Montgomery Place
Coordinates: 42 ° 0 '52 " N , 73 ° 55' 8" W.
Montgomery Place , near Barrytown , New York in the United States, is a mansion that was built in the early 19th century and is now a National Historic Landmark . The property is also historically contributing to the Hudson River Historic District , which as a whole is also listed as a National Historic Landmark. It is a federal style winged house designed by architect Alexander Jackson Davis .
It reflects the tastes of the younger generation of the affluent Livingston family after the War of Independence , who began to be guided by French residential building trends and the strict English architecture embodied in Clermont Manor , which is a little upriver on the Hudson River . It is the only federal-style mansion in the Hudson Valley from that period that is still intact and the only such existing Davis-designed mansion.
Andrew Jackson Downing extolled the landscaping of the property, a job he was informally consulted on about the part that didn't take its final form until the late 19th century. The southern part of the property, an area of about 70 acres (about 28 hectares ) was designated by him as wilderness and is now known as South Woods, the oldest oak forest in the Hudson Valley. The property now has a size of 434 acres (around 176 hectares) and includes numerous outbuildings. A whole network of paths and paths connects them with one another. They lead through secluded wooded areas as well as open terrain with uninterrupted views of the river and the Catskill Mountains . Products from the orchard are sold on the street.
The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. Ten years later, the Livingston descendants sold the property to the regional heritage conservation organization Historic Hudson Valley . In 1990, the historic district was declared a National Historic Landmark, Montgomery Place received this classification independently in 1992. Montgomery Place is located on Annandale Road near Barrytown, off New York State Route 9G .
estate
The property is bordered by Annandale Road to the east, the Saw Kill to the north and the Hudson River to the west. A tree-lined driveway leads west from the road to a visitor center with a parking lot. From there a short footpath leads through a tree grove to an open meadow in front of the main house, which is above a cliff with a view over the Hudson River and the Catskill Escarpment on the other side of the river. Five of the 22 buildings, structures and sites on the property are rated as contributing to the property's historical character. These are the main house, three other outbuildings built by Davis and the original landscaped gardens.
Main house
The farmhouse itself is a two-and-a-half story building, five bays in length and four in width. The facade of rubble is plastered , the two side wings to north and south sides are in timber frame construction built, the southern wing sanded was to give him a stone-like appearance. At the back, facing west, there is a veranda . In the metal-covered gable roof two couples sitting on the sides of of brick masonry chimneys.
All facades are extensively ornamented . All four chimneys are festooned and balustrades run along most of the eaves . A central pillar on the east side rises above the main entrance. On it stands an urn, which is flanked by balustrades, a cornice and a frieze with triglyphs and metopes . The double-winged entrance door is lined with pilasters , and above it sits a fighter window and a decorated keystone . The main entrance is shielded by a semicircular portico supported by non-freestanding Corinthian columns.
A similar portico adorns the back, and here, too, urns are placed on the balustrade. On the side wing, flat pilasters support a frieze, and on the semi-octagonal south wing, columns create an arcade .
The main entrance leads to a rectangular hall with doors leading to the two salons on either side. This entrance hall is somewhat subdivided by a segment arch that rests on two tapered wooden columns. The library is on the north side, on the south side of the house a staircase leads to the upper floor. Most of the wooden interior is original.
Outbuildings
Five outbuildings, most of which are arranged around a garden, are located near the main house, south and southwest of it. These include the shingled caretaker's house with a shed made of plastered wooden panels, a squash court clad with horizontal boards , a wrought-iron greenhouse and the coach house , which is the only auxiliary building visible from the main house. It is a one-and-a-half-story wooden post structure with a crossed gable on which a dome sits. Pilasters visibly form the corners here, as is the case on the flanks of the main building. Inside, most of the wooden interior is original.
To the east of the main house, near the street, is the barn complex. It consists of a barn built in 1861, storage shed and a farmhouse and an octagonal stone well house . The farmhouse has a cross-gable roof and a triple Palladian window at the rear.
A group of cottages stand just below the hill with the farmhouse. Most of them are simple timber frame structures, but one, the so-called Swiss Cottage , was also designed by Davis. It has a cranked, deep saddle roof with verge on the gable side and balconies on the back. Another, Thompson House , has a serrated and corrugated cornice.
Elsewhere on the property there are isolated, mostly modern outbuildings, such as the visitor center or a small hydroelectric power station at the mouth of the Saw Kill. Other small huts from the 20th century are scattered around the orchards. Some of the outbuildings that visitors to the country estate described in the past no longer exist.
Landscaping
The northern and southern portions of the property, known as the North and South Woods, are still heavily forested. The forest to the south covers approximately 28 hectares and is the oldest surviving oak forest in the Hudson Valley. North Woods slopes down to the valley cut through which the Saw Kill flows. Winding paths and paths lead through these two forests. In the north they lead to a waterfall and in the south to the bank of the Hudson River.
To the east of the property are the orchards in which at least 19 different varieties of apples and pears are planted and harvested. The products are on sale at stalls and for a number of years visitors have been able to pick the fruit themselves. Fake acacias line the eight hundred meter long avenue to and the meadow in front of the main building. The lawn to the west of the house slopes down to a reflection pool on the edge of the tree population facing the river.
history
Archaeological research on the property has indicated that Indians have used the area as a hunting ground for at least 5000 years. These investigations are still ongoing and the classification as a historic monument also reflects the archaeological potential of the area.
After European settlers settled in the area at the beginning of the 18th century, the saw kill was used for various water mills. Janet Livingston Montgomery acquired around 242 acres at the Battle of Québec in the late 1770s, shortly after the death of her husband, General Richard Montgomery . The couple had previously lived in nearby Rhinebeck , where they set up their residence in Grasmere and moved into Livingstone Montgomery after the War of Independence .
She had plans drawn for a federal style mansion and hired a local contractor to help build the project. She named the house Chateau de Montgomery after her fallen husband and moved in after completion in 1805. With seedlings from many places far and near, sent by friends, she started running an orchard on the property and employed many slaves and free laborers. Livingstone Montgomery lived on the estate until her death in 1828; she bequeathed this to her brother.
Edward Livingston and his wife Louise spent the summertime here when he moved to Louisiana after a scandal cost him his post as US Attorney for New York and Mayor of New York City . He returned to New York and was a member of the US House of Representatives when his sister died. He was later elected a US Senator and later appointed the 11th Secretary of State of the United States . He still held the office of US ambassador to France before retiring from the civil service in 1835. The Livingstons gave the manor the current name Montgomery Place.
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Livingston died the following year and bequeathed the property to his wife. In 1844, she commissioned Alexander Jackson Davis to convert the stately mansion into a more playful mansion to keep up with the sense of the emerging romance . The two wings and the decorations on the facade were added at that time. A colonnade at the front entrance - the only ornament on the original building - was moved inside, the only change to Janet Livingston's original plans.
With the informal help of Andrew Jackson Downing , a friend of Louise and a mentor to Davis, she began developing the landscaping. Her daughter Cora Barton worked with the architect to design a garden and the conservatory. Davis also drew up plans for several outbuildings on the property.
When Louise died in 1860, Cora and her husband again commissioned Davis to actually build some of the earlier smaller outbuildings. These were the coach house, the Swiss Cottage and the changes to the farmhouse. They also had the landscaped garden expanded. These measures were part of their intention to differentiate the house and the areas for entertainment more clearly from the farm - which they were also beginning to restrict.
From the descendants of Cora Bartons the property finally came in 1921 to another descendant of the Livingstons, John Ross Delafield. He had modern heating and running water installed in the main house. He and his wife Violetta White Delafield made the last major changes to the property by expanding the landscaped garden and adding smaller gardens in the years leading up to World War II .
After his death in 1964, John White Delafield and his wife moved in to maintain the property. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. Eleven years later, it was sold to Sleepy Hollow Restorations for $ 3 million ; later the organization was renamed Historic Hudson Valley . After a five-year restoration that cost three million US dollars, the house was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1992.
aesthetics
Janet Livingston's original home reflected the tastes of its time. She and her family generated much of their wealth and reputation by farming and leasing land to cottagers . As a result, their own homes were often on higher ground from where they could see their property, which at the time also included areas of the Catskills on the other side of the river. The rectangular shapes of Federal Style and Classicism expressed their authority and dominance over the country.
This began to change in the second quarter of the 19th century. Andrew Jackson Downing of nearby Newburgh preferred mansions and cottage-like houses in the styles later known as Carpenter Gothic and Picturesque . These were smaller structures and usually wooden frame structures with high, steep roofs, often in the form of cross gables and ornate cornices, which were intended to harmonize with the surrounding natural objects and thus create the impression of a place that was pleasant to live in . His pattern books became widely available and used as templates for many house constructions across the country.
Janet Livingston's descendants commissioned Downing's friend Alexander Jackson Davis over 20 years to expand and renovate the house into a more classically inspired mansion. He used curved shapes on the balustrades and side wings to set them apart from the strong vertical orientation of the existing building. The arcaded pavilion turned the veranda common in many 19th century houses into an independent wing. Textures were added to the surfaces of the existing decorations, using many floral motifs. All of these features connect the house to the surrounding landscape. Jane Davies, who works scientifically with Davis, calls Montgomery Place its finest country house.
The farmhouse is a Davis variation of a Downing pattern from the posthumously published work The Architecture of Country Houses . Davis updated the design taking into account the Italianate style popular at the time by adding the Palladian window. Downing's influence can also be seen in Davis Swiss Cottage . This pattern, often published but seldom realized, was varied by Davis, but no other such cottage built by Davis is known. He added additional entrances because it was believed the house would have multiple tenants, but four of them were disguised as windows. The main features of Downing's pattern - the floor plan, the low, wide roof, the building into the mountain so that the basement is exposed on one side and the galleries and balconies with a view of the river - are present.
The garden landscape was inspired by contemporary European trends. The Bartons had followed Edward Livingston to France when he worked there and had seen many of Europe's most famous gardens. Cora Barton had a full sentence sent to her from Joseph Paxton's The Magazine of Botany . A family friend, Downing, visited the Bartons in 1847 and wrote about the resulting gardens in his own magazine, The Horticulturist . He praised "the deep and mysterious forest" with "dark, winding and tangled sidewalks" in the "wilderness" in the northern part of the property near the Saw Kill. He called the property "the most perfect mansion in America".
supporting documents
- ^ Neil Larson: National Register of Historic Places Registration: Hudson River Historic District ( English , PDF, 2.02 MB) National Park Service. September 19, 1990. Retrieved July 7, 2011.
- ^ A b Listing of National Historic Landmarks by State: New York. National Park Service , accessed November 21, 2019.
- Jump up ↑ Susan Stein: Montgomery Place Mansion (HABS No. 5627) ( English ) In: Historic American Buildings Survey . Library of Congress. 1981. Retrieved on July 7, 2011. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Jacquetta Haley: National Historic Landmark application, Montgomery Place ( English ) New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . September 19, 1989. Retrieved July 10, 2011.
- ^ A b Montgomery Place ( English ) Historic Hudson Valley . 2008. Archived from the original on July 9, 2011. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved July 10, 2011.
- ↑ a b c d e f Lynn Beebe: National Register of Historic Places nomination, Montgomery Place ( English ) New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . March 1975. Retrieved July 17, 2011.
- ^ Dulcie Leimbach: For Children: Apple Picking (English) , New York Times. September 27, 1996. Retrieved July 15, 2011.
- ^ Historic Hudson Valley, brochure available at the visitor center
- ^ Tessa Melvin: Restoration Is Called Key To Protecting Land (English) , New York Times. May 17, 1987. Retrieved July 17, 2011.
Web links
- Official website
- 13 photos , 1 map, and 11 datasheets @ Historic American Buildings Survey
- 3 photos , 1 drawing , 3 data sheets of the farmhouse in Montgomery Place.
- 2 photos , 1 page of drawings and 7 data sheets for the Swiss Cottage from Montgomery Place @ HABS.
