We took the family to Hillwood over the holidays. It’s Marjorie Merriweather Post’s house-turned-house museum, and it’s kind of bizarre, frankly. Not seriously wack, but just a low-grade oddness which, who knows, maybe the passage of time and the accretion of history will help mitigate, and 50 years from now, it’ll be Washington’s Frick Museum. But it’s not yet.
Hillwood is a sprawling memorial to the oft-married heiress/socialite’s extravagant but ultimately middlebrow taste. The house is kind of big, but mostly grand, similar in scale and layout to the White House, but in Georgian/James River revival style, built in the 1920s. The storm doors on the terrace entrances look like the ones on every postwar red brick grandma house in Washington. The gardens are sprawling, but conventional.
Post’s collections are a docent’s paradise: tons of factoids to be shared about piles of French furniture, Sevres porcelain, Russian baubles and czarist portraits. And antique miniature furniture. None of it was as interesting as the positively massive cut crystal pendants hanging from every sconce and chandelier; seriously, grapefruit- or palm-sized or bigger, almost every one.
And so my favorite room ends up being the kitchen, which is fantastic. It’s huge and vintage and all stainless steel, acres of Lustertone countertop, with a couple of sections of Formica and marble. It’s a rare testament to the blind folly of our renovation-mad real estate culture. Keep your vintage kitchens, people, are you crazy?? [That pink tile and rococo gold-plated fixture master bathroom, OTOH, yow. A cautionary tale.]
Anyway, point is, this awesome double sink thing here in the butler’s pantry? What is going on with this? I think it’s stamped Geneva on the front edge. It is spectacular. Made my day.
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the making of, by greg allen