FROM MEDICI TO BOURBON - Newport Mansions

national life and character. 38 The introduction concludes: ‘The hope of creating a new
regimen of aesthetics lies less in her fullness of instruction about the sixteen Louis,
than in an independent creation of new and inventive belongings.’ The unrestricted
opulent and inventive splendor of 640 Fifth Avenue cost $800,000 in interior
decoration from the New York cabinetmaking and decorating firm of Herter Brothers
(active, New York, 1865-1905). 39 This proved to be the Herters’ most prestigious
commission. Known for their Anglo-Japanesque, E.W.Godwin-inspired furniture, the
unprecedented Vanderbilt project provided the opportunity to craft extravagant gilt
and mother-of-pearl inlaid works borrowed from eclectic sources. 40 The setting was
anathema to Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman who likely had it in mind in their
introduction to The Decoration of Houses: ‘a piling up of heterogeneous ornament, a
multiplication of incongruous effects; … a maison bourgeoise enlarged’. 41 The critics
Harry Desmond and Herbert Croly felt that the manifest intention of the decorators
was ‘to give Mr. Vanderbilt his full money’s worth in the way of gorgeous
trappings.’ 42 And more crucially the fourth generation Vanderbilt heirs of the house
characterized it as the ‘black hole of Calcutta.’ 43
The integrity of the interior architecture in its craftsmen ideology, accented by
Christian Herter’s blend of Oriental and Classical forms, was diluted however by
being riddled with such neo-Baroque compositions as Pierre Victor Galland’s (1822-
38 nd
George Allen, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, (2 . ed.), Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent, 1880, pp.
20-2.
39
George William Sheldon, Artistic Houses, New York, 1886-7, Vol. 1, Part 2, p. 111.
40
In Pursuit of Beauty, Americans and the Aesthetic Movement, exhibition catalogue, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, p. 439. See for example the Herter Bros. library table
(inventory # 1972.47) from 640 Fifth Avenue in the museum’s collection.
41
Ogden Codman, Jr. and Edith Wharton, The Decoration of Houses, W.W. Norton & Company, New
York, 1897, reprinted 1978, p. II.
42
Herbert Croly and Harry W. Desmond, Stately Homes in America, New York, 1903, p. 256.
43
The Cornelius Vanderbilts of The Breakers, exhibition catalogue, The Preservation Society of
Newport County, 1995, p. 59.
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