Material in the text has been included in the catalogue entries.
Connecticut, Avon
Avon Old Farms School (1918-1929) (Figs.1-3, 11, 43, 44, 48, 51-56, 58-61, 63-70)
During the year following Alfred Pope's death in 1913, Theodate decided to create a school, The Pope School for Boys, in her father's memory. She began by purchasing land in Avon, four miles from Farmington (see Appendix C). It was to be a farm school where the boys would work on the estate and govern themselves according to the principles of governance applied by old New England villages. The concept of a village with its green determined the layout of the school.Theodate was also inspired by English customs and educational systems, which influenced the style of the buildings.
The plot plan, finished on August 23, 1918, consisted of an oblong quadrangle with dormitories, masters quarters, and classrooms (Fig.43). The quadrangle opened at its far, southeastern, side into three different enclaves. In the first, on the left, two houses, to become those of the provost and dean, reached out towards a green. The second, or central one, led to a grassy area with a bridged duck pond faced by a post office, a general store, the Cock and Bull Inn for parents, tailor and boot shops, and the back of a carpentry shop. The third enclave led to a small square, with a well as its focal point, bounded by the carpentry shop and Tuck Shop (for sweets and tea) with Tuck Lane leading off to the village green. A cluster of buildings rambled around the far side of the green, leaving an open view towards the northeast from the bluff upon which the school was situated. This latter group of buildings included a library joined to a chapel by a cloister, a guest house for guest lecturers, a gatehouse and archway leading to an oak grove, a small infirmary, a bank, a refectory, and a bake shop (Fig.48). Not all would be constructed, and the plan changed.
After the death of her mother in 1920, Theodate changed the name of the school to Avon Old Farms and divided the oblong quadrangle into two, each to be named after a parent. With the creation of a double quadrangle, the central pond disappeared as did the well. Over the years, some buildings were added to the plan and some shifted their positions in it. By 1923 Theodate had decided that she would include a junior college so that her students would not have to spend time preparing for college entrance exams. The plan published in the school's brochure on its opening in 1927 represented what was projected not what had been built (Fig.44). The college didn't materialize because the Brooks quadrangle, as well as some of the other buildings on the far side of the green never got beyond the planning stage. Their plans, elevations, and perspective views are in the Avon archives.
The railroad station house (reconstructed in 1977 as a guest house), lying beyond the entrance to the school, was the first building to be constructed between 1921 and 1923. (Fig.52). Half a dozen English workers, who were imported to put on the slate roof, taught their craft to the local workers before departing. A group of buildings at the entrance followed, including a water tower, a forge, and wheelwright and carpentry shops (1922-1923). While the station house was built of sandstone, this group was constructed of brick. The wheelwright and carpentry shops, as well as the estate manager's house built across from them, are half-timber structures with brick nogging and high-pitched tile roofs reminiscent of old English houses in Sussex and Surrey (Figs.51, 3, 55, 56).
When Theodate realized that sandstone, which could be quarried on the site, would be less costly than brick, she had most of her other buildings constructed in that material and changed her elevations accordingly. With the change from brick to stone the public buildings took on a more substantial character and some of the Gothicizing details began to disappear as one can see in the two perspective views of approximately 1921 and 1933 of the library and chapel tower planned for the far edge of the village green (Figs.48, 68). The houses of the provost and dean (1926) recall the buildings in the stone-cast towns and villages of the Cotswolds, not only because of the reliance on stone, but also in the use of detail (Figs.60, 61). She also appropriated other styles to create the character of a village developed over time and by different people. Thus, a guest house, which remained unbuilt, was to be Georgian while the bank is Doric.
She insisted upon traditional English methods of construction.1 Hand-hewn wooden oak frames were pinned together; stone blocks were surfaced with a peenhammer. Irregularity of line from the lack of ridgepoles, or of plum or level in laying brick and stone walls, breathed life into these buildings, which, as examples of craftsmanship, would inspire the boys to excel in their own endeavors. She was also interested in the best use of interior space. The boys' rooms were as compact as a cabin in some ancient whaler with built-in bunks containing drawers below. At the head of the bunk there were more drawers, above which a shelf folded out of the wall to reveal a mirror.
When the school opened in 1927 the Pope quadrangle, the dean's and provost's houses, a science building, the bank, a kitchen, a post office, a temporary guest house next to the post office, and a power house had been completed. Soon after came the refectory, the estate manager's house, and a garage.2 The depression brought construction to a halt. Although Theodate tinkered periodically with plans and elevations, and hoped to add the group of buildings on the far side of the village green, she was not able to produce enough capital to complete her vision.
Bibliography:
"Unique 'Eton' at Old Farms," New York Evening Sun, March 9, 1921.Foley, John, "Avon School Radical Departure in Teaching Methods to Develop Individual Thinking, Initiative and Will Power," The Hartford Courant, April 3, 1921, 1, 3.
Pope, Theodate, "Avon Old Farms. A School for Boys at Avon, Conn.," The American Architect, CXXVIII, 1925, 391-394.
Babcock, Elizabeth, "Where Boys May be Boys," The Woman Citizen, June 13, 1925, llf.
Adams, Louise, "Avon College - A Remarkable Woman's Remarkable Project," The Illinois Clubwoman's World, October, 1925, 5, 9, 17.
"Avon, Old Farms, Avon, Connecticut: A Junior College and Preparatory School for Boys Founded by Theodate Pope its Architect," The Architect, 7, 1926, 309f., pls. XLIX-LVIII plus fold out plan.
Architectural Record, LXII, 1927, 381.
"Aspirando et Perseverando," Silhouettes. Connecticut's Social and Sporting Magazine, I, 1927, 16ff.
"Avon, Old Farms, Will Open its Doors in the Fall," Hartford Daily Times, June 18, 1927.
The Architect, June, 1928, 293ff; pls. 319-353.
The Architect, 12, 1929, pls. 639-651.
Kammerer, Percy, "Avon Old Farms," Junior League Magazine, XVII, 1931, 28.
"Avon School Expansion is Planned For," Hartford Courant, May 27, 1934, 1.
"Twelve of the Best American Schools," Fortune Magazine, XIII, January 1936, 48ff.
"Design for Proposed New Chapel," Avon Record, II, July 1941, 8.
"Dream School for Boys," Newsweek, March 15, 1948, 82.
"For Little Gentlemen," Time Magazine, March 22, 1948, 72f.
Emeny, Brooks, Theodate Pope Riddle and the Founding of Avon Old Farms, Avon, Conn., 1973.
Flanagan, Henry, Aspirando et Perseverando: The Evolution of the Avon Old Farms School as Influenced by its Founder, University of Michigan, PH.D. dissertation, 1978.
Paine, Judith, "Avon Old Farms School: The Architecture of Theodate Pope Riddle," Perspecta: The Yale Architectural Journal, 1982, 43ff.
Ramsey, Gordon, ed., Aspiration and Perseverance. The History of Avon Old Farms School, Avon, Conn., 1984.
Connecticut, Farmington
Hill-Stead (1898-1907), 35 Mountain Road (Figs.4, 12-24, 31)
Early literature credits the design of Hill-Stead, a large Colonial Revival country house, to the firm of McKim, Mead & White, and, after 1920, more specifically to Stanford White. In 1910 Barr Ferree attributed the house to McKim, Mead & White with the "zealous assistance" of Theodate Pope "to whom much of the interior treatment is due." When William Mitchell Kendall, who belonged to the firm, drew up a list of McKim, Mead & White buildings in 1920, he assigned Hill-Stead to Stanford White "with Theodate Pope." This attribution was accepted by Leland Roth who published the building list. Judith Paine, John Cornforth, and Mark Hewitt began to disassociate White with the house and to credit Theodate with a more extensive role.
Her original, undated, proposal to the firm stipulates the site of the house, the approach of the drive to the south side of the house, and the nature of the rooms on the ground floor (see Appendix A). One can date her first letter in June because of a second letter she wrote to the firm, dated September 17, 1898, in which she refers to the firm's reply "of three months ago." Her second letter is in the Walker Cain Collection, a gift of 1986 to the Avery Library, Columbia University (see Appendix B). In her letter of September 17th, Theodate stated that the plan for Hill-Stead will be hers, and she included a roll of plans, which has not come to light. Before meeting William Rutherford Mead in New York on October 3rd, she had met with a landscape architect, Warren Manning, and a survey of the site with a plan of the house superimposed on it had been completed.The role of McKim, Mead & White was to aid Theodate by drawing the plans, elevations, and interior details to scale, and by providing suggestions. Two McKim, Mead & White associates worked with her in succession. Egerton Swartwout drafted the floor plans and elevations early in February 1899. On May 18th, in desperation over the slowness in the arrival of framing plans, Theodate telegraphed to the firm that she would carry on without them. Matters were smoothed over and Walter Wilder completed the drawings. Theodate also supervised the site and chose the contractor, Richard Jones of neighboring Unionville. Alfred Pope, who had built a residence in Cleveland, also played a major part. He turned to his former Cleveland contractors to soundproof the walls and floors and to provide a heating system and the woodwork finishing. Because of its reduced role, McKim, Mead & White cut its usual commission from five percent to three and one half percent of the construction cost.1
In June of 1901 the Popes moved in. By August they were already making changes. They had Richard Jones add a porte-cochere to the south porch. At the end of October they consulted William Mead, who met them in Farmington, about a west porch. No fee was charged and Richard Jones again took charge. The idea for a Mount Vernon type of portico probably came from Theodate who had visited George Washington's country estate in the previous spring. In the winter of 1906-07, while Theodate was working on the plans for Westover, the Popes asked McKim, Mead & White to expand the library into Alfred Pope's office. The northwest porch and office became a second library with a bay window added to match the one off the living room. A new office with its own pedimented porch was joined to the second library on the north. The firm charged its usual five percent commission.2
When the Popes acquired a car, towards 1907, Theodate designed a garage and a gardener's workroom, with a conservatory behind it, opposite the barns and adjacent to the stone walls of the sunken garden. A map of the Hill-Stead farm, drawn up in January, 1908, shows them.3 The garage shows Theodate's increasing interest in an Arts and Crafts aesthetic. The walls are built out of local field stone and the gables are filled with white clapboards of irregular widths.
On May 19, 1908 the barn complex next to the house burned. The structures were restored with some interior changes. In 1917 one of the barns was turned into the "Makeshift Theater" for showing movies to the community, the proceeds being donated to the Red Cross.
Hill-Stead was opened as a house museum in 1947, a year after Theodate's death. In 1991 it was designated a National Historic Landmark.
Bibliography:
Architectural Review, IX, 1902, 282f."Mr. Alfred A. Pope's House at Farmington, Conn.," The Architectural Record, XX, 1906, 122ff.
La Farge, John and August Jaccaci, editors, Noteworthy Paintings in American Private Collections, New York, 1907.
Ferree, Barr, "Notable American Homes: Hill Stead, The Estate of Alfred Atmore Pope, Esq., Farmington, Conn.," American Homes and Gardens, VII, 1910, 45ff.
La Roche, Nancy, "The Hill-Stead Museum," Art News, IV, 1975, 70f.
Roth, Leland M., The Architecture of McKim, Mead & White 1870-1920. A Building List, New York, 1978, #673,674.
Paine, Judith, Theodate Pope Riddle: Her Life and Work, New York, 1979, 5, 7f.
Roth, Leland M., McKim, Mead & White, Architects, New York, 1983.
Jones Jr., Richard, The Builder of Hill-Stead, 1983. Unpublished manuscript in the Hill-Stead archives.
Cornforth, John, "Hill-Stead, Connecticut," Country Life, June 4, 1987, 220ff.
Hewitt, Mark A., "Hill-Stead, Farmington, Connecticut: The Making of a Colonial Revival Country House," Antiques, CXXXIV, 1988, 849ff.
(Hall, Helen), Hill-Stead Museum House Guide, Windsor, Connecticut, 1988.
Hewitt, Mark A., The Architect and the American Country House 1890-1940, New Haven, 1990, 156ff. figs. frontispiece, 171, 176-182.
Cottage
(1915), 11 Main Street (Fig. 71)
Theodate designed this one-and-a-half-story house for the newly married English butler of Admiral and Mrs. (Anna Roosevelt) William Sheffield Cowles. Richard Jones oversaw the construction, which was finished by May 15, 1915, when John Hopkinson and his wife moved in. A central entry porch is decorated with corner pilasters, and four symmetrically placed pilasters decorate the facade. In the back there is the long sweeping roof with dormer windows that one associates with Theodate's work. The interior has been remodeled. No plans remain.
Bibliography:
Prentice, Dudley, History of Farmington Houses, 1974, III, 150-1.Hart, Elizabeth and Ruth Matteson, Historic Resources Inventory, Building and Structures, Hartford, Connecticut Historical Commission, 1986 (Photographs and histories of 400 buildings in Farmington and Unionville).
Three two-family cottages (1914-1915), 179, 181, and 185 Garden Street
These three neighboring cottages were designed by Theodate and built by Richard Jones for members of Hill-Stead's staff. The houses were conceived together, each being clapboard with an overhanging gambrel roof in front, giving way in back to a straight sloping roof. Like parentheses, the end chimneys to the left and right of 179 and 185 are exposed, while the chimneys of the center cottage are in the interior. The houses are not identical in length or in the treatment of windows. Hipped dormers with casement windows on the roofs of 179 and 185 add to the picturesque effect created by the absorption of the second stories behind these roofs. There are built-in settles at some of the entrances that are at the ends of each dwelling. The kitchens were large enough to eat in with built-in cupboards. The interiors have been remodeled, but in 179 there was an alcove with a built-in bed with cabinets above it in the living room. The plans no longer exist.
Bibliography:
Paine, Judith, Theodate Pope Riddle. Her Life and Work, New York, 1979, 11.Hart, Elizabeth and Ruth Matteson, Historic Resources Inventory, Building and Structures, Hartford, Connecticut Historical Commission, 1986 (Photographs and histories of 400 buildings in Farmington and Unionville).
The O'Rourkery and Gundy, 13 High Street (Figs.9, 10)
In
September 1890 Theodate rented the Daniel Judd House, a frame house
dating from about 1725, on High Street. She named this house the
O'Rourkery after its owner James O'Rourke. The O'Rourkery is a
gabled, two-storied house with an attic and a brick center chimney.
The lean-to at the rear produced a saltbox appearance. The central,
front entrance leads to a narrow hall with stairs to the second
floor. To the right of the hall, on the southwest, was Theodate's
sitting room with a fireplace against a paneled north wall. To the
left of the hall, on the northwest, is a room of the same size as the
sitting room, with a fireplace against the paneled south wall. This
became a guest bedroom. Extending behind both rooms was a long
kitchen with a large hearth. Upstairs were two front bedrooms.
Theodate took for herself the northern bedroom, which had a
fireplace, and added a built-in corner cupboard. There was also a
bathroom and a small servant's room. She had Hal Mason, the local
carpenter-builder, add a shed with a porch off the kitchen in the
back and had the house painted white.
On
May 6, 1892, Theodate purchased the O'Rourkery and began to expand
it. She changed the kitchen into her dining room, adding a new
kitchen with stairs to the second floor and a porch at the
back.1
One knows that in 1892-93 she gave a commission, the nature of which
is unknown, to Melvin Hapgood, an architect based in Hartford. It is
likely that he oversaw this change, thereby giving Theodate her first
practical architectural experience. A few years later she added a
side entrance porch to her sitting room.
On April 30, 1896, Theodate acquired a neighboring house, which was older and smaller than the O'Rourkery, reputed to have been built for William Judd in the 1690's. Theodate named this house the Gundy. It is a one-and-a-half-storied ell, gambrel roofed with three front dormer windows. The Gundy was attached to a small new wing added to the north end of the O'Rourkery. Theodate may have acquired the Gundy as added space for her parents and guests, or for the sewing school she opened for Farmington girls in 1897. By the time the Gundy was first photographed in 1902, she had opened a tea and notion shop in it for the girls from Miss Porter's. At that time the Gundy had two front doors: a central door, where there is now a large multi-paned window leading into the shop, and another, a servant's entrance, to the right. Theodate made further renovations in the summer of 1905, according to her diary. A photograph of the south side of the O'Rourkery, published in 1906, shows that she had substituted a Colonial Revival porch for the earlier side entrance porch to her sitting room. Theodate loved to tinker. Adhering to the additive nature of a New England vernacular tradition, she continued to make changes to these two houses throughout her life.
Bibliography:
M.D.B. (Mabel D. Brandegee), "Odd and End Shop. The Grundy [sic]," Farmington Magazine, July, 1902, 16ff.Brandegee, Arthur L, Farmington Connecticut. The Village of Beautiful Homes, Farmington, Conn., 1906, 185f.
Prentice, Dudley, History of Farmington Houses, 1974, 127: 1-7. Unpublished manuscript in the Prentice Collection, The Farmington Library, Farmington, Conn.
Hart, Elizabeth and Ruth Matteson, Historic Resources Inventory, Building and Structures, Hartford, Connecticut Historical Commission, 1986 (Photographs and histories of 400 buildings in Farmington and Unionville).
Hapgood and Hapgood. The Architecture of Melvin H. Hapgood and Edward T. Hapgood. Catalogue of the Exhibition. The Stowe-Day Foundation, Hartford, 1992, 24.
Connecticut, Middlebury
Highfield (1911-1914) (Figs.32-36, 72)
Joseph and Elizabeth Chamberlain, friends of Harris and Gertrude Whittemore, acquired 596 acres of farmland near the Whittemore country estate in 1909 for their own country place. They called in Warren Manning as landscape architect, and he, presumably, chose the site for the house on the summit of a hill above Lake Quassapaug. By 1911 Theodate, who also knew the Chamberlains, had completed plans for their house, which they called Highfield. The house is gray stucco, like Westover, with yellow trim now painted a blue-gray. Shutters frame the casement windows. As an individual touch, the heads of the Chamberlains were carved on the ends of the beams which support the overhanging eaves. The over-all character of the exterior is English. In addition to the steeply pitched roof, pierced by three flat dormers, there are pots on the massive chimneys and a concentration of windows under the low eaves in front. These casement windows were originally framed above by a row of fixed glass panes.
Although the house is quite spacious, originally containing eighteen rooms and six bathrooms (an unusually large number at that time), Theodate succeeded in creating the appearance of a cozy cottage by concealing the second story behind a long sloping, shingled roof. A kitchen and servant wing on the left and an independent guest room wing on the right are set back, creating the effect of a structure added to over time. An entrance hall leads, on the left, to a dining room with a fireplace and, on the right, to a living room with its fireplace. Cupboards, book shelves, and a long window seat in the living room bay window are built in. Theodate's letter to her mother, dated February 9, 1914 (HS archives 833), tells us that she was still working on the details of the interior finish with her draftsman, Lee Atwood, and that Richard Jones was again her contractor.
Adjacent to the main house, in a quiet sunken garden with a reflecting pool, Theodate created a summer house retreat. Its glass doors were removable, and for cool days the architect thoughtfully provided a fireplace. Theodate's plans for Highfield have not resurfaced, but she published them in Architecture in 1917.
At the entrance to the property, facing the lake, Theodate built a five-room chauffeur's cottage with a built-in garage. Like Highfield, there is a steep-pitched roof, windows have shutters and the exterior is clad in stucco - but the surface is rough in contrast to that of the Chamberlains' house. Unfortunately, as far as the original design is concerned, the roof-line (both front and back) has been detrimentally altered by a later insertion of long rows of dormers to accommodate changes on the interior. The original blueprints still exist in the possession of a former owner.
In 1916, the landscape architects Lay and Wheelwright, who worked in the same building, 15 East 40th Street in New York City, where Theodate had had an office, designed a rustic pergola and a terrace for potted plants behind the garden house. This plan is at Highfield. Nine years later, Charles Downing Lay made changes in the back of the house, removing a servant's porch and adding a garage, tool house, and wood shed. Still later, in 1929, he altered the attic. His plans remain at Highfield. The Chamberlains, who had no children, left Highfield to the Stillman family, who sold it in 1954. The grounds became a golf course, and the house a club house. Few changes were made, excepting renovations to the indoor terrace behind the living room.
Bibliography:
Architecture, XXXVI, November 1917, pls. CLXXXVI-CLXXXIX.Paine, Judith, Theodate Pope Riddle. Her Life and Work. New York, 1979, 1Of.
Westover School (1906-1909) (Figs.26-30, 73)
Theodate designed Westover, a girls boarding school, for Mary Hillard, who became its headmistress. The cost of construction, a quarter of a million dollars, was underwritten by John Whittemore and Alfred Pope. Theodate finished the plans in 1907, turning them over to the contractor Richard Jones. He completed the school by 1909 when it opened. At this time Warren Manning was asked by Whittemore to landscape the grounds around the school, which consisted of one hundred acres of woods and fields. Later, in 1912, Beatrix Farrand was called in to plan the inner courtyard where some of the apple trees from the original orchard on the site remained.
Theodate worked in a Colonial Revival style (more specifically neo-Georgian) to maintain a harmony with the other buildings on the village green. The northern facade facing the green, like the rest of the building, is cream colored stucco with dark green shutters on the second story windows. The gable roof, punctured by pedimented dormer windows, has an unusually steep pitch and parapets. There is a central entrance pavilion below a bracketed, overhanging gable. Displayed here in raised relief, among a flourish of acanthus leaves, is the school crest - an escutcheon with three roses surmounted by a Roman lamp resting on a book. Below the shield, the school motto - "cogitare, agere, esse," (To Think, To Lead, To Be) - unfurls on a scroll. A hexagonal cupola, for which Theodate acquired a seventeenth-century Bavarian bell, presides above the entrance. To the left of the entrance pavilion a Gothic Revival chapel comprises a projecting eastern wing. Theodate intended its western counterpart, the quarters of the headmistress, to look like a cottage and therefore added picturesque pots to the chimney and small triangular attic windows on each side. She gave Mary Hillard a garden of her own, enclosed by boxwood hedges, with a dovecoted garden house at the end.
The form of the school is a quadrangle, cloistered on three sides in the courtyard by an arcade with 3-centered arches. This was an unusual choice for a boarding school. But Theodate, who had been charmed by the colleges of Cambridge and Oxford, saw an advantage in putting all the school functions - post office to gymnasium - under one roof. Her plans for the quadrangle remain at Westover.
In 1916 she added Virginia House, an art and music studio, beyond the playing field (Fig.73). Virginia House consists of two houses which, like the main building, are covered in cream-colored stucco with windows accented by green shutters. The eaves of one, which is set back from the other, project to form a porch, supported by the same 3-centered arches that are found in the cloistered courtyard. This porch is joined as a porte-cochere to the side of the other house. The steep-pitched roofs are slate with parapets and are punctuated by banks of dormer windows. The chimneys are capped by the decorative pots Theodate favored. The last major addition was a new library and science center designed by Gwathmey and Siegel, in a harmonizing post modern style, in 1984.
Bibliography:
Architecture, June 1913, 121.Spykman, Elizabeth Choate, Westover, Middlebury, CT, 1959.
Paine, Judith, Theodate Pope Riddle. Her Life and Work, New York, 1979, 9.
Westover School: 1909-1984. 75th Anniversary Issue, Middlebury, CT, 1984.
Stern, Robert A., Pride of Place. Building the American Dream, New York, 1986, 24, 61.
Connecticut: Naugatuck
Hop Brook School (1914-1915) (Figs.40-42)
Harris Whittemore commissioned Theodate to design a grammar school in the immigrant section of Naugatuck. The school, named Hop Brook, is a red brick rectangular building that contained four classrooms on each floor. The classrooms were divided from each other by: a central entrance hall which extended to a corresponding entrance at the back, and a wide central corridor running the length of the building. The interior has been remodeled since Theodate published her plans in Architecture. An auditorium wing projects from the front on the left, and a separate and smaller kindergarten is on the right. The kindergarten is distinguished by the characters 'A B C' written in gothic script over the door, which itself was inspired by an English Gothic precedent. The main entrance to the grammar school, which like the other doors also has a flattened gothic arch, is marked by an open book and an oriel above.
Bibliography:
Architecture, XXXVI, 1917, August, pls. CXXVIII-CXXXII.Paine, Judith, Theodate Pope Riddle. Her Life and Work, New York, 1979, 13.
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New York, Long Island Dormer House (1913-14), 357 Lattingtown Road |
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In 1927 George and Isabel Dodge Sloan purchased Dormer House and attempted to give it a French character by adding a 'Norman' tower to the right of the entrance porch. Isabel Sloan added another wing, on the right, for an indoor swimming pool with a suite of small, low-ceilinged rooms, decorated in French Rococo taste, above. She also elongated the living room on the terrace side, and installed paneling and parquet floors in the dining room. When the opera singer Patrice Munsel acquired the house with her husband, she renamed it Lockjaw Ridge in reference to millionaire neighbors she thought snobbish. They broke up the master bedroom. Most recently, some of the land has been sold so that the once extensive view down the slope of the hill from the terrace is now marred by a house.
Bibliography:
Architecture, XXXVII, 1918, 97, pls. LXXIV-LXXVI."Dormer House. The Home of Mrs. Charles 0. Gates," Country Life in America, XXXV, 1919, 56f.
Paine, Judith, Theodate Pope Riddle. Her Life and Work, New York, 1979, 12f.
Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace (1920-1922), 28 East 20th Street (Figs.45-47)
Between 1920 and 1923 Theodate designed the reconstruction of the house in which Theodore Roosevelt was born in 1858. Cornelius Van Schaak Roosevelt bought two adjoining Gothic Revival brownstones on East 20th Street, Nos. 26 and 28, as wedding presents for his sons Theodore, Sr., and Robert. Theodore, Sr., and his wife moved into theirs at No. 28 in 1854. In 1865 the interior was redecorated and an additional story with dormers and a slate mansard roof was added. The family lived there until 1872, moving to 6 West 57th Street after returning from a European grand tour. As the neighborhood became increasingly commercial, numbers 26 and 28 were altered for business purposes. In 1916 No. 28 was completely demolished to erect a two-story commercial building.
After Theodore Roosevelt's death in January, 1919, two organizations were formed to perpetuate his memory: a men's and a women's Roosevelt Memorial Association. The women's group bought Nos. 26 and 28, razing both buildings with the idea of both reconstructing the Roosevelt birthplace as a shrine for the late president and adding an adjacent and connecting wing to house the activities of a newly formed Roosevelt club. Theodate, a member of the women's group and endorsed by Anna Cowles Roosevelt, was chosen unanimously for the commission on December 30, 1919. Theodore Roosevelt's sisters and widow helped with details on the interior of number 28 by supplying Theodate with memories of it.
Theodate reconstructed number 28 as it appeared after 1865. But the brownstone facade of her adjacent new wing was slightly recessed and plainer, without Gothic Revival lintels over the windows. An entrance hall and stairs in the Roosevelt birthplace opened at each level into the wing. When the men's branch of the Memorial Association decided to contribute $150,000 (if they could take over part of the wing) Theodate made changes in the plans in 1922 to accommodate an exhibition room for Roosevelt memorabilia, offices, and an auditorium. Originally on the basement level, Theodate planned a long rectangular, wood-paneled club room with a large fireplace. This led in the back to a tea garden. Today the club room has become a display room, the tearoom an extension. Above, on the wing's first floor, Theodate planned an oblong regents or reception room (presently a display room). The wing's second floor contained a long rectangular room for Roseveltiana, the third floor was for club rooms, reading rooms and a library, while the fourth floor was to house the auditorium, sewing room and roof garden. Theodate's plans were published in the Woman's Roosevelt Memorial Bulletin, I, no. 3, April 1920, 2ff. The site now belongs to the National Park Service and some blueprints with details for the wing are at its headquarters in Federal Hall, 26 Wall Street, NYC.
Bibliography:
Hosmer, Charles B., Presence of the Past. A History of the Preservation Movement in the United States before Williamsburg, New York, 1965, 147ff.Paine, Judith, Theodate Pope Riddle: Her Life and Work. New York, 1979, 14.
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