Who wants to be a millionaire? I don’t!
Have flashy flunkies everywhere? I don’t!
Who wants the bother of a country estate?
A country estate is something I’d hate…
From ‘High Society’ The truth, of course, conveyed by Cole Porter at his sardonic best, is that every captain of industry in America’s Gilded Age and the Jazz Age that followed wanted a country house as a testament to his financial success. In Rumson, New Jersey, on the Atlantic shore south of New York, titans of Wall Street commissioned their country estates from the nation’s finest architects. A notable example is the house at 99 Rumson Road, built in 1915 for Thomas F. Vietor and his wife, the former Elizabeth Allen, who were residents of New York. The site, on the southwest corner of the intersection with Bingham Avenue, was part of a dairy farm to which Mr. Vietor added 13 acres acquired from his neighbor to the west. The Vietors chose architect Harrie T. Lindeberg to design their house. A New Jersey native and son of Swedish immigrants, Mr. Lindeberg trained for five years with McKim, Mead, and White, where he learned how to adapt historical styles to modern buildings. “More importantly,” notes New Jersey architect Mark Alan Hewitt in an introduction to a Lindeberg retrospective, “this experience gave him an understanding of how a gentleman architect served his patrons.” Harrie Lindeberg departed McKim, Mead and White in 1906 soon after the scandalous shooting death of Stanford White by Harry Thaw, husband of White’s mistress, Evelyn Nesbitt. In partnership with Lewis Albro, the 27-year-old architect designed a house in Pocantico Hills, New York, commissioned by a relative of the Rockefeller family. It set him firmly on the map as an innovative designer of country houses. Mr. Hewitt describes Harrie Lindeberg’s particular genius as “architecture that combined the sentimental associations of historical types with a strong, austere quality of mass, materiality and proportion.” The Vietor house was indeed massive: 200 feet long, with 27 rooms and 10 tiled baths. A local paper marveled at the “heavy slate roof so arranged as to give the house the appearance of an ancient castle.” A notable feature of the house is its intricate, ornamental metalwork, much of it with bird motifs. It was designed by Oscar B. Bach, whose work is found in a number of Lindeberg houses. The house typifies both the architect’s use of organic materials on the exterior and his unique ability to wed the architecture to its setting. In a 1940 appraisal, art critic Royal Cortissoz said, “Lindeberg’s houses seem as it were to rest upon the earth, striking deep roots into it, reposing with an unmistakable serenity upon the appointed place.” The house at 99 Rumson Road currently rests on approximately 6.5 acres. Its “roots” in the land and the steep pitch of the roof evoke the romantic charm of a Cotswold cottage. (Indeed, the Architectural Record had referred to Lindeberg’s Pocantico house as a “thatched palace.”) When, in 1952, a subsequent owner shortened the Rumson house by severing two sections from the eastern side and moving them to adjacent properties, that impression was only enhanced. The home’s interior underscores Lindeberg’s dedication to elegance and the pleasures of living. His fresh approach, simplicity of design, and excellence in proportion create large interior spaces that offer interior designers exceptional opportunities for creative expression. The house is 10,600 square feet, with 25 rooms and 10 ½ baths. The living room is 40’ long, with 12’ ceilings; the stair hall rises two stories. As Mark Hewitt observes, “A Lindeberg house, like a song by Kern, Porter or Berlin, served its purpose well … Its rhythms were fresh and inventive, its spirit new, but its roots ran deep in American soil.” Sources: Domestic Architecture of H. T. Lindeberg, Introduction by Mark Alan Hewitt, Acanthus Press, New York, 1996 Gabrielan, Randall, Rumson: Shaping a Superlative Suburb, Arcadia Publishing, 2003 A conversation with Sergie Christianson Conklin, May 2008. |