall’s pioneering efforts, Wilson’s portrayal has limitations. And these failings, almost all of them, stem from two culprits, the demanding, conflicted and imperious Mackays.

 

 

  1642: François Mansart's Maisons-Laffitte 

 

 It is doubtful that their architect Stanford White, a most brilliant practitioner, was ever permitted to design any aspect or element of Harbor Hill only once. Nor were his collaborators spared; not Guy Lowell, the patrician Bostonian, who devised a mostly naturalistic landscape, placing Harbor Hill in a picturesque context reminiscent of “Biltmore”, nor Warren & Wetmore, the firm that planned the stables, casino and farm buildings. Ironically, indecision coupled with resources vast enough to enable the gratification of every whim, added markedly to both cost overruns and time spent amidst the dust and noise of construction. Modeled after François Mansart's 1642 Maisons-Laffitte northwest of Paris, ostensibly, Harbor Hill was completed in 1901. But in reality, work finishing and refining one of America’s most impressive country houses, went on and on for a few decades. Katherine Mackay had predicted that Harbor Hill would take at least, ‘20 years to be complete…’ Actually, major improvements were undertaken as late as 1927. Sorting through and getting straight the myriad details associated with such an open-ended enterprise has challenged and defeated more than one scholar. This post seeks to make the record of what is perhaps America’s most remarkable lost country house, more accurate.

 

1901: The forecourt at Harbor Hill

 1901: Harbor Hill from the lawn, toward the rear grass terrace

 

Visitors were introduced to Harbor Hill’s splendors by gradual degrees. Imposing but severely plain, at Harbor Hill entry was gained via the lodge.   Wrought iron gates, handsome but unexceptional, stood below a sheltered colonnade of Tuscan piers, between two, twin, angled, square, two-storey gatehouses on each side.  Housing a gate keeper, the lodges had four high slate-covered mansard roofs. But only the enscrolled brackets of the entrance’s lanterns and a clock’s garland of fruit and flowers, offered any relief from prevailing austerity.  

 

 

1902: Mature maple trees, at the lodge and along the driveway, were meant to instantly lend Harbor Hill the mellowness of its European models. 

 

 

Harbor Hill's handsome gateway coyly suggested an interesting house, but hardly hinted at its awaiting magnificence. 

 

 

 

Only the enscrolled brackets of the entrance’s lanterns and a clock’s garland of fruit and flowers, offered any relief from prevailing austerity of the Harbor Hill gate lodge.  

 

 The gateman's impressive livery only added to Harbor Hill's luster 

 

  

No sooner had one passed through the gate however, had this formal hauteur vanished. Progress along a circuitous, mile-long drive, bordered by laurels, azaleas and rhododendrons, was designed to present a succession of features meant to enchant the eye. As the vine-hung stone bridge faded from view, a pool covered with lilies appeared. Dense stands of trees suddenly gave way to gently rolling pastures.  That is until, at last, centered on a final straight stretch of drive, between an avenue of maples, announced by stone lions, there stood imposing Harbor Hill.    

 

The driveway's rustic bridge  

 

 

A woodland pool at the driveway's edge 

  

 

 

 

Centered on a final straight stretch of drive, between an avenue of maples, announced by stone lions, there stood imposing Harbor Hill...

Italian loot, supplied by Stanford White  

An elevation of peerless nobility...  

 1899... 

Adroitly embellished with... 

  

 

Occasional concentrations of suitable richness

 

 

TO BE CONTINUED... 

 

 

 

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© Julie Saad Photography

Gilded New York, on view at the Museum of the City of New York Through March                                                  

 

As the Nazis surly knew, there is perhaps no more bitter form of discrimination than to be excluded and ignored.  Such treatment is at the forefront of dehumanization. Well before deportation to actual death camps,  Hitler’s edicts systematically eliminating the participation of Jews accustomed to taking an active and crucial role in German society, certainly took a terrible toll.  And today in New York, if one is gay, or African American, to be marginalize, compartmentalize and even altogether banished from sight is fairly routine.

In part this diminishment of blacks and gays derives from skewed reasoning. Even though Americans, we represent, it's felt, a distinct and separate subset of Americans. So, although there are few instances when examining these “subsets”, that one would fail to find whites and heterosexuals offering a context against which to objectively make an evaluation, when it comes to straight whites, particularly those who are rich, however eccentric, it’s a different story.

This explains the one dimensional character of two new special exhibitions, Gilded New York, at the Museum of the City of New York, and Beauty’s Legacy: Gilded Age Portraits in America, at the New-York Historical Society.  

In a November 21, 2013 New York Times appraisal of these offerings Karen Rosenberg perceptively references how critics and art merchants have attributed recent colossal figures realized for paintings and sculpture at auction, as evidence of the onset of a new Gilded Era: “At such a moment, it may be useful to take a hard look at the old one, the late-19th-century period defined by the aggressive buying sprees of a few newly minted industrialists.” She says. This observation prompts Ms. Rosenberg’s further critique concerning exclusivity, excess, inequality and tastes.

 

 

 

Pendant brooch, ca. 1900, Platinum, diamond, sapphire Tiffany & Co., Museum of the City of New York, Bequest of Mrs. V. S. Young

 

 

 

“ Art lovers, be warned: These shows are about lifestyle, not connoisseurship. Collecting, as seen here, is a particularly transparent form of social gate-keeping. And the exhibitions dutifully guard those gates: They don’t tell us much about the Gilded Age’s extreme disparities of wealth, aside from passing mentions in the glossy catalogs.

They do, however, have much to say about the imbalance of money and taste: that the spending of unfathomable amounts of money on art, fashion, parties and real estate had a tendency to stave off any discussion of taste."

 

 

Whether or not one finds the efforts undertaken on behalf of yesterday’s supper-rich class to elevate themselves, either aesthetically uplifting, or in the best taste possible, wrought  by exceptional craftsmen with the utmost skill, formed from the finest materials, they certainly still impress. Inaugurating the Museum of the City of New York’s Tiffany & Co. Foundation Gallery, Gilded New York explores the city’s visual culture at the end of the 19th century, the dawn of America's ascendancy as the world's great supper-power.   As never before the city’s elite then flaunted unprecedented riches, lavishing a king's ransom on ornate showplace-houses meant to last for centuries as dynastic seats.  And, just as Russian, Chinese and Middle Eastern multi-billionaires today pay whatever it takes to acquire the world's most storied art treasures, American plutocrats a century ago, similarly swept up all that was lovely or precious within a wide grasp.    One hundred  works of art, including elegant attire, jewelry, portraits, and decorative objects, dazzling accouterments created between the mid-1870’s and the first decade of the 20^th century, express their bid to be recognized as an aristocracy second to none.

 

 

Julian Francis Abele (1881-1950), the first African American to attend le Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, was chief designer of the architectural firm of Horace Trumbauer of Philadelphia. Indicative of his role in masterminding the firms later work, beyond the greater refinement of detail and the felicity of design following his arrival, is a remark he once made, "The lines are all Mr. Trumbauer's, but the shadows are all mine..." To anyone familiar with the rigorous training at the French academy, who has viewed a line elevation, versus a drawing articulated and given dimension, by subtle shadows painted with watercolors, this statement speaks volumes.

 

 

 

  

 In 1909, Julian Abele, designed one of the Trumbauer firm's greatest
townhouses, a residence for James B. Duke, on Fifth Avenue at 78th Street. The wealthy Duke was an associate of Peter A. B. Widener, and the founder of American Tobacco Company, as well as the benefactor of Duke University. Based on architect Etiene Laclotte's Hôtel Labottière, constructed in Bordeaux in 1773, Duke's house was described by architect Philip Johnson as "perhaps finer than the original."

 

 

But not one of the items on display is in any way representative of the heritage or contribution of African American or LGBT New Yorkers.  Given that the city’s elite constituted a coterie which excluded Jews, most Irish Roman Catholics, and indeed nearly all Catholics irrespective of ancestry, this mightn't seem surprising.  It was after all, as well, an epoch when people were presumed to be heterosexual even when evidence suggested otherwise.  Radical, 'confessed' lesbians and gays were deemed dangerously outré, deviant outcasts. Almost universally poor, African Americans were widely reviled, irrespective of accomplishment or even when miraculously wealthy.  So the improbability of the inclusion of  representations of people so marginalized,  even in some tangential way, naturally enough, might be a foregone conclusion.

Yet, considering  the exploitation of black labor, know-how and consumption, partly facilitating  the riches and lifestyle of utter luxury afforded Gilded Era multi-millionaires helps to enlarge the topic of glittering trappings.  Moreover, so potent and original are the gifts of America's perennial outlaws, gays and blacks, that even in the rarefied realm apart of the supper-rich, a vital influence was felt despite every effort to safeguard high society from such 'coarsening' influences.

 

 

1883: Peter Marié, Esquire (1825–1903), in fancy dress for the William K. Vanderbilts' celebrated costume ball.

 

In New York, a distinct majority of the Catholic families accepted into 'good society', had been refugees, fleeing the uprising of slaves at the close of the 18th century, leading to the Haitian Revolution. The scion of such a clan, Peter Marié's maternal grandfather was a planter who owned a large estate.  He was assassinated at a banquet being held to celebrate the cessation of hostilities between Haiti's slaveholders and the black revolutionaries. A Roman Catholic, but rather rich, the 'confirmed bachelor' was a popular socialite famous for his courtliness and extravagant entertaining.  Undoubtedly gay, 'bachelorhood' did not deter from his tremendous social success.

Between 1889 and 1903, Marié assiduously pursued debutantes and young matrons, not for amorous purposes, but for the sake of their pictures. Beseeching certain ladies for the honor of allowing him to commission their portrait in miniature, his subjects helped him to form a collection immortalizing  women in society whom he believed epitomized female beauty.

 

 

There was little to fear from 'the help', inasmuch as, after the Civil War among New York's bon ton, African American servants were increasingly avoided. There were of course conspicuous exceptions. Ever since F. D. R.’s stint as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, both as an economy, and as a gesture of charitable helpfulness, Eleanor Roosevelt made a point of exclusively and unfashionably engaging black servants. Customarily black household help were paid much lower wages than their white counterparts. Few love a bargain as much as the rich. Yet outside of the South, in lavish establishments like the Astors’, Vanderbilts’, or Drexels’, more costly white servants, who were mostly Irish and other European immigrants, where hired for the greater cachet they conveyed.

 

 

1891: A group of  Peter Marié's beauties photographed at Newport by Italian born photographer Louis T. Alman. Second from the right, in the front, is Miss Grace Wilson, who became Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt.

A dandy, an aesthete, a raconteur, and bon vivant, as a consummate snob,  Peter Marié was not above allowing exalted social standing and wealth to influence, and at times, to cloud his vision. Often initially commemorated by photographs from which the small group of artists he favored might later captured a painted likeness, this accumulation of nearly 300 watercolor-on-ivory miniatures stands today as a vivid document of New York’s Gilded Age aristocracy.

This remarkable group of images form an arresting aspect of the special exhibition, Beauty’s Legacy: Gilded Age Portraits in America, at the New-York Historical Society. Yet, by the time of Marié's death in 1903, both on account of the high status of the sitters and due to many being painted from photographs, instead of from life, his once precious miniatures were found lacking.  Rejecting Marié's bequest, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Museum asserted, the pictures were not even really art.  Not only did he feel it possible to identify on the city's streets, numerous subjects as lovely as Peter Marié's beauties, he ventured in the Times; "some of the miniatures do not even qualify as art, as they are not originals but paintings copied in Europe from photographs taken in the United States."

 

 

1891: Sallie J. Hargous by Fernand Paillet, watercolor on ivory. The subject was the daughter of L. S. Hargous of Pittsburgh. She married Lieutenant Duncan Elliott, U.S.A., a cavalry officer, on October 15, 1891.

 

 

At their Newport ‘cottage’, "Sherwood Lodge", for instance, southerners Mr. and Mrs. Pembroke Jones, always engaged black help. Proficient at expertly preparing 'down-home' delicacies, their cook indeed, was by far more widely renowned than the French chefs of the area’s most deluxe households. But more typically, nearby at the "Breakers", Anderson Cooper’s great grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, kept only white servants, with the sole exception of their laundresses.  Living and working in a sequestered laundry building on the grounds, never seen by family or guests, these black women were responsible for the most arduous job there was associated with running an exacting and elite household.  The luxury of fresh linen damask bed sheets daily, new napkins nearly a yard-square for dinners, for each person at each meal, and three changes of what one wore, every day, for everyone in the household, including servants, was not easily achieved.

 

 

 

Demeaned due to their poverty and lack of education, African Americans were viewed as a pervasive joke, permeating American life in innumerable forms, from scurrilous figures of fun in advertisements, to cartoons found even in some of the most lofty journals. To what end, blacks served as a reviled reminder to whites that they were civilized, beautiful, intelligent and superior.  As with this cartoon, celebrating African American ingenuity, what the Williams & Walker team took from humor and hate meant to harm blacks, was to always make what was spoofed, far more attractive than ridiculous. 

 

"Recon dis rig 'll done dassle dat common trash"

 

"Dat gal ain't dressed up lak dis book says"

" Mammy, kin Ah hab dis yer ole pisce ob paw's pants-laig an' dis no-count baskit?"

 

"Dis now, Miss Stuck-up, jcs gase at what am de berry latest!"

 

 

 

More readily, the more subversive means by which African Americans infiltrated and helped to transform the world of white swells, was via the stage. Imagine, no 'smart phones', internet, or TV.  Instead, with many millions to expend, in a nation where most are contented to earn two dollars a day, to amuse themselves, the rich must make do with an endless repetition of the same highly contrived dinners, dances, sport and travel. The ritualistic formality of etiquette imitative of the English nobility and association with the same small group of predictable companions gave this life a certain tedium. The theatre was an approved outlet against boredom as well as a wonderful place to encounter something 'new', something different.

How astute of Aida Overton Walker, a black dancer, choreographer, comedienne, and singer to appreciate the power for positive change she welded, Nichelle Gainer who produces the wonderful website, Vintage Black Glamour, points out.  In her 1905 editorial in the Colored American entitled, "Colored Men and Women on the Stage", Ms. Gainer related recently, the chanteuse who popularized the cake walk and hit songs like "I Want To Be An Actor Lady", wrote rebuking African American snobbery.

 

"Some of our so-called society people regard the Stage as a place to be ashamed of.... In this age we are all fighting the one problem—that is the color problem! I venture to think and dare to state that our profession does more toward the alleviation of color prejudice than any other profession among colored people. The fact of the matter is this, that we come in contact with more white people in a week than other professional colored people in a year and more than some meet in a whole decade."

 

 

 

The Cakewalk! 

 

 

 

Bert Williams, born Egbert Austin Williams (November 12, 1874 – March 4, 1922), dreamed of attending Stanford University to become an engineer. Not able to afford tuition, working  as a singing waiter instead in hotels in San Francisco, he met and teamed up with  George Nash Walker, 1873-1911, then performing in traveling medicine shows. Emulating white duos billing themselves as "coons", Williams and Walker decided to market themselves as the ultimate spooks, the "Two Real Coons." In 1896, they appeared in a Broadway production called The Gold Bug at the Casino Theater and never looked back.

1873then performing in traveling medicine shows. Emulating white duos billing themselves as "coons", Williams and Walker decided to market themselves as the ultimate spooks, the "Two Real Coons." In 1896, they appeared in a Broadway production called The Gold Bug at the Casino Theater and never looked back.

 

Celebrated African American performers, George Nash Walker and Bert Williams joined forces after meeting in San Francisco, around 1892. Their alliance offered a winning presentation of  comic, if stereotypical song-and-dance numbers, dialogues and skits.  Derived from early 19^th century white minstrels in black-face, such teams persisted late into the 20^th century via the antics of Amos and Andy broadcast on television.  Ordinarily, dark-skin Walker would be expected to play the stooge. But to their credit, the partners realized that by challenging expectations, and reversing roles, they were much funnier.  Slender, taller, darker Walker adopted the slick persona of a preening dandy. Spending copiously all the money he could borrow or trick out of the hapless Williams, a lugubrious, long-suffering fool. While Williams’ half-hearted efforts, large and small, were chagrined at every turn, George Walker, sang and  strutted his way into the hearts of a host of admiring women theater-goers.

Both delighted audiences with the refinement of their pretentious manners, contrived speech and elaborate, highly contrasted attire.  Exemplary of the age-old slur that blacks were partial to exaggerated, loudly patterned, brightly colored clothes, cut with effete and extreme precision, both in their dress and manner, they nonetheless managed to introduce to their burlesque of stylishness, an element of true elegance.   

 

 

 

 

An opportunity to do their own show was realized with In Dahomey. Williams and Walker teamed up with Will Marion Cook, Jesse Ship, and poet-lyricist Paul Laurence Dunbar to produce the musical comedy, replete with African themes,  original ragtime music and elaborate and effective scenery and props. A farce involving a stolen necklace, inept detectives and  unscrupulous royalty, the show was a resounding success, touring throughout the United States following a London production with a command performance before Queen Alexandra.

 

 

Williams and Walker’s captivated audiences with their brilliant appearance in the musical farce The Gold Bug.  It was in this vehicle that their interpretation of the cakewalk so captured the public’s  imagination, that for the remainder of their career spanning more than a dozen years, and even afterward, they were so closely identified with this dance, that many regarded the duo as having invented the cakewalk.

 

 

 

Dressed on stage, not 'to the nines', but rather, to the 'eighteens', Williams and Walker worked  diligently to equal the production values of  white shows. Handling most of the management responsibilities of their productions, they sought to elevate the professionalism in black theater.  Toward this end they helped to establish, the Frogs, a social-fraternal quasi union.  By 1906, Williams and Walker founded an actual actors' union for African-Americans, called The Negro's Society. Staring in two more successful plays, In Abyssinia and in their final show, Bandanna Land in1907,  who can say what they might have accomplished had  George Walker not fallen ill?

George Walker began to stutter and forget his cues and lines, touring with Bandana Land in 1909. Like music greats Bob Cole and Scott Joplin, he was afflicted in an era without a cure or even effective treatment, by the final stages of syphilis. George Walker spent his remaining days in sanatoria in Kansas and Michigan, before traveling to New York in hopes of finding helpful treatment for the paralysis resulting from his illness. On January 7, 1911, he died at a clinic on Long Island. Paresis was listed as the cause of his death and Bert Williams, his partner of sixteen years, paid for Walker’s medical expenses and burial at Oak Hill Cemetery in in his hometown of Lawrence, Kansas.  He was only 36-years old. A mere youth, Langston Hughes attended George Walker’s  funeral at the modest Warren (now 9th) Street Baptist Church. Hughes was then living with his rancher-father, but was soon to move to live with his mother in Cleveland where he attended high school.  Probably in sketching Aunt Hager's funeral for "Not Without Laughter", the writer was revisiting this event in the tiny church of his boyhood.

"The little Baptist Church was packed with people. The sisters of the lodge came in full regalia, with banners and insignia, and the brothers turned out with them. Hager's coffin was banked with flowers...wreaths and crosses with golden letters on them: ‘At Rest in Jesus,’ ‘Beyond the Jordan,’ or simply: ‘Gone Home.’...They were all pretty, but, to Sandy, the perfume was sickening in the close little church...The Baptist minister preached...The choir sang ‘Shall We Meet Beyond the River?’ People wept and fainted."

 

 

 

 

Quite willing to wear gauchely over-elaborate costumes on stage for a laugh, off-stage, George Walker and Bert Williams alike, were always impecably attired.

“That’s Why They  Call Me ‘Shine,’” dates from 1910.  According to Perry Bradford, himself a songster and publisher, the song was written about an actual man named Samuel Johnson, who was with George Walker when they were savagely beaten during the New York City race riot of 1900. "Piping the shine..." is a reference to their assault.

It seems there was a real Samuel Johson who was attacked in the riots. The intro lyric that refers to "Pipe The Shine" is a reference to beatings during the riots - See more at: http://jdurward.blogspot.com/2009/06/manic-monday-thats-why-they-call-me.html#sthash.11Wb2c20.dpuf

The music was composed by band leader Ford Dabney, an associate of James Reece Europe, while the seemingly self-deprecating lyric, which turns out to actually be defiant, was written by Cecil Mack.  Born Richard C. McPherson, Mack was perhaps the co-founder of New York's first black-owned musical publishing concern. Both he and his writing partner were African-Americans. Taking over for her ailing husband in Bandana Land, doing his parts in his costumes, Aida Walker made a great hit with George Walker's number Bon Bon Buddie. In 1911, again wearing male drag, "That’s Why They Call Me Shine” was sung by Aida Overton Walker in the Broadway production of “His Honor: the Barber.”

The lyrics were written in 1910 by Cecil Mack who co-founded what was likely the first black owned musical publishing company in New York. The music was by Ford Dabney, a black band leader and long time associate of James Reese Europe. Among the most noted early performers of the song were George Walker and Bert Williams who were probably the most famous black vaudevillians of their day.

It seems there was a real Samuel Johson who was attacked in the riots. The intro lyric that refers to "Pipe The Shine" is a reference to beatings during the riots. Without the intro as originally written, the song appears to be an insult to African Americans when it was actually written to lessen the pain of the name calling and claiming a dignity not afforded to them at the time. The "recorded by" list of the song is virtually every great black performer from 1910 to today as well as some of the best of the white blues performers who took it on as a jazz anthem. - See more at: http://jdurward.blogspot.com/2009/06/manic-monday-thats-why-they-call-me.html#sthash.11Wb2c20.dpuf

The lyrics were written in 1910 by Cecil Mack who co-founded what was likely the first black owned musical publishing company in New York. The music was by Ford Dabney, a black band leader and long time associate of James Reese Europe. Among the most noted early performers of the song were George Walker and Bert Williams who were probably the most famous black vaudevillians of their day.

It seems there was a real Samuel Johson who was attacked in the riots. The intro lyric that refers to "Pipe The Shine" is a reference to beatings during the riots. Without the intro as originally written, the song appears to be an insult to African Americans when it was actually written to lessen the pain of the name calling and claiming a dignity not afforded to them at the time. The "recorded by" list of the song is virtually every great black performer from 1910 to today as well as some of the best of the white blues performers who took it on as a jazz anthem. - See more at: http://jdurward.blogspot.com/2009/06/manic-monday-thats-why-they-call-me.html#sthash.11Wb2c20.dpuf

The lyrics were written in 1910 by Cecil Mack who co-founded what was likely the first black owned musical publishing company in New York. The music was by Ford Dabney, a black band leader and long time associate of James Reese Europe. Among the most noted early performers of the song were George Walker and Bert Williams who were probably the most famous black vaudevillians of their day.

It seems there was a real Samuel Johson who was attacked in the riots. The intro lyric that refers to "Pipe The Shine" is a reference to beatings during the riots. Without the intro as originally written, the song appears to be an insult to African Americans when it was actually written to lessen the pain of the name calling and claiming a dignity not afforded to them at the time. The "recorded by" list of the song is virtually every great black performer from 1910 to today as well as some of the best of the white blues performers who took it on as a jazz anthem. - See more at: http://jdurward.blogspot.com/2009/06/manic-monday-thats-why-they-call-me.html#sthash.11Wb2c20.dpuf

 

Verse 1:

When I was born they christened me plain Samuel Johnson Brown, I hadn’t grown so very big ‘fore some folks in the town Had changed it ’round to Sambo, I was Rastus to a few, Then Choc’late Drop was added by some others that I knew, And then to cap the climax I was strolling down the line When someone shouted, “Fellers, hey, come on and pipe the Shine.” But I don’t care a bit, Here’s how I figure it.

Refrain:

‘Cause my hair is curly, ‘Cause my teeth are pearly, Just because I always wear a smile, Like to dress up in the latest style, ‘Cause I’m glad I’m living.  Take troubles smiling, never whine; Just because my color’s shady, Slightly diff’rent maybe, That’s why they call me “Shine.”

 

Verse 2:

 

A rose, they say, by any other name would smell as sweet.  So if that’s right, why should a nickname take me off my feet?  Why, ev’rything that’s precious from a gold piece to a dime And diamonds, pearls, and rubies ain’t no good unless they shine.  So when these clever people call me “shine” or “coon” or “smoke,” I simply smile, and smile some more, and vote them all a joke.  I’m thinking just the same, What is there in a name?

Repeat Refrain.

 

 

Joining their company in 1898 Ada Overton (14 February 1880 – 11 October 1914), of New York  married George Walker a year later. Becoming their leading lady the versatile performer soon became famous in her own right, both as a droll comedienne and as a graceful dancer.  As a choreographer and as a dancer alike, her modification of the cakewalk and other dances were warmly received.   By 1903, Ada Overton was reborn as Aida Overton Walker.

 

 

Ca. 1900 

 

 

Although she bewitched early-20th-century theater audiences with her original dance routines, Aida Overton Walker started under the impression that she was not a good singer.   Only as the expedient replacement of an ill company member was it discovered she indeed possessed an enchanting singing voice.  Mrs. Williams allied her loveliness not only with devastating talent, but a fashion-sense as developed and appealing as white stage stars like Lillian Russell and Lily Elise. Her reinterpretation of the low-down cakewalk into an elegant dance, made it her own.  Her stardom and cakewalking fame helped open the door to the ‘Four Hundred’; making the cakewalk respectable, a generation ahead of  Josephine Baker or Florence Mills, Aida Walker was frequently engaged by the leading hostesses of  New York, London and Paris to instruct guests in the mysteries of  a dance that had originated among black slaves on Southern plantations.

 

 

1907: Possessed of Paris inspired gowns and precious gems, Aida Overton Walker nonetheless retained an African American identity. Eschewed by whites between 1800 and 1930, she proudly wore hoop, or 'slave' earings, only not of plain gold, but paved in diamonds.

 

 

 

What made the cakewalk so appealing to white members of high society?  Success stemmed from the same duality so often at the center of the appeal of African American cultural contributions, the contradiction of familiarity and difference.

Since the Renaissance, at royal and noble courts all across Europe, grandees have engaged in quadrilles, contredanses, German Dances, and the cotillion; types of patterned social dances, reminiscent of nothing, so much as bees or today's 'ELECTRIC SLIDE'.  What's unknown, is the true origin of such activity.  Were such dances adaptations of romp-like reels, the wedding dances of peasants depicted by Peter Brueghel, or did they originate instead as courtly dances in stately great halls? In the United States the square dance, where "figures" are called aloud by the caller, or a cotillion leader evolved from the working class retaining the ceremonial dances abandoned by those better off, or did it? The name cotillion still conjures up social fan-fare.  The word is from the French cotillon, or "petticoat ".  The term is thought to have been suggested by frequent and flirtatious glimpses of underskirts as the changing partners turned.

Be it a quadrille, a German, a square dance or a cotillion, each dance involves ‘competitive couples’ and a concluding ‘grand ’march’.  With the arrival of such dances in America, via a ruling class eager to identify with their European counterparts, it was not long before black slaves, who served at such elaborate entertainments, in the 18th century, took them up too. Dance for the slaves became a means of emulating, and even perhaps, of mocking their masters.

As Aida Overton Walker explained it, "The cakewalk is characteristic of a race and in order to understand it and appreciate it and to become adept in it, it is necessary to keep your mind upon the judges, your partner, and especially upon what the cakewalk really is—a gala dance…"

 

 

 

 

 

Gay men certainly inhabited New York’s most exclusive precincts in the past.  Among those who never married some were quite easy to spot. The Sun, Thursday, March 15, 1891 observed of such unencumbered gentlemen:

 

The wealthy bachelor is the most luxurious resident of fashionable Gotham as well as the most popular man in society. His morning begins at 11 o'clock when the average run of humanity has finished a half day's work. He lunches between 2 and 3 o'clock at his favorite club or a swell cafe d. He dines between 7 and 8 o'clock and he has his super at midnight, when the city has given itself over to Morpheus. He is as welcome at an evening party, dance, or soiree musicale as he is behind the scenes of the big theatres. The wealthy bachelor is as generous as he Is regular.  The head waiter in one of the largest of the most fashionable restaurants said: "The unmarried men in society spend three times as much as the married men.

 

 

Edward M. Curtiss was thought an interesting single-hearted epicure. At sixty, he was regarded as "just as young as he used to be."  He had some odd notions as to his old-fashioned dress, holding onto stock, and wearing straps under his trousers, until they were long out of vogue and he was laughed at.  Once, attending a ball with a yard of his mother's rare point lace made into a ruffled shirt front, from that date on he was known as "Point lace" Curtiss.

 

 

 

 

During an epoch when rich single men described as elegant or ‘epicene’ were among the most popular hosts in society, Messrs. James V. Parker and Peter
Marie, fairly pride themselves on being the oldest entertaining bachelors
in town.  Valued for conspicuous gallantry and as extra men for dinners and dancing at balls, their unattached state was generally viewed as highly ‘unusual’.

 

 

 

By the end of the 1880’s, a new generation of fashionable ‘confirmed’ bachelors came to the fore.  Young men like Llspenard Stewart, not only were adept at helping hostesses, by selecting the most exquisite cotillion favors and leading and planning the cotillions for their dances, they also gave jolly and unconventional entertainments of their own, such parties to see vaudeville performances, proceeded by dinners and followed by suppers.

 

 

 

Although  millionaire Robert Hargous, known as ‘Bobbie’, had French ancestry, his father had made the family’s fortune in Mexico. With his three sisters, Bobbie Hargous was noted for an olive completion and dark good looks. Yet he was also said to have a high-pitched voice and to be effeminate.  He was also recognized  for being, “ the one bachelor of  New York who entertains on an elaborate scale.”  It became his habit to give very intimate teas in his bachelor apartments at the Cumberland.  There, each room was said to be a symphony in cream, rose or pale- blue satin and silver.   Dexterous in the use of a chafing dish, Hargous was assisted by a valet, Shoto, brought back from a journey to Japan, along with a collection of porcelain, prints, suits of armor, robes, brocades, silk embroideries, and carpets. 

 

 

1904: Aida Overton Walker. Photograph by Cavendish Morton in London

Such was the scale of Williams & Walker's London run of "In Dahomey" that they were as inundated with request for cakewalk lessons as John Singer Sargent was with demands for portrait commissions. The Walkers, ragtime and the cakewalk were the latest thing, and everyone who was anyone in London wished to be initiated in the marvelously suggestive and rhythmic mystery, able to be imparted by just three dark souls.  Mrs. Walker adored the experience of being in demand.  She particularly cherished the following

letter inviting her to give Lady Constance Mackenzie private lessons at one of the most stupendous palaces in the world. 

 

 

Dunrobin Castle, Sutherland. Lady Constance Mackenzie will' be very much obliged if Mrs. Walker will give her a dancing lesson on Monday at five o'clock in the evening. She is sorry she was unable to have them before.  Please let Lady Constance know if Mrs. Walker cannot come, otherwise she will expect her at Stafford House, St. James, at 5 on Monday next

 

 

 

 

As to his exacting attire, “ When it comes to collars,” wrote a reporter from the  Daily Leader, April 9, 1892, “I think no one man of fashion can quite equal the taste or the lavish display in styles of that prince among men of fashion, ‘Bobbie' Hargous.   If ever "Collars and Cuffs," the lamented English prince, had a peer in his realm of peculiarity and idiosyncrasy it was in Bobby Hargous.  And now, of course, Bobbie may be said to have come into his kingdom, all his collars and cuffs are made to order and in every possible variety permitted by the dictates of fashion…”

 

 

  

1912: Twice Aida Overton Walker portrayed the sensual Oscar Wilde heroine, Salome to acclaim  

 

Mrs. Walker's diamond necklace could be converted into a tiara 

 

 

The impact of Aida and George Walker's assured style, both regarding dancing, shoes and wardrobe was far reaching and certainly not lost on later husband and wife dance teams like the Chastles  

 

1916: Vernon and Irene Castle

1904: George Walker, his wife dressed as a child, Bert Walker and Mrs, Walker on the end, appearing in "In Dahomey" 

 

1904: George N. Walker in 'In Dahomey', tweaked fashion with just enough exageration to take it over-the-top yet still kept what he wore alluring 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1911: In costume when she performed with the Smart Set Company's production of His Honor the Barber

 

 

 

 

 

 

Taking leave of New York and Newport early in the 1890’s Bobbie leased the
Gothic Palazzo Contarini-Fasan in Venice on the Grand Canal, known as the house of Desdemona.  Tradition, maintained that Shakespeare's heroine was born and died there, but the palace surely never witnessed anything comparable to the young connoisseur.  Usually in residence during the summer, attended by gondoliers liveried in white, traveling in a white gondola, Bobbie Hargous was a great favorite among ordinary people and Venetian society alike, both of whom referred to him the "American prince." 

 

 

Bobbie Hargous leased Desdemona's Gothic style Palazzo Contarini-Fasan  in Venice

 

 

As a languid dandy, as a faithful subscriber to the Bachelors Ball, well polished and easily drolleries, cotillion skills and largess, Robert Hargous was well thought of.Before the assent of Harry Lehr around 1900, he was the most sought after gay man in New York society. But finally, effecting what one newspaper termed “the Café au Lait Waltz”, just proceeding Lent in 1903, Bobbie Hargous who had mildly titillated society for decades, finally actually shocked some. “Mr. Hargous,” insisted one journal, “ is so perfectly so au fait in the entertaining line that he scarcely requires, any feminine aid, though fortunately his three sisters. Mrs. William Appleton, of Boston: Mrs. George B. de Forest and Mrs. Duncan Elliot of this city, ably assist him.” On March 7, 1903, according to the next day’s New York Herald Mrs. de Forest played the part of her brother’s hostess. Their party numbering about twenty, was seated at a round table placed at the end of the palm garden, of Delmonico’s. The table, cut off from the main room by a screen of palms, was laden with a great mass of growing spring plants In full bloom.

 

 Delminicoe's

 

 

Bobbie Hargous guest of honor; Mrs Arthur Paget, later Lady Paget, née Mary (Minnie) Paran Stevens (1853-1919) was the daughter of  a wealthy American hotelier, Paran Stevens, who died in 1872 leaving his daughters the fantastic sum of ten million dollars.  Her husband was General Rt. Hon. Sir Arthur Henry Fitzroy Paget (1851-1928), a soldier, diplomat and grandson of the 1st Marquis of Anglesey. Lady Paget was one of  the tiny group of advantageously married American heiresses in the Prince of Wales's set.  As a fabulously wealthy member of London society, with a London residence in Belgrave Square, she was recived in fashionable circles worldwide.

 

Ostensibly, the dinner was held to honor the departure from the city of a well-born local girl who had done quite well for herself. Mrs Arthur Paget, later Lady Paget, née Mary (Minnie) Paran Stevens other guests included Mrs. Frederic Neilson, Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont, Mr. and Mrs. William Jay, Mr. James V. Parker, Mr. Charles M. Robinson, Mr. Elisha Dyer, Jr., Mr. Stuyvesant Le Roy, Mr. and Mrs. T. J. Oakley Rhinelander, Mrs. George Law, Baron Kap-Herr and, remarkably, Mr. and Mrs. Jules S. Bache.The presence of the Jewish financier and art collector on the list is significant.This was the very beginning of acceptance in society of a tiny influx of exceptionally rich and cultivated Jews. Harry Lehr, the man who succeeded Bobbie Hargous as socity's pet gay 'thing', is said to have been there.  What about his wife, the very rich Elizabeth Drexel Lehr, or his patron, the ascerbic but witty social leader, Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish? Otherwise, dinning on the usual fare of diamond-back terrapin, with celery salad and canvas-back duck, with hominy, accompanied by champagne, the excellent dinner was standard for a repast hosted by Hargous. Only after dinner was over, moving on into the adjoining Winter garden, where his guests treated to something rather special.  It was not unheard of to have performers in from some popular musical to entertain one’s guests after dinner.

 

 

 Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont, formerly Mrs. William H. Vanderbilt of Newpore's "Marble House"

 

At Newport by now, Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish had already delighted her company with a black ragtime band, replete with ‘pickaninnys’ cradled in hollowed-out watermelons."In Dahomey" had only opened in January, but it was already acclaimed as a winner.  But to engage Mr. and Mrs. George Nash Walker, stars of the first all African American production to appear on a Broadway stage, to bid them to come to sing and dance the cakewalk, this was unique! Equally unprecedented was the Walker’s gracious reception. After they danced, and had taken refreshment, the host and his guest of honor, danced in turn with the pair. Compared by some papers to the recent White House dinner where Theodore Roosevelt entertained Booker T. Washington, the educator, Bobbie Hargous dinner was by far more subversive.  For no sooner had their host and Mrs. Paget completed their spins with the Walkers, than other guestS clamored for an opportunity to challenge a taboos of longstanding. Such interracial intimacy certainly existed in the cafes of the Tenderloin, among black and white 'sports', consorting with actresses and prostitutes, but 'mixed' dancing on Fifth Avenue, was radically new!

 

 

Harry Lehr, in drag and out, the man who succeeded Bobbie Hargous as socity's pet gay 'thing'

 

 

Elizabeth Drexel Lehr, whoes fortune made it unnesicarry for her gay husband to work

 

 

 Jules S. Bache

 

Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish

 

 

1903: Mr. and Mrs. George Nash Walker

 

"In Dahomey" was a rollicking farce involving a stolen necklace, inept detectives and  unscrupulous royalty. The Walker's were astute enough to exploit its resounding success, directing their press agents to spread the news of their participation at Bobbie Hargous' select dinner dance at Delmonicoe's widely.  Unfortunately, the invidious nature of prejudice one suspects, caused some guest to regret having their name's in the paper in association with having danced and socialized with 'Negros'.  This must account for the contradiction of some white journals suggesting that ladies had objected and the party rapidly broke up, after Bobbie Hargous was Mrs. Walker's partner, versus black papers emphasis of the excitement and enjoyment this elite group had had with the black performers.  So delighted was the host for one, that one account says he insisted on sending the Walkers home in his carriage.  "Thank you sir. That's very kind of you. But we prefer to take our own, if you don't mind...," Aida Walker is supposed to have responded.  The Saint Louis Republic March 14, 1904 noted,"the following day Mrs. Walker was the guest of the dinner dance's guest of honor Mrs. Arthur Paget at the Waldorf-Astoria, that night she was the guest of Mrs. George Law of 10 East 54th Street at a second dinner for Mrs. Paget."

Rather reminiscent of some media today concerning President Obama, and even his family, for some journalist Aida Walker could do no right. Even offering accolades for talent, business acumen and success, their temptation to snidely sneer, invariably proved irresistible. 

 

 

 

 

 

 107 West 132nd Street, the house that the Cakewalk bought!

 

NY PRESS JUNE 24 1903
Through The Lorgnette

When Mrs. Aida Overton Walker, the Negro dancer, referred to Mrs. Arthur Paget last winter as "my friend Mrs, Paget," everyone smiled and pitted the Negress for her confidence in the whims of a great woman of fashion. Mrs. Walker insisted that "her friend" would play sponsor to her professionally when she reached London just this service, too, seemed Incredible. But the laugh is on the doubters. Mrs.Walker has triumphed, and at the wave of Mrs. Paget's hand Mrs. Walker attained the goal for which all mummers strive.  She was "commanded" to Cakewalk before the King. In all history no singer or dancer of this order has ever been exalted by one of the "royal commands," and because Mrs. Walker is of dusky tint the honor Is magnified. Nor was this all. A future King, little Prince Edward. shook hands with the black dancer, "it was a very nice dance." murmured the little Prince, and those words will-forever be treasured by the woman whose forefathers labored in cotton field's.

Cakewalks at $100 Apiece

It is only natural and almost pardonable that Mrs. Walker should be conscious of her own importance. Those achievements have brought with them a shower of wealth as well as laurel wreaths and Mrs.Walker's "lugs" are astonishing. Soon after she was exploited as Mrs. Paget's protege a Fifth Avenue girl decided she would like to join the cake-walking throng, and she sent for Mrs. Walker to discuss terms for lessons.  Mrs. Walker call. She was driven in her own modest brougham and a white footman scampered In front of his swarthy mistress With the manner of a duchess the dancer sauntered into the girl's drawing room. She wielded her Jeweled purse with the air of a Western millionairess and her plantation accent was swallowed Up by the mellifluous "burr" peculiar to Englishwomen. "My terms," said Mrs. Aida, "are $100. for four lessons. After these you will know how to Cakewalk gracefully." But the Fifth avenue girl was gasping with surprise, and determined to learn this famous step from a person of lesser importance.

 

 

Touring throughout the United States following a London production with a command performance before the Royal Family, owning a house in Harlem, keeping a private conveyance, owning beautiful clothes and flashing jewels, the Walkers were in a class by themselves, compared to most blacks. For some, indicative of the potential and possibility kept fettered among African Americans, such outstanding exceptions proved to be unbearable.

 

 

 

 

Romantically born on St. Valentines Day, Ada Overton had gotten her start touring with Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones, known as Sissieretta Jones, who was born January 5, 1868 or 1869^-June 24, and died in 1933.  The African-American soprano, who sang in Europe before monarchs, was quite famous as "The Black Patti", referencing the great  Italian opera singer Adelina Patti.   An inspirational model for Overton, both in terms of the way she presented herself, as a true diva, Jones also eventually influenced Overton in terms of the variety of her repertoire.  Jones' repertoire included grand opera, light opera, and popular music.   As she matured as an artist, Aida Overton Walker sought the same kind of challenges, hence her efforts to make the cakewalk both elegant and respectable. This also no doubt spured her desire to take up 'serious' dance, preforming Salomme.

Although Aida Walker originally became famous through partnership with her husband and Bert Williams, her popularity was olny flourished all the more in the years following George Walker’s death.  The Williams and Walker troupe might have disolved, But Mrs. Walker's work with the Smart Set company was launched.. Subsequently, as leader of her own vaudeville company, she remained widely acclaimed.  Several of the lady-like troupe members lived with her, in her Harlem home, a brick and brownstone row house at 107 West 132nd Street. Aida Yes, Aida Overton Walker firmly maintained her position as the reigning female talent in black vaudeville and musical theater after 1911. Many critics contended that she was only just apporching the zenith of her carreer At the time of her death in 1914.  How gauling it must have been to see the Vernon and Irene Castle so thoroughly appropiate the popular ragtime dance craze she'd  helped to initiate. A century ago, it was so easy to sicken and die.  There were and are many ways to contract the kidney disease that killed her, but was it connected to her husband?  Lying in state in the new St. Philip's Episcopal Church, thousands passed her bier, she was widely mourned and only 34.

 

 

 

Circa 1911:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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