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Interior Life: Mansions in the Metropolis
Here at Urban Archive, we often focus our stories on the city streets and the public-facing architecture of the city. However, being stuck inside our apartments has given us a new appreciation for interiors so we thought we'd take a look at a diverse array of New York's interiors over the years. This particular story dives inside the homes and lives of New York's elite at the turn of the century and what their interiors meant to them.
122 East 17th Street
No list of turn of the century New York residential interiors could exempt the home of Elsie de Wolfe (1859-1950), often credited as America’s first professional interior designer, and Elisabeth “Bessie” Marbury (1856-1933), one of the world’s leading, and pioneering female, theatrical agents, and producers.
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122 East 17th Street
The power couple hosted the cream of society, and Marbury characterized the house as “a glorified Ellis Island.” The success of De Wolfe's own interior launched her career and she decorated everywhere from the Colony Club to the homes of the Vanderbilts, Henry Frick, and Ann Morgan and more.
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122 East 17th Street
By crafting an irresistible home for guests, De Wolfe had made her own skills clear to the best possible clients. In a sense all of her rooms were showrooms.
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Henry Clay Frick House
One of Wolfe clients, Henry Clay Frick's interiors were not just notable due to De Wolfe's decoration. Visitors wandering around the tranquil Frick collection might assume it was a stroke of luck that the mansion was so easily adapted into a museum.
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Henry Clay Frick House
However, Frick had planned it that way from the start. Knowing that he wished to turn the home into a museum, Frick ensured that it would be adaptable in its design, layout, and decoration. With the exception of the Fragonard Room, the Frick's interior has remained almost entirely unchanged from its initial conversion.
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Henry Clay Frick House
Frick organized his spaces to have dual purposes. First, to serve as a luxurious mansion, but also to be a monument to his wealth and taste after his passing.
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350 Fifth Avenue
While Frick envisioned his mansion as an art museum, Caroline Schermerhorn Astor had a very different idea about how her interior would shape society. Along with her confidant Ward McAllister, Mrs. Astor ruled New York society and her home signified that rule.
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350 Fifth Avenue
It was believed that the 400 that supposedly made up New York Society were called such as that was the number that could fit inside Mrs. Astor's Ballroom. Whether this was true or not, one needed to be invited into Mrs. Astor's home to be considered a true member of New York Society.
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350 Fifth Avenue
Mrs. Astor used these invitations to include (or exclude) those who pleased or displeased her. Alva Belmont Vanderbilt was forced to throw an elaborate (and exceedingly expensive) ball to secure herself passage into Mrs. Astor's home. Astor wielded her interior as a social weapon.
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960 Fifth Avenue
However, there was always an underlying theme: money. Best illustrated in William S. Clark's mansion on Fifth Avenue. William S. Clark was a Montana Senator, who had made a fortune in copper and was not ashamed about flaunting it.
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960 Fifth Avenue
Clark decided he needed a house that matched his wealth and proceeded to build a mansion that was so extravagant it was called "Clark's Folly."
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960 Fifth Avenue
With 121 rooms, 31 baths, four art galleries, a swimming pool, a concealed garage, and underground rail line to bring in heating coal, it showed every penny of the more than six million dollars it cost to build it.
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960 Fifth Avenue
The Gilded Age titans, socialites, and heirs, commissioned magnificent mansions throughout the city. Whatever their purpose may have been, few of the homes have survived to this day. Clark's mansion was replaced, much like many of the rest, by an apartment building.
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