Family room couch, CT
This post is a little late and perhaps a bit early. Just after posting about the Hemingway House and Museum in Key West, FL we watched the HBO movie Hemingway and Gellhorn on demand T.V. And wow is the home accurately portrayed in the movie. Remember the antelope head on the wall in my blog photo? There it was on the living room wall in the movie. And those enormous green shutters, and the cats? All there. The home came alive in the movie. When I visited the totally distracting actor / guide and crowds made that impossible.
Watching the movie I was sorry to see Ernest leave his wife Pauline in Key West to go off to the Spanish Civil War - no more views of the house! Well perhaps that's not true. We haven't yet finished the movie. Maybe they'll go back to the Key West home at the end of the movie. Better keep watching.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Saturday, June 30, 2012
At Home With Frank Lloyd Wright
I've been hanging around the periphery of the Frank Lloyd Wright fan circuit. I've toured Taliesin East and West, his Oak Park home and neighborhood, Fallingwater, and the Guggenheim Museum. I've read the two recent historical fiction accounts of his personal life along with anything else in the newspaper or preservation news. And I've dream of seeing more of his work, noting in this blog a list of FLW homes that you can rent on vacation.
But here's something new. A 2000 foot gallery opened on June 2 in the FLW designed SC Johnson Administration Building in Racine, Wisconsin. (scjohnson.com/visit) The gallery will have rotating exhibits with FLW's "designs and artifacts, and will explore his influence on families and the American home".
The chief curator of the inaugural exhibition, "At Home With Frank Lloyd Wright, said it seeks to illustrate FLW "radical deviation from Victorian architecture by opening floor plans, connecting with nature, using natural materials and not hiding them with paint or wallpaper."
Sounds fabulous. Best of all, I have to admit, they seem to have liked my blog title,
At Home With House Museums !
Monday, June 18, 2012
Hemingway Home and Museum
Key West, FL
Look at the line to get into this house museum! I should have told them to forget it. Go a mile and a half up the road to the Truman Annex. That's worth the visit!
It's very unusual for me not to like a house museum. In fact I can say I'm happy to have seen this one but mostly to cross it off my list. But that's not saying much, is it?
What didn't I like? It was all business and was it doin business! There were so many people visiting first thing in the morning that there was a line to get in. My tour group members gathered in the dining hall. As we moved about we were sometimes forced to take a different route because another group was already in the room we wanted to see or we waited single file for others to pass us so we could proceed into the room or up the stairs. It's a compact home on standard lot and on most days I'll bet its overflowing with tourists.
And then there was the tour guide! He has to be an underemployed or perhaps formerly employed actor. The tour was really his opportunity to run his lines by us. The Hemingway Home website has a little bio, just like in a playbill, on each tour guide. I don't believe this was my guide but here's part of the bio on another guide: "describes himself as an "edutainer." His philosophy is that if he can touch as many lives as possible, however briefly, and have people smile, he is doing something worthwhile with his life. Joe would like you to know that he has completed over 6,000 public performances at the museum."
And unlike most house museum guides our guide wasn't interested in our questions, either before or after his spiel. But he was interested in tips! He had an especially distasteful little shtick at the end of the tour when he asked for tips.
Actually a good question. Should you tip house museum tour guides? I don't believe I ever have.
Hemingway wrote many of his classics while living in Key West. They include: Death in the Afternoon, Green Hills of Africa, To Have and Have Not, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Fifth Column. This small second floor room in a smaller building at the back of the property is where he preferred to write early in the morning.
Look at the line to get into this house museum! I should have told them to forget it. Go a mile and a half up the road to the Truman Annex. That's worth the visit!
It's very unusual for me not to like a house museum. In fact I can say I'm happy to have seen this one but mostly to cross it off my list. But that's not saying much, is it?
What didn't I like? It was all business and was it doin business! There were so many people visiting first thing in the morning that there was a line to get in. My tour group members gathered in the dining hall. As we moved about we were sometimes forced to take a different route because another group was already in the room we wanted to see or we waited single file for others to pass us so we could proceed into the room or up the stairs. It's a compact home on standard lot and on most days I'll bet its overflowing with tourists.
And then there was the tour guide! He has to be an underemployed or perhaps formerly employed actor. The tour was really his opportunity to run his lines by us. The Hemingway Home website has a little bio, just like in a playbill, on each tour guide. I don't believe this was my guide but here's part of the bio on another guide: "describes himself as an "edutainer." His philosophy is that if he can touch as many lives as possible, however briefly, and have people smile, he is doing something worthwhile with his life. Joe would like you to know that he has completed over 6,000 public performances at the museum."
And unlike most house museum guides our guide wasn't interested in our questions, either before or after his spiel. But he was interested in tips! He had an especially distasteful little shtick at the end of the tour when he asked for tips.
Actually a good question. Should you tip house museum tour guides? I don't believe I ever have.
a descendant of Hemingway's six-toed cat
Hemingway wrote many of his classics while living in Key West. They include: Death in the Afternoon, Green Hills of Africa, To Have and Have Not, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Fifth Column. This small second floor room in a smaller building at the back of the property is where he preferred to write early in the morning.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Duke Homestead and Tobacco Musuem
Durham, NC
I asked my sister Susan if she planned on bringing her grandchildren to the Duke Homestead and Tobacco Museum. Well, she said, that's a little tricky. While they'd enjoy the animated farmer characters in the museum, like the gift shop toys and run wild in the expansive fields surrounding the Homestead there was the issue that at the heart of it, the museum is about tobacco. Of course the family take on that is one of total abstinence.
While I'm totally on board with this anti-tobacco philosophy, I forgot about all that as we had a pleasant morning learning about the Duke family, Durham history and of course tobacco.
Washington Duke, a middle aged farmer, returned home after fighting for the Confederacy in the Civil War to learn that the Union army soldiers had taken up the habit of rolling cigarettes with the local, bright leaf tobacco. His decision to grow and sell the "weed" proved to be the start of what was to become the The American Tobacco Company. The success of the company hinged not only on the bright leaf tobacco but on the marketing genius of James Duke, one of Washington's sons.
At Home With House Museums chronicles history; it's rare, no unheard of, to "contribute to it". Yet at the Homestead we did! While standing behind a work table in the early factory our well informed tour guide noted that in order to pay for the ever increasing Civil War debt, the Congress passed on July 1, 1862 a heavy tax on tobacco. And in 1868 this tax was a main source of income for the federal government.
Maybe you had to be there to hear the way Jennifer, our guide, told the story but the question that popped into my mind, was "when had the government first taxed tobacco?". Good question Jennifer said but she didn't happen to know the answer.
A minute went by, maybe less, and another tour group member reading from his iPhone phone told us that in 1794 Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, ordered the first excise tax on tobacco products. That satisfied my curiosity and I thought that was the end of the story.
A month later Sue, remember the sister with the grandkids, had more visitors to her new hometown of Durham. Back she went to the homestead for another tour. The guide once again stood behind the factory work table and spoke about the civil war tobacco tax. But now added into the standard tour guide talk is the iPhone information about the first tobacco tax in 1794!
During my visit to the Homestead it was easy to become immersed in the agricultural techniques, the marketing savvy and the humanitarian efforts of the Duke's and to forget about the evils of tobacco. One last tour group question, not about evil tobacco but something else, whiplashed me back to reality. "Did the Dukes have any slaves?" While she hadn't included it in her talk our guide knew the answer to this one.
Only one. A female to shoulder the heavy repetitive tasks of housekeeping in the early 1800's...
Caroline, a 10 year old child.
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| corn husk broom |
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Bidwell Mansion
Chico, CA
It's a bit of an unusual relationship. Jane and I became friends/acquaintances because our email addresses are almost identical. I was serving on a volunteer committee and in our back and forth emails one of the members dropped a letter from my address. Next thing we knew Jane from California was in the loop and regretfully declining attendance at the next meeting.
When Jane learned about my passion for house museums and this blog she recommended her local favorite, the Bidwell Mansion in Chico CA.
Though not planning a trip to the West Coast anytime soon, I was intrigued. But I was stopped in my tracks. Early search results focused on a listing of over 70 California state parks slated for closing in the summer of 2012 due to the dire California budget crisis. Bidwell Mansion was on the list!
Reading further the Mansion looked just like the kind of property I love to tour and write about. It's interesting to me at every turn... so many historical references in the related biographies, so much period furnishings and interior design elements, so many architectural details, and so much beauty in the surrounding geography!
The Bidwell Mansion Association is raising funds to keep the Mansion open for another year! Let's hope they're successful and that they're ingenious enough to keep Bidwell open year after year.
To learn more about what we're missing at the Bidwell Mansion go to Martha's Musing. And for more discussion about the California park closings as well as the Bidwell go to the blog State Park Closures Trip.
It's a bit of an unusual relationship. Jane and I became friends/acquaintances because our email addresses are almost identical. I was serving on a volunteer committee and in our back and forth emails one of the members dropped a letter from my address. Next thing we knew Jane from California was in the loop and regretfully declining attendance at the next meeting.
When Jane learned about my passion for house museums and this blog she recommended her local favorite, the Bidwell Mansion in Chico CA.
Though not planning a trip to the West Coast anytime soon, I was intrigued. But I was stopped in my tracks. Early search results focused on a listing of over 70 California state parks slated for closing in the summer of 2012 due to the dire California budget crisis. Bidwell Mansion was on the list!
Reading further the Mansion looked just like the kind of property I love to tour and write about. It's interesting to me at every turn... so many historical references in the related biographies, so much period furnishings and interior design elements, so many architectural details, and so much beauty in the surrounding geography!
The Bidwell Mansion Association is raising funds to keep the Mansion open for another year! Let's hope they're successful and that they're ingenious enough to keep Bidwell open year after year.
To learn more about what we're missing at the Bidwell Mansion go to Martha's Musing. And for more discussion about the California park closings as well as the Bidwell go to the blog State Park Closures Trip.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Downton Abbey Frenzy
We're all in a frenzy over Downton Abbey on Masterpiece Theatre. The 20 room mansion in the series has attracted almost as much interest as the vivid personalities who inhabit it. Highclere Castle, in Hampshire England, is the real grand house where the show is filmed. According to the New Yorker it's a house museum open to the public in the warmer months of the year. The current Earl and Countess live on the estate in a smaller home.
To quote Yogi Berra it's deja vu all over again! In my post of July 3, 2011 I talked about the 1960 Hollywood movie "The Grass is Greener". It's a movie about the earl and countess of a English stately house, or house museum, that is giving tours to the public in order to pay the bills.
There are over 500 stately houses in England. I can't think of a better vacation than leisurely driving the English countryside and visiting a different stately home each day. However, having driven on the left side of the road in England before, I now know we'd need a chauffeur for the trip. A very stately idea indeed!
To quote Yogi Berra it's deja vu all over again! In my post of July 3, 2011 I talked about the 1960 Hollywood movie "The Grass is Greener". It's a movie about the earl and countess of a English stately house, or house museum, that is giving tours to the public in order to pay the bills.
There are over 500 stately houses in England. I can't think of a better vacation than leisurely driving the English countryside and visiting a different stately home each day. However, having driven on the left side of the road in England before, I now know we'd need a chauffeur for the trip. A very stately idea indeed!
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Ventford Hall and the Mount in the News
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| The Mount |
Ventford Hall and The Mount, two of the first house museum posts on this blog, are mentioned. I liked reading once more about the interesting history of each and was reminded again of how many important historical homes come close to demolition.
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| Ventford Hall |
Thanks to the article I've added another museum in the area to my long list of Massachusetts house museums : Arrowhead, Herman Melville's home in Pittsfield.
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