National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
In addition to the following alphabetical list of specific recommendations for further
research, which includes both repositories and topics warranting further investigation, special
consideration should be given to the surviving collections of Hyde Park's estate records in the
collection of the Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Site Archives.
The collection includes a nearly complete series of cross-referenced payroll records,
account books, and ledgers which number over forty volumes. In addition, the park archives
has on long-term loan and has nearly completed transcribing the personal journals of Herbert
and Marie Shears, the estate superintendent and his wife. These two collections offer a unique
opportunity to reconstruct the management of the Hyde Park estate with particular attention to
the operations of individual estate departments, staffing, building maintenance and alterations,
farm production, garden plantings, and daily life on the estate.
It is recommended that a special history study of these collections be undertaken to
carry forward the work begun in this study. Further research should include new oral histories
with descendants of estate employees as well as complete documentation of the physical
remains of the farm side of the Vanderbilt estate. This documentation should include
photography, record drawings, and site mapping of the extant buildings, roadways, and
landscape features which remain on the portion of the estate east of the Albany Post Road.
The special history study should place the Hyde Park estate in the context of other
country places by including a review of surviving estate record collections, such as those at
Shelburne Farms and Biltmore.
More in-depth study of the Vanderbilt estate would make a significant contribution to
the understanding of gilded-age country places by providing a depth of research and analysis
which has not yet been carried out for this or any other property, extant or lost, by scholars of
the period.
ARCHITECTURAL LEAGUE OF AMERICA
Papers at the Archives of American Art, Washington D.C., (not microfilmed), Glaenzer was a
member and frequent exhibitor.
AVERY ARCHITECTURAL LIBRARY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
Guastavino Papers, the Dairy Barn at Hyde Park had Guastavino Fireproof Construction.
BEINECKE LIBRARY, YALE
Edith Wharton Correspondence should be searched for letters from Ogden Codman with
mention of the Vanderbilt project.
BILTMORE
Until the archives at Biltmore have been processed, it is unclear what is included there, but
further research is clearly warranted when the collection is made accessible.
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