Domesticating History

Domesticating History
Author: Patricia West
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2013-09-03
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1588344258

Celebrating the lives of famous men and women, historic house museums showcase restored rooms and period furnishings, and portray in detail their former occupants' daily lives. But behind the gilded molding and curtain brocade lie the largely unknown, politically charged stories of how the homes were first established as museums. Focusing on George Washington’s Mount Vernon, Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, and the Booker T. Washington National Monument, Patricia West shows how historic houses reflect less the lives and times of their famous inhabitants than the political pressures of the eras during which they were transformed into museums.

Great Houses of the South

Great Houses of the South
Author: Laurie Ossman
Publisher: Rizzoli Publications
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2010-03-23
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0847833097

An exquisitely photographed collection of the great houses and mansions of the South. In the tradition of Rizzoli’s Historic Houses of the Hudson Valley and Great Houses of New England, Great Houses of the South features a stunning array of newly photographed homes that range over three centuries and are distinctive examples of the architecture of the region. While in popular imagination the "Southern Style" is embodied in the classic Southern plantation house with its Greek Revival detailing—its stately white columns, wide porch, and symmetrical shape—the houses themselves are much more various and engaging, as shown in this important volume. From stately Stanton Hall of Natchez, Mississippi, one of the most magnificent and palatial residences of antebellum America; to Longue Vue House and Gardens of New Orleans, the luxurious Classical Revival–style home of Edgar and Edith Stern; to the fabled Biltmore of Asheville, North Carolina, the opulent French Renaissance–inspired chateau and Gilded Age estate of George Washington Vanderbilt, this lavish volume is comprehensive in scope and a landmark work of enduring interest to homeowners, architects, architecture historians, and all those who love fine architecture.

Real Life at the White House

Real Life at the White House
Author: John Whitcomb
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 540
Release: 2002
Genre: Presidents
ISBN: 9780415939515

An irresistible chronological overview of daily life in the presidential residence. Divided into 42 chapters representing each succeeding administration, this survey is brimming with fun facts, tantalizing tidbits, and memorable anecdotes detailing two centuries of domestic bliss and strife in the White House. From George Washington, who chose the sight and initiated work on the presidential mansion, to Bill Clinton, whose well-documented White House escapades titillated and scandalized the nation, each individual president has contributed to the mystique of the most readily recognized home in the U.S. Together with scores of drawings, portraits, and photographs, the breezy text chronicles the significant physical, social, and emotional changes wrought by each First Family as they sought to personalize daily life in the White House.

Life Along The Hudson

Life Along The Hudson
Author: Pieter Estersohn
Publisher: Rizzoli Publications
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2018-09-18
Genre: House & Home
ISBN: 0847863239

This gorgeous oversized tome features thirty-six sublime country homes, many overlooking the Hudson River. This scenic stretch of estates along the Hudson offers some of the finest examples of American architecture and landscape design. The edition's thirty-five featured homes were designed in a range of styles by notable architects Stanford White, A. J. Davis, Calvert Vaux, Warren and Wetmore, and more. All pair exquisite interiors with expansive lush lawns and riverfront views. Formerly country homes for eighteenth-century landed gentry and nineteenth-century industrialists--Astors, Chanlers, Chapmans, Delanos, Roosevelts--they include Dutch colonial cottages and grand Gothic Revival, Federal, Georgian, and Beaux-Arts residences. Constructed on land owned by the influential Livingston family, who settled in the area in the late seventeenth century, many have been restored to their former splendor by the original owners' descendants as well as recent leaders of New York City industry and the arts, including Richard Jenrette and Brice Marden.

Empty Mansions

Empty Mansions
Author: Bill Dedman
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 498
Release: 2013-09-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0345534522

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Janet Maslin, The New York Times • St. Louis Post-Dispatch When Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly sixty years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the nineteenth century with a twenty-first-century battle over a $300 million inheritance. At its heart is a reclusive heiress named Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, at the time of her death at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen in decades. Though she owned palatial homes in California, New York, and Connecticut, why had she lived for twenty years in a simple hospital room, despite being in excellent health? Why were her valuables being sold off? Was she in control of her fortune, or controlled by those managing her money? Dedman has collaborated with Huguette Clark’s cousin, Paul Clark Newell, Jr., one of the few relatives to have frequent conversations with her. Dedman and Newell tell a fairy tale in reverse: the bright, talented daughter, born into a family of extreme wealth and privilege, who secrets herself away from the outside world. Huguette was the daughter of self-made copper industrialist W. A. Clark, nearly as rich as Rockefeller in his day, a controversial senator, railroad builder, and founder of Las Vegas. She grew up in the largest house in New York City, a remarkable dwelling with 121 rooms for a family of four. She owned paintings by Degas and Renoir, a world-renowned Stradivarius violin, a vast collection of antique dolls. But wanting more than treasures, she devoted her wealth to buying gifts for friends and strangers alike, to quietly pursuing her own work as an artist, and to guarding the privacy she valued above all else. The Clark family story spans nearly all of American history in three generations, from a log cabin in Pennsylvania to mining camps in the Montana gold rush, from backdoor politics in Washington to a distress call from an elegant Fifth Avenue apartment. The same Huguette who was touched by the terror attacks of 9/11 held a ticket nine decades earlier for a first-class stateroom on the second voyage of the Titanic. Empty Mansions reveals a complex portrait of the mysterious Huguette and her intimate circle. We meet her extravagant father, her publicity-shy mother, her star-crossed sister, her French boyfriend, her nurse who received more than $30 million in gifts, and the relatives fighting to inherit Huguette’s copper fortune. Richly illustrated with more than seventy photographs, Empty Mansions is an enthralling story of an eccentric of the highest order, a last jewel of the Gilded Age who lived life on her own terms. Praise for Empty Mansions “An amazing story of profligate wealth . . . an outsized tale of rags-to-riches prosperity.”—The New York Times “An evocative and rollicking read, part social history, part hothouse mystery, part grand guignol.”—The Daily Beast “Fascinating . . . [a] haunting true-life tale.”—People “One of those incredible stories that you didn’t even know existed. It filled a void.”—Jon Stewart, The Daily Show “Thrilling . . . deliciously scandalous.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Lives

Lives
Author: Lee Bennett Hopkins
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 42
Release: 1999-04-07
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 006027767X

Poetry that makes us appreciate the magnitude of lives filled with courage, enthusiasm, inspiration. Lives: Poems About Famous Americans is the ideal introduction to sixteen American personalities who have changed the course of history. Favorite anthologist Lee Bennett Hopkins has brought together the work of a number of accomplished writers and poets, among them Jane Yolen, Nikki Grimes, and X. J. Kennedy, to portray such figures as Sacagawea, Babe Ruth, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Leslie Staubs portraits contain a poetry of their own, capturing a bit of history in the glint of smile or the reach of a hand. Lives is a book for all readers to savor. Notable Children's Trade Books in the Field of Social Studies 2000, National Council for SS & Child. Book Council