Friday, October 21, 2011

The Ogden L. Mills Estate

The Ogden Livingston Mills estate designed by John Russell Pope c. 1915 in Woodbury. Click HERE and HERE for more on the Mills estate. The house is no longer extant but click HERE to see where the estate stood on google earth. Photo from Examples of Work by Lewis & Valentine, 1916... which was brought to my attention by our valued resource who goes by the alias HalfPuddingHalfSauce.

13 comments:

The Down East Dilettante said...

Elegant and restrained to the point of iciness. Mills's childhood home was not too shabby either. http://www.city-data.com/picfilesc/picc8431.php

The Ancient said...

That's an interesting caption. Do we know much about the landscaping?

I recall that Ferruccio Vitale and a few others with deep-pocket clients made a habit of transplanting of mature trees and specimen plants. Do people still do that on Long Island?

Down here, we have this -- http://oldplants.com/press.html -- and not much more. As for economy, when I moved a couple dozen 200-year-old boxwoods, the expense was crushing, as it required special machinery to be brought in from a thousand miles away.

The Down East Dilettante said...

I chuckled at the 'economy' of moving mature trees also. Rather than the interest gained on that $10 over 40 years, let's talk about the interest lost on the $100 over those 40 years.

Supermarket billionaire Charlie Butts bought an old apple tree up here and had it trucked to his summer place at Northeast Harbor, tying up traffic for something like 20 miles for half a day. It brought life to a standstill along the route. The peasants were not happy. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/934776/posts

Kellsboro Jack said...

There is something pleasing about the Mills estate if only because it is visually different.

In regards to 'insert mature tree here' the cost to purchase, transport and plant just one is tremendous so the days of Hicks and Olmstead creating a estate woodland in three months are frankly gone save for a very rare occasion.

Below is a June 2008 article on a developer in the Hamptons who brought in mature specimen trees to a site at a cost of $10 million.

http://www.hamptons.com/print.php?articleID=3414

Anonymous said...

Have always loved this house - Have you seen any interior photos, Zack?
This is Pope at his finest. Will never understand why anyone likes the Gould house- it bears no relationship to anything that is actually French- plus, the proportions are awkward and unrefined.
Love your blog!

Patricia said...

New participant here who recently stumbled on this wonderful site. I grew up at Sefton Manor, at the time Mill Neck Manor, where my father was founding headmaster and we lived on campus.

In regard to mature trees, I remember part of the folklore was that Mrs. Dodge, the original owner of the estate, imported six mature flowering cherry trees from Japan -- "in the hold of a ship" is how it was always described. There were other imported trees I remember, such as the Judas tree, which I was reading about today at Wikipedia. The estate had a collection of odd and rare trees which were immported, similar to Planting Fields down the road.

But my favorite of all was this huge copper beech -- just remember how glorious and glistening those leaves were. And I hope still are!

HalfPuddingHalfSauce said...

Welcome Patrica!

http://wikimapia.org/#lat=40.8149785&lon=-73.4543109&z=16&l=0&m=b&show=/19022953/Garage-Stables-from-the-Ogden-Mills-Estate

Click the HistoricAerials link to get overhead look on the true scope of the property.

This has been a question for Zach and I - Who's built this house this -

http://wikimapia.org/#lat=40.8149785&lon=-73.4543324&z=16&l=0&m=b&show=/8984987/LIGC

The Realtor always claimed it was built for Mills daughter. Fact is Mills didn't have children. Across the street -

http://wikimapia.org/#lat=40.814946&lon=-73.4542894&z=16&l=0&m=b&show=/19058168/County-Line-Farm
My thoughts were they twisted Hines for Mills??? anyone?

ChipSF said...

I like this house- icy or not!

HPHS -
According to "Daytonian in Manhattan", Sidney Z. Mitchell's Manhattan residence in 1942 was 1020 Fifth Ave. Coincidentally 1020 was featured this week on "Mansions of the Gilded Age".

HalfPuddingHalfSauce said...

Thanks for the followup ChipSF. It must have been in the apartment building that replaced the original Solomon mansion? From Mansions of the Gilded Age "Mr. Salomon died in 1919, and, after the dispersal of his fine art and antiques collection, the house was demolished in 1924." Do you have a timeline? If he lived there it would have been a short time.

2007 NYTimes article on the apartment building -

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/realestate/10scap.html

Kress penthouse at 1020 Fifth, click on the highlighted text for link to slide show -

http://www.observer.com/term/1020-fifth-avenue/

***Warning*** this one might require that all your chores are done and its raining outside to justify the time -

http://nyre.cul.columbia.edu/projects/view/17219#images

It opens up to the original sales brochure for 1020. There are 8421 images I as yet can't justify looking at{chores}...

HalfPuddingHalfSauce said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/realestate/29scapes.html?_r=1&ref=realestate

Christopher Gray article on the archives at Columbia.

ChipSF said...

HPHS -
Yes, it would have been the apartment building he livedin. Maybe he moved in there post-crash, but certainly no earlier than 1925 when the building opened. Prior to 1925 a mystery still.

I will have to wait to get into your interesting links too. Thanks!

The Down East Dilettante said...

Chip SF, old New York directories and Social Registers are invaluable resources for finding out where people lived.

Kirk said...
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