Sometimes you want to share knowledge with people who will appreciate it, and sometimes you want to archive knowledge so that you yourself can find it again. This post is concerned with both purposes. I want to be able to find all this again one day, and I want to you to have seen this at least once in your life.
Several years ago, I read an article about a house. A glorious, labyrinthine house on the sea, designed and enlarged around the Gilded Age by a committed bachelor. Each room led into another. There was no central hallway, no main staircase. Around each corner was something lovely. Everywhere were nooks and views. I wanted to look at it forever.
And I couldn't find it again because I couldn't remember the name of the house or the owner. It was somewhere on the East Coast, in some place where one could find Gilded Mansions, but it was lost to me. I thought the owner's name had been Joshua, or that he was connected with Edith Wharton, but such searches revealed nothing. The house haunted me. I yearned to see the green bedroom room, filled with light and doors to elsewhere. I spent hours googling variations on every detail I remembered, to no avail.
And then recently, without warning, I came across the green room again.
Behold: Beauport, the Sleeper-McCann House in Gloucester, Massachusetts, designed by Henry Davis Sleeper. This verdant color graces several rooms, one of the few unifying design themes in this eclectic house.
There are photos galore at the above link, and biographical info on Sleeper, and the history of the house. Take, and read, and contemplate. But what you really want to do is tour this magnificent house, and this you can do from the comfort of your couch with this virtual room-by-room walk through Beauport. First, though, you must -- no, you must -- have the floor plan for reference.
You must enlarge these photos and use them as you navigate through the tour. My green room is, I believe, the Belfry Room on the second floor. What, this isn't what you spend your nights and weekends doing, ogling the glamorous houses of yore?
I've done the tour several times, and one thing that is very noticeable is that despite the extreme eclecticism, everything blends very well -- almost every room is in a very different style, but you're never jarred going from room to room.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it glorious, though? It's the exquisite taste of Henry Davis Sleeper that ties everything together. (And sometimes, that green.)
ReplyDeleteOne of the patterns in A Pattern Language is something like Partial View: how a window or corridor only gives you a glimpse of some room or vista until you get right up to it. Every doorway and passage in Beauport is like that -- nothing opens directly, everything has a vestibule or a turn or a jog. And so there are always delights to be discovered, even if you know the house well. The rambling asymmetry of the house creates these moments of drama, but they wouldn't be nearly as effective without the elegance and the understated maximalism (can I say that?) of Sleeper's genius.
I would dearly love to wander Beauport in person one day. There is a book on it, but it's out of print and Amazon doesn't even have any copies: https://www.amazon.com/Beauport-Sleeper-McCann-House-David-Bohl/dp/0879238739/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3TSF3QBGRWNMK&keywords=beauport&qid=1687265209&sprefix=beauport%2Caps%2C128&sr=8-1
Well, Bookfinder says you could get the book from Germany for a mere $76; tack $100 onto that if you get it from a US source!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bookfinder.com/search/?ac=sl&st=sl&ref=bf_s2_a1_t1_1&qi=mWcrT31z0JkHATJwHEWp5NGus1Y_1687711723_1:3:9&bq=author%3Dnancy%2520curtis%253B%2520richard%2520c%2E%2520nylander%26title%3Dbeauport%2520the%2520sleeper%2520mccann%2520house
Lovely!The greenery on the walls reminds me of the eclectic house we rented in Coronado. It's now for sale for a mere $3.4 million. It doesn't have the twists and turns, but it does have a bit of whimsy and surprising fairies and animals painted into the trompe l'oeuil courtyard and magic potion shelf.
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