National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior

The Gilded Age and Country Places
an enormous forest. Olmsted had persuaded George that forestry would be an interesting and
gentlemanly agricultural endeavor. Vanderbilt hired Gifford Pinchot to be the chief forester for
Biltmore, thus creating one of the earliest scientific forestry management programs in the
United States. In addition, Biltmore had a manorial village, in true emulation of the English
tradition, which was even built in an old English style. George, and later his wife Edith,
entertained guests (many of them family) in the enormous house.
Both the Shepards and the Twomblys turned to McKim, Mead & White for the design of
their country estates. The Shepard Estate, Woodlea, was in Scarborough, New York, not far
from Hyde Park. This area of lower Westchester County was especially attractive to millionaires
who wanted to be close to Manhattan. John D. Rockefeller was one of the Shepards' closer
neighbors. William Rutherford Mead, who usually tended to the administration of the firm, was
the partner-in-charge, assisted by Stanford White. Mead was related to Elliot Shepard through
the marriage of his sister to Shepard's brother. Woodlea was completed in 1895 after the death
of Elliott Fitch Shepard. It was an English style house, characterized by its long hallways. It was
built of light-colored brick trimmed with classically detailed limestone. The landscaping was
done by the Olmsted firm and includes especially impressive stretches of rolling lawns and
Italian gardens. The interiors were carried out with the expense and splendor expected of the
Vanderbilts, although there were no extraordinary decorative schemes. The long axis of the
house featured rooms en filade, 171 including the Living Room, Gold Room, and the Dining
Room. All of these rooms had views of the Hudson River. The family and guest rooms were
distinguished by their spaciousness. The servants' wing was isolated on the north side of the
house.
William Rutherford Mead was also the McKim, Mead & White partner-in-charge of
Florence and Hamilton Twombly's estate, Florham, in Convent Station, Morris County, New
York. Morris County was another wealthy enclave whose residents included the Dodge,
Armour, and Harkness families. The house was finished in 1897. Florham was a conscious copy
of an aristocratic English estate encompassing a grand house, a farm, greenhouses, an orangery,
and a large tract of land. Florham was designed in the Georgian Revival style and constructed of
brick. William Mead wrote, "Twombly wants a house on the order of an English gentleman. I
don't think he knows exactly what he means, and I am sure I don't, but as near as I can gather,
his idea was that it shall be a thoroughly comfortable house without the stiffness of the modern
city house." 172 It was composed symmetrically with a large center section that is flanked by
wings. Everything about the house emphasizes the wealth and social importance of its owners.
Like Woodlea, the plan features a long hall. Twombly's important collection of tapestries was
hung throughout the house. 173 The decoration was English in taste marked by the marble floors,
mahogany doors, and widespread use of damask wall covering, much of which was carried out
by William Baumgarten, formerly of Herter Brothers. Like most of the other Vanderbilt houses,
Florham incorporated the most up-to-date technological advances in plumbing, heating, and the
like. Frederick Law Olmsted and his son Frederick, Jr., landscaped the grounds. Despite the
early death of Hamilton Twombly, Florence entertained regularly.
171
En filade rooms are rooms that open one into the next along a single axis.
172
Letter Mead to Frank Millet, July 9, 1895, N-YHS quoted in Richard Guy Wilson, McKim, Mead &
White Architects, 155.
173
The tapestries had been made for Louis XIII of France; they were later owned by the Barbarini Family
and were purchased from Charles Foulke. See McKim, Mead & White (MMW) Collection, N-YHS,
Correspondence-Twombly, 1892.
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