Tuesday, November 3, 2009

When 'Mañana' Was For Sale

A brochure advertising 'Mañana', the E. Mortimer Barnes estate designed by Thomas H. Ellett c. 1914 in Old Brookville. The formal garden was designed by Annette Hoyt Flanders with specimens provided by Lewis & Valentine. Barnes was a stockbroker who had been living in a converted farmhouse when he commissioned Ellett to design him his estate. Click HERE to see 'Mañana' on google earth.



Brochure courtesy of SPLIA.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Really lovely building, the floor plans, hand-painted wallpapers and lovely grounds!
I hope the current owners have more carefully edited and perhaps, appropriate furnishings, but oh what a charming place. Thank you!
- Robert

An Aesthete's Lament said...

I could move in without changing a stick of furniture. This is impressively charming. Lovely house, lovely decoration, delicious wallpapers. Does it still stand? And I agree with Robert: terrific floor plan also. But I love the furnishings as is, especially those delightful upholstered club chairs in the living room, the chintz-covered ones. This house is so up my personal alley in many ways, though the living-room chandeliers are rather dinky.

An Aesthete's Lament said...

Ah, yes, I followed the link to see it still stands. Lucky it wasn't demolished! I would love to visit this one.

An Aesthete's Lament said...

The decorator seems likely to have been Barnes's first wife, the former Theresa Chalmers (later Mrs F Cecil Baker, died 1970), who founded the decorating firm Thedlow Inc with her sister, Mrs Truman Handy. Theresa wrote an entertaining though fact-fudging memoir called A Decorator's Dizzy Decade, which pulls a veil over her contentious divorce from Barnes. They married in 1910 and divorced in 1931 and had one child, Barbara (Mrs Pierre E Boudelle, Mrs Robert Beverly Hale).

An Aesthete's Lament said...

The first married-surname of Barnes's daughter is spelled BOURDELLE, not BOUDELLE.

Anonymous said...

I grew up in this house from 1972 to 1995. It was a beautiful home and was preserved well but in the 70's was subdivided and left on two acres but still had the barn/gargage and house with a new entrance to a new road. Thank you for posting these photos.