National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior

Analysis of Historical Significance and Integrity by Resource Type
Although the firm's focus shifted to urban centers, the market for country houses still
remained. "In 1890 they began to design vast country houses in a Georgian vocabulary for two
Vanderbilt daughters and their husbands, Florence and Hamilton F. Twombly and Margaret
and Elliott Fitch Shepard. . . ." 1293
The Twombly estate, Florham, was completed in 1897 near Morristown, New Jersey. As
directed by Hamilton Twombly, it was really an "English country seat . . . complete with
manorial house, working farm, and extensive acreage." 1294 Mead was made the partner-incharge
of this project, 1295 but McKim is credited for the exterior design of the main house and
the carriage house. Apparently the Twombly project was a difficult one, evidenced by McKim's
complaint about his work at Columbia University to Mead: "[t]he scheme for the Library has
undergone many changes and at one time I felt as sick of it as you did of [Florham], . . . " 1296 The
house is said to have been based on Sir Christopher Wren's Hampton Court palace wing, and is
clearly in the Georgian Revival style. "The design is as competent overall as that of Fred
Vanderbilt's very different house at Hyde Park, New York, which was designed by the firm at
almost the same time." 1297 The houses are very different in plan and detail - the former is very
English, the latter is very French.
The Shepard House, Woodlea, was erected in suburban Scarborough, New York, and had
no pretensions of becoming an English manorial estate. Although Margaret Vanderbilt
Shepard's new country house - it was her house because her husband died in 1893 during its
construction - did not quite compare to her sister's "manor" near Morristown, the grounds
were transformed by the Olmsted brothers into a "ravishing" estate setting, and the house itself
was rather manorial. 1298 This house was designed by Mead, who was definitely the partner-incharge,
and whose sister had married Elliot Shepard's brother. 1299
William Mitchell Kendall, in his authoritative 1920 list of the firm's works, attributes the
design of Woodlea to Rutherford Mead. This makes the house unusual in the opus of
McKim, Mead & White. Mead was rarely involved in design work, concentrating instead on
business and client relations. The fact that he was actively involved in the design of both of
the houses the firm executed for this generation of the Vanderbilt family (Woodlea and
Florham) is unusual. 1300
Its European and English antecedents are apparent, and the design certainly was inspired by
classical cultural tradition. The final product, however, has an unmistakable American gloss .
. . The floor plan was also different, and far more sophisticated, than those of English houses.
American concepts of efficiency, as opposed to those of social class, dictated the locations of
the kitchen, the serving pantries, the service stairs, and quarters for domestic help. . . . The
1293
White, 16. Roth mentions neither of these houses.
1294
John Foreman and Robbe Pierce Stimson, The Vanderbilts and the Gilded Age, Architectural
Aspirations, 1879-1901 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991), 107.
1295
Mead was rarely in charge of projects, serving primarily as office manager. McKim, Mead & White, x.
1296
Roth, 192.
1297
Foreman and Stimson, 110.
1298
Foreman and Stimson, 160. Certain similarities exist between the setting of this estate on the Hudson
and Frederick Vanderbilt's estate upriver on the Hudson.
1299
Foreman and Stimson, 159.
1300
Foreman and Stimson, 161. Kendall joined the firm in 1882 and later became McKim's successor.
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