Living with antiques: Rosemary Lodge in Water Mill, New York

Magazine Antiques, July, 2000 by Mary Anne Hunting

The first room Rose furnished was what he originally called the hall and later the living room, the most important room in the house (Pls. I, IV and Fig. 2). Modeled on the nineteenth-century "living hall" advanced in the United States by the Boston architect Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886), this two-story room contained the main entrance, a grand open staircase (Pl. I), and a large hearth surrounded by built-in settees (Pl. IV). For Rose the hearth served as a type of high altar, where family and friends could gather and where he could enjoy "the quiet of his own fire-side." [24]

It is not known who determined the design of the hail, but it seems likely that Stickney had a hand in it, for the staircase and fireplace had been installed when the building shell was completed in 1884. The design of the woodwork is markedly more sophisticated than in the other rooms, and in its composition and details it recalls other living halls, such as that at Kragsyde, built in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, by Peabody and Stearns between 1882 and 1884 (see Fig. 6). Yet it undeniably also reflects an awareness of a then popular notion that decoration should be subservient to the architectural features of a house. [25]

Rose confessed in his diary that his work on the hall preoccupied his thoughts throughout the winter of 1884 to 1885. He not only created the ash wall paneling (with small cupboards tucked in everywhere) but also the built-in settees and desk-and-bookcase, the carved posts and latticework for the staircase and balcony and the fireplace surround. The carvings in the woodwork include flowers, birds, fish, butterflies, a "Spanish caravel to commemorate the Columbus celebration," and even Sarah, the family cat. A profusion of mottoes, often with moral or religious messages, are also present, among them a verse on the balcony beam from "A Thanksgiving to God for his House," by the seventeenth- century English cleric and poet Robert Herrick (1591-1674). The monogram "RL," for Rosemary Lodge, is prominent not only in this room but throughout the house. The original stained-glass windows above the desk-and-bookcase and on the first-floor landing no longer survive, but the original orange-yellow glass in the window o n the landing lights it dramatically.

Early in 1886 Rose turned his attention to the master bedroom, which he called the Green Room (Fig. 7) after the "green stain" he put on the woodwork a year later. The green-painted woodwork and floral wallpaper of 1888 suggest Rose's familiarity with the work of William Morris. The carved mantel, now painted white (Pl. XIII), contains four charming painted panels reminiscent of English book illustrations (Pl. XII). Perhaps the four panels were painted by Rose himself, for he wrote in his diary in 1888, "a few days between two Sundays in March were occupied with some painting in the Green Room." In that year too, he produced a suite of oak furniture for the room--a bedstead, a Dutch style bureau-cupboard with a min-or and a washstand. The mottoes he carved into the furniture are quite amusing: on the bed he quoted the sixteenth-century poet Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), "Good Night/Good Morning/Sleep O sleep, the certain knot of peace,/The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe."