| |
Note some of the street names. Stotesbury and Trumbauer, obviously. Cromwell was Eva's first husband (before Ned Stotesbury). Eva's daughter (from the first marriage) married Douglas MacArthur. (Eva's son, James(?) Cromwell, married Doris Duke.) Duveen, the aesthete and fine art dealer told Eva she should build a palace (with a good chunk of Ned's money going into Duveen's pockets). And the Wideners had Trumbauer build Lynnewood Hall which is stylistically the older sister of Whitemarsh Hall.
Remember when we wrote about place names. I was looking for cedar trees in what used to be Cedar Grove, and you noted the birthplace of Oakland "without an oak tree in sight."
Is this all indicative of how 'modern oblivion' operates?
A, I fully understand your reaction/impression, and, like all the other responses, here, you're spot on, BUT there's a very rich story here that needs further understanding.
From the air, yes the suburban street layout is "ugly", but the homes from the first wave of developments (1950s and 1960s) are for the most part 'ok' and some are even stylistically interesting, especially those that look to be from the 1950s. And, in general, the old estate is a very nice place to live, even desirable. The group of homes built after the mansion was razed 1980 are the worst though.
If you read through the guestbook you'll see that for those that grew up near or knowing about the place, the derelict palace was something beyond enchanting. My older brother first took me there in 1970 when he got his driver's license. I was a freshman in high school then and it was like my first architectural wet dream come true. My goal became to get into every room of the place, and I almost succeeded. Now it's like Learning From Whitemarsh Hall.
Abracadabra's archaeological evocation is great. Very Piranesian. There's reenactment, damnatio memoriae (erasure of memory) and ultimately palimpsest. The landscape telling a story via strata of data.
I have some treasured "souvenirs" gotten by teenage vandalism (barbarian that I was)--a baluster from the forecourt and two slabs of marble from Mr. Stotesbury's bathroom (one of which has Anonymous Saint in Bikini While Jesus is Walking on Water painted on it). Plus I still have some super-8 movies of the place in 1972 that need to be transferred into digital media.
quondam (from the Latin) once, at one time, formerly; at times, sometimes, once in a while; some day, one day (in the future)
-----
(The art/theory journal) October 25 devoted the entire Summer 1983 issue to Leo Steinberg's The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion. I'm pretty sure Steinberg's title is what inspired Anonymous Saint in Bikini While Jesus is Walking On Water.
-----
note to self 2004.01.26
more novel ideas
16. Gordon Matta-Clark is coming to the [Horace Trumbauer Architecture Fan Club] convention because he used to break stuff at Stotesbury, which is how most locals used to refer to the place, actually, I first heard of it as Stokesbury; he claims to have broken most of the windows, etc. Gordon is staying in the old Sears power plant. Matta-Clark died in 1978, right before some of his work was to be exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary in Philadelphia. All the windows of Stotesbury were broken by then, but he still enjoyed 'haunting' the place till it was gone.
|
