Great Estates: Davenport House in Savannah, Georgia

Editorial Staff Furniture & Decorative Arts

Completed around 1820, Davenport House, located in the historic port city of Savannah, evinces the post-Revolutionary American taste for contemporary European design.  Isaiah Davenport, a master carpenter by trade, looked to the classicizing mode that had become prevalent in residential architecture throughout England and Europe when he constructed Davenport House for his growing family.  Today, visitors can experience the excitement …

Great Estates: Fenway Court, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston

Editorial Staff Furniture & Decorative Arts

Fenway Court, the former home of Isabella Stewart Gardner, gives added meaning to the notion of a house museum.  Built in the style of a fifteenth-century Venetian palace, it was conceived as both a residence and a museum.  With the help of many great advisers, Gardner amassed-and later, meticulously arranged-a superlative collection of fine and decorative arts, architecture, and rare …

Great Estates: Pittock Mansion in Portland, Oregon

Editorial Staff Furniture & Decorative Arts

Pittock Mansion, a French Renaissance revival style house situated 1,000 feet above downtown Portland, Oregon, was built between 1909 and1914 for newspaper owner Henry Lewis Pittock and his philanthropist wife, Georgina Martin Burton Pittock.  The 16,000- square-foot mansion, located on over forty-six acres of parkland, features forty-four period rooms that incorporate original furnishings into a restored interior.  Visitors to Pittock …

Great Estates: Ash Lawn-Highland in Charlottesville, Virginia

Editorial Staff Furniture & Decorative Arts

The onset of crisp autumn air can only mean one thing: apple season is finally here, making it a great time to head to the Piedmont region of Virginia, where dozens of varieties of apples are ripe for the picking.  And while you’re there, why not take in a helping of Virginia’s history?  You can do both on Carters Mountain …

Great Estates: Roseland Cottage in Woodstock, Connecticut

Editorial Staff Books

Beginning in the second quarter of the 19th century, the Gothic revival style took hold in the United States, impressing upon domestic and public structures a romanticized rendering of medieval life.  Inspired by the movement abroad—primarily in England—the revival was first championed in the United States by Alexander Jackson Davis, a designer whose influential books included Rural Residences, which was, …

Great Estates: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona

Editorial Staff

“Living in the desert is the spiritual cathartic a great many people need.  I am one of them.” -FLW This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the iconic Fifth Avenue building designed by seminal architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The museum’s golden anniversary has inspired a year-long series of events beginning with the exhibition Frank Lloyd …

Great Estates: Fechin House in Taos, New Mexico

Editorial Staff

As one of the most important American portraitists of the twentieth century, Nicolai Fechin is especially revered for his depictions of Native Americans and the New Mexico desert landscape.  Of equal merit is the house he built for his family in Taos, New Mexico. A charming combination of styles, it is now home to the Taos Art Museum, and a …

Testing the fate of Admiral’s Row

Editorial Staff

Quarters C, the second-oldest residence on Admiral’s Row—the compound built between 1853 and 1901 to house the officers of the former Brooklyn Navy Yard—collapsed almost entirely on June 18.  Although the building had previously suffered irreversible damage from fire, recent heavy rains felled a fatal blow, causing the walls to give way, leaving little but the facade intact.  Given this …