The US has always been an oligarchy. When we use today’s eyes to look at Jefferson’s Monticello, it looks quaint and compact compared to Michael Jackson’s Neverland ranch, but in its time it was as close to a palace as the US could get.
Building gigantic monuments to oneself and one’s comforts is a very parvenu sort of thing – I suppose it’s a way of marking the feeling of “I finally got here.” At least that may be the case for the head of a dynasty; for the inheritors of vast wealth it’s just “how I grew up” – it’s expected.
I found this article at The Daily Beast to be fascinating [db] – it’s about the Carrier/Mills mansion up in the Catskills of New York.
It has that neoclassical white house wanna be look, doesn’t it? Only it’s bigger. And it’s falling apart.
What fascinates the reporter at Daily Beast is that it appears as though everyone just sort of – left. There wasn’t a nuclear fallout cloud or anything like that; they appear to have gotten bored of the place and so they stopped going and let it sit there, completely furnished, as a sort of cultural archeology dig of American culture during the late golden age.
At one end of the great library, a nine-foot portrait of Governor Lewis dwarfs the fireplace and takes up half the space to the ceiling – where, in Wharton’s story, “a few family portraits of lantern-jawed gentlemen in tie-wigs…hung.” Other family portraits adorn the library walls, but those are modest in size and probably only recognizable to gilded royals. On my tour, the docent said, “She’s showing right off while she’s socializing, and she repeats that in other rooms, like the Main Hall – you’ll see the whole line up of all her ancestors.”
The idea of being proud of one’s ancestors has always struck me as silly. My dad used to say (of some people) “They didn’t choose their parents very well” which neatly encapsulates the contradiction: it’s not as if ones ancestors did much but contribute some DNA. It’s the money that makes the difference; the economic opportunity and privilege. But please don’t mention the 9-foot portrait to Donald Trump or he’ll need a 20-footer.
Like all rooms on view at the Mills Estate, the library remains as it was when the family occupied the home and hosted America’s elite. As a whole, the library is remarkably intact, and only close inspection reveals cracks in the facade. Sunlight and temperature have faded and worn away the vibrancy of the curtains, and the book collection is now enclosed in glass to prevent further environmental deterioration. Preserving the contents of the rooms is the first order in conservation. The carpet and the upholstery are maintained and cleaned. The discovery of carpet beetles has been a blessing in disguise. New methods of preservation are developed in real time as challenges present themselves – the spray-it-with-gunite-so-it-doesn’t-decay era is over.
In the era of the Trump clan, the “social graces” of the important New York set don’t seem much different from other moneyed and powerful:
To help keep out the riffraff, i.e., new money, Ruth Mills joined forces with nine other grande dames (the Chicago Tribune called them a social “trust,” since the men in their families were then infamously busy running the trusts that ran American commerce). She wondered publicly how one could even conceive of an upper crust that allowed in 400 names when only 20 families really mattered. Ward McAllister freaked out when the Times published the truncated list. “The so-called Four Hundred has not been cut down or dwindled to 150 names,” he said. “That list of names, you understand, printed on Sunday, did not come from me, don’t you see. It is unauthorized, don’t you see. But it is accurate as far as it goes, you understand.” McAllister didn’t invalidate the 150, because he knew it came from Mrs. Livingston Mills.
Tacky house, horrible people, lots of money spent. They used to shit all over eachother in The New York Times instead of Twitter. What do “class” and “taste” mean? We are raised to think of this building as beautiful – and it’s certainly opulent – but is that only because it is old and was very expensive? Will Trump Tower’s penthouse suite someday be a preservationists’ nightmare? Plus ça change.
“it was as close to a palace as the US could get” – The white house looks to me like a rather obvious disney-style mini-replica of Versailles or the Louvre. If you’ve spent as much time as I have wandering around the imperial detritus of Louis XIV and Napoleon, it’s hard not to see American attempts at imperial grandeur as pretty cheesy, really. My dad’s a historian, who’s specialty is pre/revolutionary France, and we spent a lot of summers in Paris while dad dug through the national archives. For me, that equated to a lot of time in the Louvre and Les Invalides. There are worse ways to spend a childhood; I am not complaining.
“Will Trump Tower’s penthouse suite someday be a preservationists’ nightmare?” – I hope that all they save is the toilet.
Pride in ancestry is a weird thing; I was always proud of my great-great-great grandmother, who in her time was a highly lauded and accomplished actress. Her husband was a successful architect, and I have had the opportunity to visit two of the buildings he designed, and there’s something to be said for that sense of personal history, even if it doesn’t actually have much to do with me.
Then I discovered their son (my GGgrandfather) was a serial womaniser (we still don’t know exactly how many children he had with how many women, but those we know of were usually abandoned to fend for themselves) and an openly antisemitic nazi sympathiser (the family story I heard was that during the war he was exiled from the UK, but wasn’t able to enter Germany because he was British, so he abandoned his family and lived in poverty in Italy. There’s also a legend that when the nazi’s discovered him they confiscated his belongings, but returned them to him “with the box unopened”, supposedly a sign of the respect they had for his art). It’s hard to be proud of that.
Of course, his sister was an open lesbian, and supported the suffragette movement, so I suppose I could be proud of her…
Another element of it is how context can change things. My GGgrandfather on the other side of the family went with a regiment of Canadian forces to South Africa during the Boer War; their job towards the end of the war was guard the British concentration camps, where he supposedly met his future wife who was one of the dutch children there, and then to act as a military police as the war wound down, a role in which they are usually cast as “well liked” by the people they were policing. This always seemed sweet and romantic to me, and maybe in a way it was, but then you learn that the British Concentration camps in the Boer War led to more deaths than the actual fighting, and that he was involved in that tragedy.It’s hard to imagine love blossoming amidst the sewage and dysentry…
Yep. All the modern European royalty just strikes me as silly. And in some cases, where they still retain their titles and waste huge amounts of taxpayer money, they outright piss me off.
The idea of being ashamed of one’s ancestors is even sillier, yet that’s what many people do. For example, my maternal grandfather was a murderer. He killed his stepson and, in an attempt to hide the body, divided it in pieces with a saw. My mother always hid this fact and feared that somebody might find it out. Yet that’s irrational—a child is never guilty for their parents’ misdeeds. Then again, society does judge people for “coming from a bad family,” which is very sad and unfair.
And then there’s all the shame associated with being born out of wedlock. The word “bastard” is even used as a generic insult. It’s just so wrong, considering that children don’t choose their parents. At least this one is shifting, nowadays people just don’t marry before making babies. At least in Latvia, it is very common for people to just live together and have kids without ever bothering to sign the marriage papers. My parents were never married, and this one has never been an issue for me, but I know that some other societies still cling to mistreating children who don’t have a father.
At least those photos featured in the article you linked don’t look that impressive for me. European palaces are way prettier (I’m mostly familiar with German and French ones). Even in Latvia, which is pretty much the middle of nowhere, there are better looking palaces.
There’s also something I don’t like about the Mills Mansion façade. I’m not sure how to best describe it, but something just looks wrong with the proportions. I have grown up in an 800 years old city that sometimes gets called as the world’s art nouveau capital, so I have seen lots of pretty building façades. The Mills Mansion façade isn’t one of them.
From the same era, I recently finished reading Empty Mansions by Bill Dedman and family member Paul Clark Newell, Jr., detailing the history of the Clark family fortune and the life of noted recluse daughter Huguette Clark.
Her father, W.A. Clark, the “Copper King”, after whom Clark County NV was named, was born in 1839, and she died in 2011. She grew up in a 121 room mansion on 5th Ave, built to W.A.’s specifications and lasting only a decade or two before being torn down. She didn’t visit Bellosguardo, the family’s vacation home in Santa Barbara after 1953, but had it immaculately maintained at enormous expense until her death.
I thought the book was tedious at times, but thorough as investigative reporting, and I’d recommend it for the insight into the profligate habits of the newly wealthy of the 1880s-1920s.
The white house looks to me like a rather obvious disney-style mini-replica of Versailles or the Louvre.
Close (within a few hundred miles): the WH design came from Dublin’s Leinster House, built for the Earl of Kildare.
You might like architectural & design critic Deyan Sudjic’s The Edifice Complex on this topic, which I recently re-read. Has some great stuff in it like the drama surrounding the building of Blenheim Palace (Churchill’s ancestral home), the Presidential Libraries of all the former American heads of state compared and contrasted (boy, what a treat we’re in for with the DJT Presidential Library, assuming we’re not all immolated in nuclear fire first), and who built it best– Hitler or Mussolini? My only criticism was my edition has no photos which means reading it in one hand and a tablet or other internet device in t’other…
Quibble with the headline; it should be the 0.01% — the 1% of the 1%.
I used to live a few minutes’ drive from Moreton Corbet castle, near Shrewsbury. (I always hear “Take On Me” in my head when I think of it). “It” is in fact two structures, an actual castle from nearly a thousand years back, and right next to it an Elizabethan mansion. What struck me hardest when visiting it was the casual way it was mentioned that the Corbet family (who still own it) just moved out some time in the 18th century, and went to live in another mansion they had nearby.
Imagine being so rich you can just live in a massive mansion.
Now imagine being so rich that when you grow bored of it, you don’t sell it, rent it out or even keep it in any kind of usable repair – you simply bugger off to one of your other mansions and let the first one just… fall down.
0.01% indeed.
Cat Mara #5
“the Donald J. Trump Presidential Twitter Library” https://twitter.com/CNNSotu/status/1104746379203760134
Actually, repair and maintenance costs are one of the reasons for this sort of thing. As buildings get older, they tend to get more and more difficult (and expensive) to maintain. Eventually it becomes too expensive to be worth the trouble, and they get abandoned.
Changing architectural fashions are also a big factor, of course.
In Latvian there’s a saying that translates as “a dog sitting on a pile of hay.” The idea is that a dog cannot possibly eat hay, but he’s still guarding the hay pile and won’t allow cows or horses eat it either. Thus nobody gets to use a valuable resource. In most of the world there’s a shortage of good housing, it’s common for poor people to live in really miserable homes. This is why it makes me angry when rich people simply keep their houses empty and unused (but locked up).
As a child, I lived in a pretty bad home. Yet whenever I walked around my city, I saw countless empty apartment buildings. I would look at every one of them with envy thinking about how I’d love to move in. Capitalism can be awful at distributing resources. By the way, the problem with unused real estate is why I’m in favor of real estate taxes. If a rich person is forced to pay a tax on all that unused real estate they have hoarded, then maybe they will reconsider the possibility of letting somebody else use it.
Waste of resources (that usually stems from the way how these resources are distributed, namely a few people have hoarded more than they can possibly use) bothers me in general, it’s not just housing. Food waste is another sad example. In the world there are people literally starving to death. Even in developed countries there are poorer people who would love to be given some free food. But, no, the rich will rather throw out perfectly edible food than give it away for free to the poor.
There’s a very similar expression in English: “a dog in the manger”. It derives from one of Aesop’s fables.
@ 2 Ieva SkrebeleThere’s also something I don’t like about the Mills Mansion façade. I’m not sure how to best describe it, but something just looks wrong with the proportions.
Thanks Ieva, I had the same feeling but could not express it. Now that I look more closely I see what you mean. I think it is that they glued the portico onto a smaller building. Does this sound reasonable?
jrkrideau @#12
Yes, I agree.
Also, pay attention to the windows. On both sides there are two rows of windows. In the middle there are three rows, they first stories are lower, but the upper one has smaller windows. I don’t like how that looks.
And then you can also pay attention to 3rd window on left and right side. There are those weird squares that are used as decorations, and, in my opinion, they don’t fit together with the adjacent decorations. I’m not saying that decorations next to each window must be the same. I’m not even asking for symmetry (I have seen some totally amazing asymmetrical buildings). But I do think that in this case these decorations simply don’t fit together well.
@ 13 Ieva Skrebele
/they don’t fit together with the adjacent decorations.
It took me a while to see what you mean but you are right. It reminds me of our courthouse where everything is “almost” correct.
Sad thing is that this building, despite its “errors”, is infinitely better than MODERN attempts to build “classical” architecture. Maybe it’s because Americans have been raised in the modern suburban environment of strip malls and snout houses and thus American architects just lack the sense of “proportion”. Maybe its the cant of the modernist architectural training. Who knows, but visit any Trump-Voting Gated McMansion Community and look at the horrors therein.
I heartily recommend the website McMansion Hell, where the young woman amusing profiles examples that are far, far worse than this one!
bmiller@#15:
I heartily recommend the website McMansion Hell, where the young woman amusing profiles examples that are far, far worse than this one!
I agree with the recommendation; it’s plenty of fun.