Monday, December 12, 2011

'Killenworth'

The first 'Killenworth', the George duPont Pratt estate designed by William B. Tubby c. 1897 in Glen Cove, with landscaping by the Olmsted Brothers. Pratt demolished this house in 1912 and replaced it with his much larger 'Killenworth' by Trowbridge & Ackerman c. 1913, click HERE for more. George, along with brothers Frederic, Harold and Herbert all either demolished and rebuilt or significantly altered their existing Glen Cove country houses starting around 1910. Click HERE to see where the first 'Killenworth' stood and where the current one stands on google earth.






Photos from Architects' and Builders' Magazine, 1900.

10 comments:

Doug Floor Plan said...

It looks like a very comfortable country house. It's probably good that this house was torn down & replaced with 'Killenworth' because I doubt the Soviets would have purchased this small (relatively speaking), comfortable home for their country retreat -- & then today we probably wouldn't have either house.

In the second picture look at the structure to the right of this house -- interesting look on what is probably the house next door.

Anonymous said...

I would have saved this as a guest house,very comfortable.

HalfPuddingHalfSauce said...

DFP - if I recall correctly the tower in the back ground was the estates water tower.

VisualNotes said...

I apologize for the VERY off topic question, but do any of you know where I could find measured drawings for Whitemarsh Hall? I would like to use it for my interior design thesis project next spring at Harrington College of Design. Any info would be much appreciated.

The Down East Dilettante said...

Visual Notes: Measured drawings and photographs of Whitemarsh Hall are available on the Philadelphia Buildings website (www.philadelphiabuildings.org). Full access to the site is $40.00 per year (well worth it--lots of Maine and Long Island material on it, including the Trumbauer archives that you will need). Permission to reproduce will be needed from the several collecting institutions that hold the collective collection of drawings, but you will find plans for all five floors, including original and revised versions, and elevations for four facades, as well as gate house, gates, and a stunning garage/orangery that was never built.

chipon1 said...

hphs,
from my memory of the water tower it is not the water tower. the water tower did not have a porch on the top or such large flag pole.
other than that i love your comments

The Down East Dilettante said...

(how many times could I have used a variation on 'collect' in one sentence above? I will start proofreading, I will start proofreading.

On topic: Interesting to see how the Pratt's architectural aspirations (and obviously budget) grew from the first to the second Killenworth. I mean, the first one is not that different from the house my great-grandparents built, but they never followed it up with a fifty room Tudor (darn it)

magnus said...

I like the first Killenworth better than its second iteration.

I have posted this before, but think it might be interesting in light of today's photos:

When Charles Pratt died, the children of his second marriage (to his late first wife's sister) were quite young and his will was relatively restrictive: His children received income from trusts he established for each of them, but the principal was not to be distributed until their deaths, and then to their children. The first spate of houses built by the Pratt children were, like the first Killenworth, substantial by today's standards, but modest by the "Robber Baron" standards then prevailing. In 1912, however, the US Supreme Court ordered the dismemberment of the Standard Oil Trust into dozens of smaller companies. While I have not come across any definitive document deliniating the effect of the break-up of Standard Oil on the Pratt trusts, I have seen various newspaper articles that refer to lawsuits among the Pratt brothers and the Pratt trustees about which securities received in the break-up were to be considered principal and which were to be considered income and thus available for distribution to the beneficiaries. It does not take too great a leap to assume that sufficient was alloted to income to encourage all but one of the brothers to tear down or substantially enlarge the existing houses that they had built only a decade or so previously.

VisualNotes said...

Thanks so much DED. I knew you, if anyone would know.

Anonymous said...

I believe my Great Grandmother, Marie Koster worked at Killenworth I as a housekeeper around 1897 to 1905. Would there be any records to support this.