An aerial of 'Haut Bois', the Walter E. Maynard estate designed by Ogden Codman Jr. c. 1916 in Brookville, with landscaping by Jacques Greber. Click HERE to see the brochure from when 'Haut Bois' was for sale. Click HERE to see the estate on google earth and HERE on bing. Photo from the Greber family collection.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
'Haut Bois'
An aerial of 'Haut Bois', the Walter E. Maynard estate designed by Ogden Codman Jr. c. 1916 in Brookville, with landscaping by Jacques Greber. Click HERE to see the brochure from when 'Haut Bois' was for sale. Click HERE to see the estate on google earth and HERE on bing. Photo from the Greber family collection.
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18 comments:
Haut Bois indeed---pre-subdivision---lovely to see
I urge any of your readers who are interested in Jacques Greber to Google Whitemarsh Hall, the jaw dropping Edward Stotesbury house outside of Philadelphia. It is probably the most extensive property in the United States, and perhaps even outside of France executed in the grand, French neoclassical tradition. His work at Blenheim for the Duke of Marlborough in the 1920s is still almost entirely intact and sets off that magnificent house to perfection. What a genius.
May not be commonly known that Martin Scorcese filmed a scene here for AGE IN INNOCENCE in 1992. It was suppose to be a dining room in an Paris apartment. I recall though it took a month of prep work for that brief scene, including cleaning the chimneys (for safety reason?) and a big prepaid phone payment to last the month. I didn't witness the shoot, but the day after I brought home some grapes that were featured in the scene! But for all that work the scene barely lasts a minute.
P.S. I want to add that the house at the time was in rather battered shape, with a long abandoned kitchen on the ground floor, and creepy dark rooms elsewhere, especially in the wings. It really needed a full rehab, which happened around 1996.
Me again.
Aaaaarhhhghhhh...the film is called THE AGE OFINNOCENCE.
Must proofread more.
I'd like to lift a glass to the owner who grit his teeth and restored the reflecting pool.
More.
THE AGE OF INNOCENCE.
I'm done!
I really like the house, but I am a Codman fan anyway. So the sales brochure offering the house at $295,000 dates from the late 60s with star of stage, screen, and television Patrice Munsel moving on, I presume.
It's sort of ironic that Edith Wharton who wrote, The Age of Innocence" was a guest of the original owners.
http://books.google.com/books?id=jIXc9ES8qcAC&pg=PA1916&lpg=PA1916&dq=edith+wharton+walter+maynard&source=bl&ots=p8EIXvNIdg&sig=6aGJNHr3MyW_zOHNbjZC2qhQDhA&hl=en&ei=iAJyTqC2LMXl0QHw6Y30CQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CD4Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=edith%20wharton%20walter%20maynard&f=false
I thought Duchene rather than Greber did Blenheim.
Magnus...wasn't Whitemarsh Hall demolished within the last 15 or so years and not very far from the now decaying Lynnwood Hall?
This house is beautiful, I hope the new owner stayed faithful to the interiors and didn't cut corners using faux materials. Again, I wonder who zones these places when doing sub-divisions?? The Cedar Swamp entrance is fine enough....but the rear of the house is so close to Sewall Lane.
"Age of Innocence" is one of my all time favorites just for the location shots alone.
Anonymous: Yes, Whitemarsh was about three miles (ish) from Lynewood. It was taken down in the early 80's to make way for a huge swath of track houses. My uncle took me through the abandoned carcass of the house when I was very young (think 6-7) and that is what got me interested in the big houses of America. The columns from the portico, a small stone pavilion, some random garden statuary and the main gate pillars and gate house are still standing which give a great sense of the scale of the place. Sorry to Zack for taking these comments so far off track from Haut Bois.
AL: right you are and sorry for the misinformation
Whoa! Wait a cotton-pickin' second!
Did I read the credit correctly? Greber family collection? Hmmmmmm, now that would be a photo collection
Oh, and to build further on the coincidence that Edith Wharton was a close friend of the Maynards, their daughter, Audrey, married the brother of Louis Auchincloss, one of Wharton's literary successors.
...who himself was also a Wharton scholar, and was married to Adele Lawrence, granddaughter of Adele Sloane Burden of Woodside Acres.
There, I think I've got all the degrees of separation tied up now.
All this 'talk' of Whitemarsh Hall gets me to thinking of author, James T. Maher, who wrote "The Twilight of Splendor" back in 1975. The book featured that wonderful chapter on Whitemarsh and the Stotesburys. "Twilight" was supposed to be the first of TWO
books . . . the second to feature great houses of the Vanderbilt era, including Biltmore ~ The Breakers, etc. ( and please, use
a capital 'T' when mentioning The Breakers . . . not the Breakers )
Anyhow ~ does anyone know what happened to author Maher, or to his unpublished manuscript for his sequal book ?
He never finished the second book.
I was waiting for it for years.
http://www.nysun.com/obituaries/james-maher-90-historian-of-popular-song/59205/
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