National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior

Resource History and Description of Existing Conditions
three stories, where the Langdon third story covered only a segment of the plan's square
footage, being recessed back from the balustrade and appearing as if it was an afterthought.
McKim's new design is bolder, more monumental, and truer to classical vocabulary. In plan it is
composed of the central block with the recessed flanking wings off the north and south ends.
Each end displays a two-story projecting portico supported by columns of the composite order,
as do the east and west entrances. Three of the porticos are rectangular in shape, while the west
portico is semicircular, as was Langdon's. Recessed coffers decorate the ceilings of each
portico. These coffers may have displayed a subtle polychromatic color scheme, but closer
examination would be required to confirm this observation.
The structure has an overall horizontal emphasis when viewed from the east lawn. The
horizontal is articulated by the water table, the entablature between the second and third (or
attic) stories, which also carries into the portico roofs at the north and south ends, the smaller
main roof entablature and the roof balustrade. This horizontal thrust is counteracted by the
portico columns, the two-story building pilasters, and third-story decorative vertical panels
(placed above each pilaster, surmounted by lion heads that transition to smaller foliated
details), 484 and the vertical placement of the window openings. Each story exhibits a hierarchy
of window-opening heights, with each opening aligning above the other in its respective bay.
The basement openings are the shortest, but visually appear to belong to the first-story
openings, which are the tallest. The alignment and separation from one another by a seemingly
narrow but continuous water table contributes to this illusion. The progression of diminishing
heights continues through the second- and third-story openings. One-over-one double-hung
sashes are hung in the openings above the basement, and all openings appear as voids,
contrasting with the solid mass of the elevations. Shutters once appended the window
openings. A photograph suggests that the shutters were constructed so that, when open, they
folded back to the jamb of the window opening, rather than lying flat on the building plane (see
ill. 18). They then would not obstruct or interfere with the continuous visual lines formed by the
vertical window voids.
In addition to the composite order of columns and pilasters, exterior ornamentation
includes a cartouche above the main entrance portico, lion-head medallions on the frieze of the
main entablature between the second and third stories, and running foliated decoration
spanning the frieze between selected medallions. It is this added ornamentation that
distinguishes this structure as being Beaux-Arts, rather than only Neoclassical, in the realm of
architectural styles.
ESTATE STRUCTURES
The majority of surviving estate structures was constructed during the Vanderbilt era
(without consideration of the farm buildings on the east side of the Post Road - Route 9). The
minority relates to part of the Italian Gardens and adjacent Gardener's Cottage and Tool House.
The Vanderbilts enlarged and altered the garden, built new greenhouses, and reconnected the
Gardener's Cottage to the Tool House with the replacement of a greenhouse with a Carnation
House by 1908. Both the Cottage and Tool House were constructed in the Italianate style by the
Langdons. 485 The remaining structures between the river and the Post Road were constructed
between 1895 and 1899.
484
Lions were included in Vanderbilt family heraldry symbols.
485
O'Donnell et al., 66, 138.
95