Thursday, June 24, 2010

The Lanier/Steele Residence

Above, the rear of the J.F.D. Lanier house as it looked in his time and below the result of Charles Steele's renovation on the c. 1891 James Brown Lord designed house in Old Westbury. Click HERE for more on the Lanier/Steele estate.

Pictures from the Gary Lawrance Collection.

5 comments:

The Down East Dilettante said...

I've loved seeing the versions of this place....huge and awkward in all its incarnations, and just wonderful. We're all size queens at heart, I guess.

An Aesthete's Lament said...

So awkward but strangely charming. The remodel does help reduce its original vertical ungainliness by, well, making it larger and ungainly in a horizontal fashion. Oh well, at least the tower's gone.

Turner Pack Rats said...

i'll agree that the second version looks like a collision between two mansions but the lanier with those two towers - i love it and combined with those descending terraces. i'm firing up the time machine and moving today.

security word def - "tesse" - italian for not so famous kevin costner film

Kevin said...

Hopefully those intricate details on the moldings of the towers didn't go to waste, they were so charming.

The Ancient said...

The interesting question to me is which version we'd rather encounter intact today.

(I'd go for the original.)