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Wallpaper in the Gilded Age Part IV: Architectural Change 1800-1900 | AMDLA

We can't talk about wallpaper comprehensively without acknowledging the frame into which it was placed�the architecture. By all accounts the key influence on high-style late-nineteenth century residential architecture was the American Renaissance, particularly the Romanesque strain attributed to H. H. Richardson. The favored materials for super-sized second homes in Berkshire County after the Civil War were brick, masonry, and stone. Although the subject of this article is architecture, we also touch on the colors of buildings: large civic structures (most often white); "picturesque residential" (often earth tones); Greek Revival and Federal (again, often white) and Colonial Revival (just about always white). The story begins with genuine cottage-building.

The Carpenter-Built Cottages of Southern Berkshire

Before 1800, Georgian/Roman/Federal traditions shaped farmhouses as well as town dwellings throughout the county. As in other areas of rural New England, it was the local joiners, not architects, who supervised house-building. After 1800, these carpenters began to modify traditional styles according to the publications of Asher Benjamin. They substituted simple drilling techniques and stock wooden ornaments for eighteenth-century carving.[1] Soon, more formal Greek Revival forms appeared. The county boasts some fine examples of vernacular and civic Greek Revival buildings, among them the second Lenox courthouse built c. 1815, now the Lenox Library. Lenox had been the county seat since the 1780s and held this title until 1868, when county government moved to Pittsfield, a city eight miles to the north.[2]

1. Lenox Library



2. The c. 1825 Merwin House in Stockbridge.




3. The Bancroft Hotel in Interlaken 
near Stockbridge was built in 1833 
as a stagecoach inn on the Albany 
Post Road.

Between 1825 and 1850 many of these squat Greek Revival and Federal shells got filled up with fanciful wallpapers, replacing bare plaster walls and humbler painted finishes such as whitewash and stenciling. Primitive paper-hangings, too, many of them �blanks� (ungrounded, with few colors) were replaced with more ambitious offerings from American paperstainers. The decorative history of the second quarter of the century is not well understood. One of the avenues for exploring it are folk-art paintings by the likes of Jacob Maentel and Henry Walton which occasionally show brightly colored walls.

Wall fashions at this time were diverse. No doubt what has been called early-Biedermeier in Europe was also happening here. Biedermeier was something new: a response to the heaviness of Empire decoration, but one that came from a rising middle class as well as tastemakers. Biedermeier could be brightly colored and was often based on simple forms derived from nature. Many of these characteristics can be found in the decorative arts that appealed to young Americans of the early republic. We, too, had a rising middle class hungry for new forms. Paperstainers mobilized. 

They copied new European wallpapers, as always. But they also created. What emerged, over a period of many years, was a nascent native style�a synthesis of French and English trade traditions. Colors in this style were bold. By the middle of the century many colors and designs had calmed down, but loud colors prevailed in the "country trade." A plethora of revival styles came in, many sporting frames, pillars, stripes, and trellises. �Fresco papers,� often printed on polished white grounds, were a high-style favorite. Throughout this period, �oak paper� and other handcrafted imitations of stone and wood were popular. As always, there were outliers�innovative wallpaper designs that defy categorization.

More important than the wall decoration, which changed often, was the fact that the rather plain Berkshire housing stock did not. There was little need to update a farmhouse, except to add to it. The more prosperous built staid Federal-style homes (Stockbridge is especially rich in these). These upper-class homes were not radically different in design from what had gone before. 

When picturesque villas arrived they were different indeed, in color as well as design. In contrast to the Greek Revival and Federal palette, mid-century tastemakers like Downing and Holly advocated natural stone and earth colors. The rolling lake country of the Berkshire hills was peculiarly suited to large estates. A fine new home could be well-sited on its terrain and at the same time well-hidden on an innocuous country road. When picturesque commercial structures went up in town centers, the contrast with older forms must have been evident. It is much less evident now. Nevertheless, present-day Stockbridge hints at how townscapes may have looked when they were truly picturesque. The south side of Main Street has not changed appreciably since it was painted by Norman Rockwell in 1955.[3]



4. Rockwell's "Home for Christmas" c. 1955.


A small book could be written about this collection of styles, but briefly, the large building on the right is the present-day Red Lion Inn, a replica of an earlier hotel.[4] Moving to the left, the small brick Housatonic Bank was built c. 1825; the front was remodeled in the nineteenth century. Next is the Flemish Revival Old Town Hall dating from 1884. Next to it is the Seymour Store, a brick front-gabled commercial space from c. 1826. The neighboring colonial revival Guerrieri Block was built in 1921. Then comes the Pratt/Braman Block c. 1898, a highly decorated Queen Anne. Finally, the library, which started life in 1863 as a stone French Second Empire structure. It was encased in brick veneer and wooden trim in colonial style by Ralph Adams Cram in 1938. Despite the preservation of this picturesque stretch on Main Street, the dominant color for residential structures in the main part of Stockbridge is white, while the great estates are notable for their individuality, including their handsome earth tones. This contradiction will be explored a little later in this article.

Getting back to the mid-nineteenth century, the question rises as to why, during the early picturesque phase, town fathers in the Berkshires seem not to have been as self-consciously �colonial� as were, say, the residents of Litchfield, Connecticut. 

Like Lenox, Litchfield was built on a hill, and was an important town, fourth-largest in Connecticut, in 1810. But despite a railroad which arrived in 1840 the population of Litchfield declined relative to neighboring towns in the Housatonic and Naugatuck Valleys. These valley towns owed their existence to rivers which supplied power for mills. However, social forces were also at work in Litchfield. The town sheltered an old-money and scholarly crowd sustained by academies and partial to traditions. In the late nineteenth century Litchfieldians clung to the supposed rituals of white-painted and green-shuttered homes (actually, these were rarities in the eighteenth century) and discouraged encroachment by the newly-rich and the tourist trade. Around 1900 additional railroad and trolley line development was successfully fought off.[5] 

There was certainly a clannish aspect to upper-class families in the Berkshires during the Gilded Age. They shared business and social contacts, architects, land transfers, and even gentlemen's agreements about positioning their homes. And, their self-styled aristocracy could hardly be called democratic.[6] Yet, the newly-rich were accepted among them, and no great reluctance toward tourism has been recorded. Consider the longstanding traditions of the Curtis Hotel in Lenox. An inn occupied this central location as early as 1773. The second county courthouse next door was established in 1815. A redesign of the hotel soon followed (both have a temple front facade). The hotel was next renovated in brick in 1839. A guidebook noted the importance of the hotel in 1852.[7] 

In 1853, the hotel was purchased by its namesake, William O. Curtis. During the height of cottage construction over the next fifty years the Curtis expanded several more times. High-society architects often arrived at the Lenox train station and stayed at the Curtis for a night or weekend while meeting clients. No such accommodations were needed (or wanted) in Litchfield.[8]

Few examples of the bracket, villa, and Italianate styles so prevalent in the more populous Hudson River Valley region to the southwest were erected in southern Berkshire. A few fan-lighted brick residences with marble lintels on the outskirts of Berkshire towns were constructed (some remain) but not much commercial brick construction took place in Lee or Great Barrington until the arrival of the railroads around 1840. 

These, then, are a few glimpses of Berkshire County's architectural setting on the eve of the Civil War�mostly plain and rural, with pockets of variety and commerce. Whatever sub-category of design describes the second-home cottages which came with increasing frequency, they were above all �picturesque.� And there was no more important figure in the arrival of the picturesque than Henry Hobson Richardson.

An Unbroken Line 

Richardson followed Richard Morris Hunt into the school of Beaux Arts in Paris (Hunt in 1855, Richardson in 1860). By the 1870s Richardson was building in stone, masonry, and brick to great acclaim. Echoes of his work can be seen in many Berkshire County cottages, among them the fortress-like Naumkeag in Stockbridge and castellated Blantyre in Lenox. Naumkeag was designed as a shingle-style-with-turrets by Stanford White in 1885. Blantyre came quite a bit later (1902) but still fits the picturesque mold as a neo-Tudor building. Both were furnished with large amounts of patterned wallpaper, as we shall see; Blantyre retains an original leather paper in its main hall. 

5. Naumkeag



6. Blantyre 


Richardson founded an unbroken line to the so-called American Renaissance in architecture. For example, McKim and White started their careers in his office. The American Renaissance was based on classical forms. But, the idea was not just to copy. It was to build "in the tradition of" older forms and create something not yet seen. This idea was well understood in decorative circles in 1893.

7. �Indoors� cover and title page.


 �Indoors,� a wallpaper promotional booklet published in 1893 by Warren, Fuller & Company sounded the theme while discussing forward-looking American architects: 

�...as they lead us into more academic lines we welcome the advent of the movement to promote study of buildings abroad. We also acknowledge the powerful influence of such men as Richard M. Hunt, Stanford White, Thomas Hastings, and others....There really seems to be no limit to the material our architects and designers use in preparing their schemes ....Designers and manufacturers alike go to Europe for their models. In this they are right in spite of the meaningless cry for novelty. Why, can we not have a new style? Yes, by all means, but that new something must be founded upon what we already have. It must be grafted in, so to speak, and take its proper place on the tree of knowledge, lest it be artificial and unreal...�[9] 

8. Sketch for a morning room from "Indoors."

The copywriter quoted above would no doubt have agreed that wallpaper, no less than architecture, needed to fit into its �proper place.� Careful planners of high-style interiors were constrained by the character of the surrounding doors, windows and moldings. This might help explain why the wallpapers of the late Gilded Age seem to match their surroundings so well. But, it�s worth noting that successful wallpaper of this era, no less than the architecture, was more �in the style of� than a line-for-line copy of something else.

By the time that Ventfort Hall was built in 1893, the large country house was an honored tradition in the Berkshires. A peculiar feature of the building boom was how malleable the designs could be. In 1882 Peabody & Stearns had a Queen Anne as well as a Colonial Revival design drawn up for Charles Bullard before Merrywood was constructed. The rambling colonial design was chosen. In 1893, the same firm offered a Tudor style for Wheatleigh, but an alternative (Italianate) was chosen by the railroad financier H. H. Cook.[10]  

Perhaps oddest of all, Mr. and Mrs. Robb de Pester Tytus dropped in on C. F. A. Voysey in England while planning their Berkshire County estate Ashintully. Voysey would have created �a quaint medieval range of low, half-timbered buildings around a courtyard and a formal garden with a free-standing chapel.�[11] Instead, the Tytus family hired Francis Hoppin to construct a Palladian behemoth. 

9. Ashintully.


The fact that it was common for these sophisticated architects to offer their clients a variety of designs shines a new light on the claims that a great estate was �modeled after the ancestral home� back in Europe. That seems not to have happened.

The First Wave

A recitation of some dates, styles and names associated with the first wave of cottage construction underlines the variety of forms. Richard Upjohn built the Italianate Highwood in 1846 and then pumped up Martin Van Buren's Lindenwald with Italianate woodwork and a bell tower in the 1850s.[12]  

Linwood, the Stockbridge estate of Charles Butler, was built in 1859 as a Gothic revival cottage. The Second Empire Southmayd Farm sprouted next door in 1870, complete with mansard roof. Oakwood, a shingle-style house by McKim followed in 1876, and then Naumkeag arrived in 1885, as previously noted.[13]  But, the picturesque was not to everyone's taste. A newly-published design critic went so far as to dismiss most of the architectural history of the nineteenth century as �a labyrinth of dubious eclecticism�. That critic, who would one day build a wood-framed house with impeccable classical proportions just down the road from Ventfort Hall, was Edith Wharton.[14]

10. From the introduction to The Decoration of Houses.



From White City to White House

Having looked at Richardson and his followers, we conclude this nineteenth-century tour with a look at two late-century phenomena: the construction of the White City, and the re-construction of the principal rooms at the White House.


11. Charles S. Graham, Official Bird�s-Eye View of the Fair. 



12. Art Palace at Night, painting, Charles S. Graham.

The �White City� of 1893 (Columbian Exposition) is known today as the first large-scale American expression of Beaux Arts design: neoclassical architectural principles based on symmetry, balance, and splendor.[15] Hunt, White, Sullivan, and other leading architects participated. The Exposition has been hailed as the rebirth of classicism, but this easy label does not quite fit; American buildings did not immediately take on classical garb as the Fair ended. That said, it is true that nearly 200 buildings of predominantly neoclassical architecture were featured. Though the buildings were meant to be temporary, the debt to classical architecture was real. The effects are still with us�in banks, post offices, museums, and libraries.

13. The First Agricultural National Bank was constructed in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 1908.


14. Present-day Pittsfield City Hall was built as a U. S. post office in 1910.


Many of these civic temples were inspired by the City Beautiful movement which developed in the wake of the Fair. Its advocates believed that grandeur could encourage a harmonious social order that would increase the quality of life. But not everyone loved the White City, nor did everyone agree about what it stood for. Critics charged that the City Beautiful movement was far more concerned with aesthetics than social reform; Jane Jacobs referred to the movement as an "architectural design cult." And Louis Sullivan wrote that the classical style of the White City had retarded modern American architecture by fifty years.[16]

The McKim, Mead, and White Renovation of the White House 

In the years after 1893 a reverence for classical forms, a narrowing focus on a supposedly plainer colonial style, and the stripping of surface ornament gathered speed. These forces contributed to a completely new look around the turn of the century for the main rooms of a prominent building: the White House. 

To understand the changes to the state rooms on the first floor, it helps to learn how they were treated just prior to 1900. In 1892, only a year before Ventfort Hall was built, the principal rooms at the White House were slathered with pattern during a major re-decoration. True, Edith Wharton would trumpet in 1897 that �the overlaying of pattern is always a mistake.� But no one at the White House was thinking this way in 1892. On the contrary, the overlaying of pattern by decorator Edgar Yergason and First Lady Caroline Harrison was quite deliberate. An analysis of the decorating reveals that the patterns and colors were heady: 

�Yergason needed to make a bold statement in the [East] room while incorporating the existing furniture and light fixtures. He overcame this restriction by lavishing the walls and ceiling. Yergason combined neo-classical ornament and patriotic motifs with emblems of nature�s bounty to reflect America�s dominance over land and sea�.The walls of the State Dining Room were heavily encrusted with plaster appliqu� work. A drawing of the wall decoration reveals a large dado and frieze overflowing their traditional confines until nearly the entire wall is covered in high relief plaster appliqu�. Yergason delighted in creating interiors of refined coloration for the Green Room. Yergason masterfully transformed an historic eighteenth-century color arrangement of green, pink, white and gold with contemporary influences. A pale citrus green, referred to as �absinthe�, was contrasted with a dramatic pink color, and variously referred to as �peachblow� or �old-rose�, with touches of cream and a sprinkling of gilt highlights.��[17]  

The Harrison/Yergason treatment of the Blue Room was just as elaborate. A neoclassical silk damask was hung on the walls, and the same sort of high-relief plaster loomed overhead and garnished the dado. 


15. Blue Room c. 1894: a patriotic shield is displayed on the ceiling.





The decoration of the Cleveland and McKinley administrations was not as fussy as the Harrison renovations. A geometric design of paneling was put on the walls of the Green Room, solid colors were used more often, and pattern began to recede. But views of the Green Room and Blue Room from around 1898 show that their decoration was only slightly less swanky than that of ten years earlier.[18] 

During the work McKim spoke often about a �classic restoration� to the Federal period, but the results slid well into Georgian territory.[19] No doubt the long delay of the renovation explains some of the abruptness of the changes. So too does the greater separation of residential and official functions. The second floor became newly important as sequestered domestic space, and the newly created West Wing as a theatre for a presidency more powerful and efficient than ever before. 

But, whatever can be said about its authenticity or abruptness, there is no question that the 1902 renovations were a big change to the interior wall surfaces. The contrast between �before� and �after� photos of the parlors over a roughly ten-year span are sharp�even shocking. The circular ottoman of the Blue Room was exiled around 1900.[20] Such a large shift in visual weight raises questions: Why? What was happening to wall surfaces around 1900? Why did patterned wallpaper largely disappear from elite interiors in the coming years? These questions will be considered in Part VI of this series.

16. Blue Room comparison




17. Green Room comparison




18. Red Room comparison


Postscript: The Curation of the Colonial

I said earlier that the Lenox/Stockbridge area did not follow the Litchfield, Connecticut model of extreme colonial revival in the early-picturesque era. But, Stockbridge and Lenox caught up. In the period 1875-1925, a preference emerged for painting houses white, as opposed to natural stone and earth colors (or, the colors of the late-Victorians: mossy greens, maroons, and ochres).[21] 

Just as the architects, by building new homes, were the cultivators of the Gilded Age colonies, the elders of these three towns took on a curatorial role, especially when it came to the appearance of the town centers.  

Although mid-century picturesque forms were not purged outright, they were often remodeled to fit a Colonial/Federal aesthetic.[22] For example, the Stockbridge Casino was painted yellow soon after it was built by Stanford White in 1886. It is now painted white and serves as the main stage for the Berkshire Theatre Festival.

Another example of curation came with the arrival of the county-wide trolley line. It was not banned in Stockbridge as it had been in Litchfield. Yet staunch opposition by cottagers and the Laurel Hill Association kept the tracks in a riverside location (following present-day Park Street) rather than in the center of town, as elsewhere in Berkshire County.  In Lenox, the cottagers also had their way: a newspaper reported in 1901 that �The cottagers at Lenox have been much disturbed over the idea of a trolley line along the main highway, and have favored another route which is now made a part of the plan of the new company.�[23]    

Yet somehow in spite of this curation during the last quarter of the nineteenth century the Berkshire community was able to absorb the ultra-rich, including the newly-rich, and even cater to them, while retaining a reputation for rural authenticity. At least that was the opinion of Edith Wharton, who traded Newport for Lenox in 1900: ��we sold our Newport house, and built one near Lenox, in the hills of western Massachusetts, and at last I escaped from watering-place trivialities to the real country��[24]

footnotes:

[1] James Garvin, A Building History of Northern New England, 2001, p. 108-9. Benjamin published The Country Builder�s Assistant: Containing a Collection of New Designs of Carpentry and Architecture, Which will be particularly useful, to Country Workman in general, in Greenfield, Massachusetts in 1797. His book developed the ideas of English architect William Pain in an American context. Pain was in turn a popularizer of Robert Adams� innovations. Pain�s The Practical Builder and The Practical House Carpenter had been published in Boston during the 1790s.

[2] The architect was Captain Isaac Damon. From Massachusetts Cultural Resources Information (MACRIS) LEN.21: �Built in 1815, this was Lenox�s Second County Courthouse. The First Courthouse, a wooden structure built shortly after Lenox became the county seat in 1787, was not large enough to adequately serve the needs of the county court. The new Courthouse was a far more imposing structure, costing the county $26,059, a substantial sum in 1815. The Courthouse quickly became a landmark, and came to symbolize Lenox�s position of prominence in the region.�

[3] "Stockbridge Mainstreet at Christmas (Home for Christmas)" was published as a story illustration for McCall�s magazine in December of 1967 but was actually painted about 1955. The painting hangs in the Norman Rockwell Museum at the other end of town.

[4] An inn opened on this corner in 1778 and was known for many years as Bingham's Tavern, later Plumb's Hotel and Stockbridge House. In 1895 it was re-named the Red Lion Inn and promptly burned to the ground. This led to the construction of a replica by architect Harry Weeks of Pittsfield in 1897. Lion G. Miles has researched the property. See his �Anna Bingham from the Red Lion Inn to the Supreme Court,� New England Quarterly (June 1996): 287-299.

[5] William Butler, 1985. �Another City Upon a Hill: Litchfield, Connecticut, and the Colonial Revival,� p. 45 in The Colonial Revival in America, edited by Alan Axelrod. New York: W. W. Norton. Hotels and a tourist trade did come to Litchfield, but not until the Shepaug Railroad opened a passenger spur in 1872.

[6] There is no reason to think that wealthy Jews faced less prejudice in Lenox than they did in Newport or Saratoga. They summered in alternative destinations such as the New Jersey coastal towns of Keyport, Freehold, and Elberon. Catholics were not plentiful but they were not unknown: the Alexandres of Springlawn and Count de Heredia, whose wife Georgie Cook de Heredia inherited Wheatleigh, lead the list.

[7] Joseph E. A. Smith, Taghconic: Or, Letters and Legends about Our Summer Home, Redding and Company, 1852, p. 93.

[8] �The loss of the County Court in 1868 had little impact on business at the Curtis, which by this time was catering to a growing number of seasonal visitors. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, and accelerating rapidly after the Civil War, a stream of visitors came from New York, Boston, and other cities to experience the healthful climate, take in the views from its veranda, and join in the social activities that took place there. Many guests returned year after year: some, desiring more space and privacy than the hotel rooms afforded, rented houses on Main and Walker Streets, also owned by the Curtis�s. These became known as �Curtis Cottages� and their occupants as �cottagers�; this has been cited as the origin of the term �cottagers� to describe wealthy summer residents in Berkshire.� From MACRIS for Lenox, LEN. 23, citing Form B from 1/31/87.

[9] Indoors, a promotional booklet from Warren, Fuller & Company, pp. 16 and 20. I wonder if this is not an oblique criticism of the Aesthetic approach toward interiors taken by Tiffany and others; their methods of decorating respected the individual character of each room and such methods did not lend themselves to replication.

[10] The American Architect and Building News published five sketches for Wheatleigh in 1902 featuring French chateau to Scottish baronial to Italian villa (Houses of the Berkshires, p. 136).

[11] Houses of the Berkshires, p. 270.

[12] Lindenwald in nearby Kinderhook, New York was a large but plain Dutch brick building when it was constructed in 1797

[13] Joseph Choate (Naumkeag), Charles Southmayd (Southmayd Farm), and Charles Butler (Linwood) were New York City law partners who built their houses on adjoining plots of land in Stockbridge. Today Linwood houses the administrative offices of the Normal Rockwell Museum.

[14] From the introduction to: The Decoration of Houses by Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman, Jr., 1897: "It is therefore all the more encouraging to note the steady advance in taste and knowledge to which the most recent architecture in American bears witness. This advance is chiefly due to the fact that American architects are beginning to perceive two things that their French colleagues, among all the modern vagaries of taste, have never quite lost sight of: first that architecture and decoration, having wandered since 1800 in a labyrinth of dubious eclecticism, can be set right only by a close study of the best models; and secondly that, given the requirements of modern life, these models are chiefly to be found in buildings erected in Italy after the beginning of the sixteenth century, and in other European countries after the full assimilation of the Italian influence." 

[15] An observation of Julie Rose. See her masters thesis for an overview of the Fair: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma96/wce/title.html

[16] "Meanwhile the virus of the World's Fair, after a period of incubation ... began to show unmistakable signs of the nature of the contagion. There came a violent outbreak of the Classic and the Renaissance in the East, which slowly spread Westward, contaminating all that it touched, both at its source and outward.... By the time the market had been saturated, all sense of reality was gone. In its place, had come deep seated illusions, hallucinations, absence of pupillary reaction to light, absence of knee-reaction-symptoms all of progressive cerebral meningitis; the blanketing of the brain. Thus Architecture died in the land of the free and the home of the brave.... The damage wrought by the World's Fair will last for half a century from its date, if not longer.� Louis Sullivan, The Autobiography of an Idea (1924).

[17] Keith D. MacKay, "The White House Interiors of Caroline Harrison and Edgar Yergason, 1890-1892." PhD diss., Corcoran College of Art & Design (Washington, DC), 2009, pp. 30-1.

[18] views of Green Room, Red Room, Blue Room around 1898 at www.whitehousemuseum.org

[19] William Seale, The President�s House, Vol. 2, p. 682. See p. 662 for how McKim�s Beaux Arts training may have influenced his approach.

[20] The exile was temporary.

[21] Andrew Jackson Downing: "Do not paint your house white!" (essay in the mid-century magazine The Horticulturalist). Henry Hudson Holly: "...do not fall into the opposite extreme, and paint your house white, which is no color at all, always cold and glaring, and makes an ugly spot in any landscape..." Picturesque Country Seats (1863), p. 48.  Although white still dominates, other house colors seem to have made a significant comeback in the Main Street area of Stockbridge. This may be the result of better color analysis and restoration practice.

[22] The exhaustive National Register of Historic Places registration (2001) for Stockbridge is instructive. It lists 92 buildings in 15 architectural categories for the Main Street Historic District. The bulk are Federal or Colonial Revival. According to the form: "Since 1853 the village improvement society, the Laurel Hill Association, has monitored the village�s external appearance, reflected in the absence of large signage, parking meters, overhead wires, news vending boxes, and traffic lights." 

[23] Boston Evening Transcript, January 28, 1901, p. 4.

[24] Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance, D. Appleton-Century Co., 1934, p. 124-5.  See also Butler, p. 38.


caption credits:

1. The Lenox Library photo is the work of John Phelan, from Wikimedia Commons:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ALenox_Library%2C_Lenox_MA.jpg
2. Merwin House, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, USA. View of facade's front-left corner, copyright, Daderot
3. Copyright John Phelan: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Former_Bancroft-Curtisville_Hotel,_Interlaken_MA.jpg
4. "Home For Christmas," �  2015 Norman Rockwell Museum.
5. Naumkeag photo courtesy of The Trustees of Reservations.
6. Blantyre photo public domain.
7. �Indoors� promotional booklet, courtesy of the Bolling & Company Archive.
8. ibid.
10. � 2015 WallpaperScholar.Com.
11. "Map of the Chicago Exposition," painting by Charles Graham, from www.chicagology (Terry Gregory). 
12. "Art Palace at Night," painting, Chicago Tribune Supplement, 1893, Charles Graham, from www.chicagology (Terry Gregory).
13. <http://mass.historicbuildingsct.com> (Daniel Sterner).
14. File photo, www.BerkshireEagle.com
15. The Blue Room, circa 1894, during the Benjamin Harrison administration (Benjamin Harrison Home), whitehousemuseum.org. The first lighting fixtures installed in 1892 are clearly visible.
16. Left side, see 15.; right side: hand-tinted photo of the Blue Room in 1904 (Library of Congress - Theodor Horydczak).
17. Left side, hand-tinted etching of the Green Room around 1887 (Library of Congress); right side, hand-tinted photo of the Green Room, circa 1904, looking northeast (Library of Congress).
18. Left side, hand-tinted etching of the Red Room around 1887 (Library of Congress); right side, hand-tinted photo of the Red Room, circa 1904 (Library of Congress).