It has been a long day and I don't have a lot of brain power, so once again I'm going to share a couple of images that come from the Twitter feed of Cory Doctorow. These are plans and renderings of a 1932 house built in Scarsdale, N.Y., designed by Electus D. Lichtfield for an investment banker named Randolph P. Compton. It was built at the height of the Great Depression.
Scarsdale, in case you don't know, is a hoity-toity early bedroom community north of New York City, connected by commuter rail before cars were common. This house has three servants' bedrooms and that was what got my attention.
To someone of the present day, at first the outside images don't look abnormal for an American house, but it was large for the time it was built. It actually had more in common with an English stately home than a typical American house of that period (such as the one I live in, which was built not long before).
My house is not small for its era, with four bedrooms, two up and two down, but it wasn't built with servants' quarters. Or a basement under the kitchen that I suspect was for the wine. Or a three-car garage. Or four-and-a-half bathrooms.
According to the plans, that's the kitchen in the stone portion with the chimney, so below it is probably a food and drink-related cellar. There doesn't appear to be an internal stairway from that cellar to the house interior.
(Click to enlarge.)
The three servants' bedrooms are in the wing above the garage, along with a "servants hall" that is shared with the laundry. I think this means they ate their meals in the same room where they did the laundry for the family.
There are two stairways to the second floor, a main one from the center hallway and one tucked behind the dining room leading out of the pantry. On the second floor, the main one comes into an area adjacent to the master suite. The secondary stairway rises into an area between the guest room, a second bedroom, and the children's suite (shared with a governess's room), which is above the servants' quarters.
The second floor and attic (with playroom, above the master suite):
The main hall, looking inward from the front door.
The children's sleeping porch, above the end of the servants' wing.
A little research on the Comptons turned up a few facts. Randolph's father was also an investment banker, and Randolph began his career working for his father's company. Randolph lived until the age of 95, dying in 1987. He was on Nixon's enemies list (good company). Mrs. Compton — Dorothy (née Danforth, of the Ralston Purina Danforths) — went to Vassar College, as did their daughter, while it appears the men generally went to Princeton.
Randolph and Dorothy started a family foundation in 1946 that "supports work in climate change, progressive foreign policy, and reproductive rights and justice," especially as those three areas overlap. They recently announced the foundation would begin spending down its assets and close out operations by 2027 "in response to the severity, urgency, and scale of the threats facing our grant partners and all advocates working for a more peaceful, climate resilient, just, and democratic world." They granted $9 million in 2020 vs. $1.9 in 2019.
The architect, Electus Litchfield, worked until 1950. He designed many houses and planned some towns. It sounds like he saved New York's Central Park from being turned into a bunch of baseball diamonds. He also designed the main library in downtown Saint Paul (!) and the Lewis and Clark monument in Astoria, Oregon. I don't remember ever hearing of him before today.
No comments:
Post a Comment