'The Monastery', the Mrs. Farquhar Ferguson estate designed by Allen W. Jackson c. 1908 in Huntington Bay. Click HERE for more on 'The Monastery'.
Photos from The Touchstone by Mary Fanton Roberts, 1917.
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'The Monastery', the Mrs. Farquhar Ferguson estate designed by Allen W. Jackson c. 1908 in Huntington Bay. Click HERE for more on 'The Monastery'.Photos from The Touchstone by Mary Fanton Roberts, 1917.
8 comments:
I wonder what happened to the children's gravestones that she used for the dining room floor? Vandalized? Salvaged for a biker bar? Recycled for the local Boy's Club?
Great pictures, Zach! I wonder who the people are in the first two photos -- looks like a servant in the second but in the first it looks like a couple of those notorious flappers!
The captions for the photos are so wordy & oddly constructed. My two favorites are:
a) The first photograph -- "The tall cedar was transplanted to its present position by the ivy covered archway." Shouldn't that be "... next to the ivy covered archway"? The ivy covered archway didn't do the transplanting.
b) The last photograph -- "No riotous planting could equal in beauty the broad simplicity of this wall." LOL, yes a flat wall is more broad & simple than a live plant.
Ancient, I'm starting the rumor here & now that the demolition crew was too superstitious to remove those headstones & so one of the existing houses at this site has them in it's foundation &/or under its patio.
By all accounts, Julianna Armour was a loving mother and a kind, generous, thoughtful neighbor.
So where did she get that crazy morbid streak?
My working theory is that she never got over Take Your Daughter to Work Day.
Her son, Danforth Brooks Ferguson:
http://dna.cfsna.net/GEN/Nova_Scotia/Danforth_Brooks_Ferguson.JPG
Danforth Brooks Ferguson - Born February 28, 1895, in New York City. Son of Farquhar and Juliana Armour Ferguson. Educated Harstrom's Tutoring School, New York, and in Paris. Joined American Ambulance, France, October, 1914. Joined American Field Service, April, 1915; attached Section Two until August, 1915. Returned to America. Enlisted U. S. Coast Artillery. To France, with 42d Coast Artillery. Died of pneumonia, October 20, 1918. Buried Dannemarie. Body transferred to an American Cemetery in France.
Seems like there was a great deal of family tragedy in later years, but Mrs. Ferguson had a great reputation with the locales.
I also dont think the gravestone collecting is anything unusual. They were probably easily bought and sold as decorative items when ancient European burial sites were being developed or repurposed and she cornered the market on them. People obtain rubbings of old colonial gravestones, since stealing them is now frowned upon, to admire their designs not do to any morbid fascination.
I think it was mentioned somewhere that the family themselves removed alot of the embedded artwork and salvaged artifacts from the walls prior to its final sale and maybe the flooring was ripped up at that time?
It looks like a woman with two dogs in the first photo.
I remember reading somewhere that many parts of this home are housed in a museum, don't remember which one though.
"My working theory is that she never got over Take Your Daughter to Work Day."
I'm on my second day of chuckling over this gem of a remark, you got the gift Ancient.
-Flo
Sorry Ancient but I don't buy the oft told line:: "By all accounts, Julianna Armour was a loving mother.."
That's a common depiction held by anyone commenting on a quality the lady was said to have possessed.
It seems she was that after all, - mostly to other people's children.
What is anyone supposed to think of all those middle-of-the-night boat junkets, not exclusively, but especially those on Christmas Eve?
I mean, sending her own out to sea on those endless jaunts
(She forbade them to return home without the human cargo she desperately longed for!!!) to search for those souls lonely or loony enough to agree to return with them - just so Mama Ferguson might fulfill her personal mission to share her hospitality with all and sundry - total strangers or not.
How very kindhearted it was - telling her own that they mustn't return home to share in holiday warmth with family until they completed this ridiculous, ill spirited Xmas Eve roundup.
.
I'll take it, with just so many grains of salt, the last portion of the account painting Madam Ferguson as "..a kind, generous, thoughtful neighbor."
Example:: A room filled with toys always accessible to all the -other- kids.
I can't help thinking how familiar, albeit vaguely, is of the horrifically tragic tale "The Little Match Girl" - in this case a non-lethal monied version, naturally.
Please believe it when I say that I HATE speaking either ill or well of anyone who is not present to comment on or correct what's being said about them.
There are many reasons for oft repeated, second hand, retold tales of days long-gone to be inaccurate, not to say totally false, but the legends surrounding Ferguson's Castle are always told in the best light with never a hint of negativity..
I just needed to offer a plausible alternative. Thanks
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