17. 12. 1992

DEC 28 1992

Mit der Freude zieht der Schmerz Traulich durch die Zeiten. Schwere Stürme, milde Weste, Bange Sorgen, frohe Feste Wandeln sich zur Seiten.

Und wo eine Träne fällt, Blüht auch eine Rose. Schon gemischt, noch eh wir's bitten, Ist für Thronen und für Hütten Schmerz und Lust im Lose.

War's nicht so im alten Jahr? Wird's im neuen enden? Sonnen wallen auf und nieder, Wolken gehn und kommen wieder, Und kein Wunsch wird's wenden.

Gebe denn, der über uns Wägt mit rechter Waage, Jeden Sinn für seine Freuden, Jeden Mut für seine Leiden In die neuen Tage,

Jedem auf des Lebens Pfad Einen Freund zur Seite, Ein zufriedenes Gemüte Und zu stiller Herzensgüte Hoffnung ins Geleite.

Johann Peter Hebel
(1760-1826)

Feln verehren, lieber Professor Krippingen,

dr. Welt ist nicht sicher, nicht rationeller und nicht moralischer geworden. Erinnern Sie mein Papier? He bleibe bei meiner Väsimu nur Weltverfamung und auf der gepründeten Weltrepnung. Kein globale Friede ohne globale recht gememachffahrbare Maß! Barke Baustelle dazu gibt es - wie der Golfkrieg gezeigt hat. Erheben SieLASCH! Junge Prinze!

Heien und Herer Gatten zu Verbrüngung selt alowiee Wehrwaffen uns ein gütndes, erfolgreichen Dreyer, Jahr!

Hei kochnehlen, herzlichen Größen
sot her
Herbert Stachowich

[Prof. Dr.]

TAUBENWEG 11
4790 Paderborn
GERMANY

ANTIQUES

*We are the Romans of the modern world,—the great assimilating people.*

Oliver Wendell Holmes,
*The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table*, 1858

OUT OF SUCH an assumption Americans fashioned an image of themselves as an inclusive nationality, at once diverse and homogeneous, ever improving as it absorbed many types of men and women and forged a unified, superior national character. This is not to say that America huddled in isolation behind the Atlantic Ocean. That great ocean was indeed a barrier, providing security for this bold experiment in self-government, but it was also a highway for commerce in goods, skills, ideas, and immigrants.

In the long view of history, the new nation was in abnormally rapid transition. At a speed and in a manner that startled the nations from which they and their ancestors had come, Americans moved from apparent insignificance to acknowledged prominence, from shaky beginnings to solid achievements. This "empire of liberty"—of which John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and their colleagues dreamed and spoke—was dedicated to the beauties of personal liberty, the security of constitutionalism, the rightness of democracy, the wrongness of class distinctions, the virtue of private property, the moral necessity of hard work, the inevitability of progress, and above all the high destiny and glorious future of the United States. In *Redburn*, Herman Melville gave this cosmopolitan belief its noblest expression in 1849, when Americans were deeply divided about the meaning of their history. "We are not a nation, so much as a world," this mystic believed. "For who was our father and our mother? Or can we point to any Romulus or Remus for our founders? Our ancestry is lost in the universal paternity, and Caesar and Alfred, St. Paul and Luther, and Homer and Shakespeare are as much ours as Washington who is as much the world's as ours. We are the heirs of all time, and with all nations we divide our inheritance."

Blessed by a rare opportunity and driven by a deep-seated belief in America's uncommonly rich legacy from the Old World, Clement E. Conger conceived and assembled the Americana collection in the United States Department of State. His vision was that America's highest achievements in the arts and crafts be displayed in compatible architectural settings for the elevation of the world's leaders. This dream has been amply realized, as these pages demonstrate; the planning of the articles in this issue was ably co-ordinated by Kathryn A. McCutchen of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms' staff.

Wendell Garrett

JULY 1987

119

[L]

# Introduction

BY CLEMENT E. CONGER

Silver skippet, probably Washington, D.C., c. 1835. Diameter 5⅜ inches.

On loan from Colonel Frederic Harrison Smith III;
photograph by Breger and Associates, Incorporated.

MANY PEOPLE WONDER how I, a career foreign service officer, became involved in the Americana Project to furnish the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the United States Department of State and eventually to make architectural improvements to all the rooms. Although I had spent four years in the army and should have known better, I volunteered. It started when, as deputy chief of protocol of the United States in the mid-1950's, I suggested the inclusion of what are now the Diplomatic Reception Rooms in the department's new building because the secretary of state, the vice-president, and the cabinet secretaries had no place for official entertaining. The suggestion was accepted, but when the rooms were completed on the top floor of the building, they looked like a late 1950's motel, from the wall to wall carpeting on concrete floors to the ugly acoustical tile ceilings. The exterior walls of the sixteen rooms, stretching for a city block and a half, were floor to ceiling glass and exposed steel beams. Some of the interior walls were pseudo-eighteenth or nineteenth century while others were very modern, with brown paneling like those of the offices below.

The first official dinner in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms was given in January 1961 for Queen Frederika of Greece, a very elegant lady. The secretary of state at the time was Christian Herter, a former governor of Massachusetts. His wife, Mary Caroline, was a Pratt from New York, a Standard Oil heiress, and believe me, she knew what was right and what was wrong. Only three or four of the rooms were then furnished—sparsely and with things which were quite out of scale. As we progressed through them on the afternoon before the dinner, Mrs. Herter's face fell and fell.

Finally she asked, "Clem, if I have to take the Queen, where do I take her?" We went to the ladies' lounge, which is what I assumed she had in mind. Although it was not a high priority room with regard to furnishings, a Detroit firm which obviously specialized in airport lounges had been given the contract. The upholstery and draperies were in vivid, electric greens, reds, purple, and turquoise, like those in a gangster's moll's quarters on a Twentieth-Century Fox lot. Mrs. Herter burst into tears. "I've never been so mortified in my life as an American woman. To think it could happen in the State Department is unbelievable." It was then that I volunteered to run a public campaign to furnish the rooms. Of course, I should have had my head examined. There are no Federal funds for acquisitions of any kind. I had no idea I was going to have to raise between $1,000,000 and $4,000,000 annually for twenty-six or more years. At that point I never dreamed of the architectural improvements. These have so far cost nearly $12,000,000 in contributed funds and have given the rooms an international reputation for elegance and authenticity.

I had grown up in Virginia surrounded by good Georgian architecture and inherited English antiques, but I realized that the State Department collection would have to be exclusively American. I am self-taught in American decorative arts, but then so was Henry Francis du Pont of Winterthur, Delaware. I

CLEMENT E. CONGER is curator of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the United States Department of State and of Blair House. Until last year he was also curator of the White House.

120

ANTIQUES

[L]

learned a lot of tricks of the trade in a hurry. My natural Virginia soft sell got me nowhere, so after a year I changed to the hard sell. I do not hesitate to tell people that while they are of sound mind and body they should decide what is going to happen to their money and to their family treasures. "You can't take it with you" is an important part of the message. I urge them to remember the State Department in their wills, thus doing a public service and getting a tax deduction at the same time. It really works. I also learned early on that collectors collect too much, so I like to help them with their storage problems. I really do them a lot of favors. I pay for transportation, insurance, and repairs. You would be surprised how many collectors hate to put out money for that sort of thing. One quarter of the State Department's collection consists of loans worth more than $8,000,000. Some loans become tax deductible gifts in the donor's lifetime; others become bequests to help pay taxes on the donor's estate. Ten to fifteen things a year are returned to lenders whose circumstances have changed or who see how grand the family treasures look in the State Department and ask to have them back.

Since we do not have faith that Congress would give us the money to rebuild the collection in case of a disaster, we pay insurance on the $22,000,000 worth of objects we own. The premiums are paid with contributed funds since by law we are allowed to use government funds only to insure objects on loan to us. However, the premiums are worth every penny because the coverage gives our donors confidence in the integrity of our collection and the fact that it will always be properly maintained.

In 1961 Benjamin Ginsburg, then the only antiques dealer willing to lend us a roomful of American antiques (which we later bought), introduced me to the late Edward Vason Jones of Albany, Georgia, in my opinion the greatest restoration architect in the country during his lifetime. In addition he was a born interior designer. He contributed his services to the State Department and later to the White House. Between 1965 and his untimely death in 1980, Jones redesigned seven major rooms in the Department—described here by Allan Greenberg—and he and I together “re-furbished” (to use Walter Annenberg’s favorite word) twenty-five rooms in the White House. The White House now contains the pre-eminent collection of early nineteenth-century American furnishings in the country, while the State Department is now acknowledged to have the fourth greatest collection of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century American decorative arts.

I was very happy as curator of the State Department, looking after the Diplomatic Reception Rooms in the time I could spare from my job as deputy chief of protocol on weekends, evenings, and holidays. This state of affairs changed in the fall of 1969. On a whirlwind visit to the Diplomatic Reception Rooms, President and Mrs. Richard Nixon declared that they looked better than the White House and asked whether I would be willing to “come over and help us out.” I naturally agreed, thinking they wanted me to do a room or a special project. When I discovered that they wanted me to be the curator of the White House I appealed to Secretary of State William P. Rogers, stating that I thought the White House needed someone with a degree in fine arts or in American decorative arts. However, President Nixon told Secretary Rogers that anybody who could do what Clem Conger had done for

the State Department need not worry about taking on the White House too. So from February 1970 to May 1986 I shuttled back and forth between two jobs, two offices, and one pay check.

When Edward Jones died I realized that we would need another talented architect to redesign the remaining nine Diplomatic Reception Rooms, so I consulted my friend Walter Macomber of Washington, D.C., the former resident architect at Mount Vernon and earlier at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. He redesigned all the remaining rooms except the huge Benjamin Franklin State Dining Room. This last was a very difficult and expensive project because it is the largest room in the complex—101 feet, 1 inch long and 45 feet wide—and there was no known American room to use as a model. Therefore, we held a competition and suggested that the architects model the new Franklin State Dining Room after the great French and English dining halls which Franklin, Jefferson, and Monroe would have visited. The competition was won by John Blatteau of Philadelphia who teaches architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Frederick D. Nichols, emeritus professor of architecture at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, describes these rooms.

When the Franklin Dining Room project was about to start in 1984 Secretary of State George Shultz, whose offices are directly below it, offered to move out while that work and the renovation of his own suite of rooms was in progress. We engaged the architect Allan Greenberg of New Haven, who had taught classical architecture at Yale University, to redesign the secretary of state's suite of ten rooms. After they were completed it was decided for security reasons to rebuild the suite of reception rooms leading to the offices of the secretary and deputy secretary of state. Greenberg was engaged to redesign these rooms too so that all the architectural themes on that floor would be related. Thus began what is now known as the Treaty Room suite. These two sets of rooms are discussed by Paul Goldberger.

I receive numerous requests to redesign the rather unattractive C Street lobby of the State Department building and even some suggestions that we redesign the exterior of the building. However, I have confined future architectural work to redesigning the seven-room suite of offices of the deputy secretary of state. This project will cost approximately $2,500,000 in contributed funds. That done, we will concentrate on adding to and upgrading the collection.

In the course of my work I have been asked to advise the restorers of fourteen American governors' mansions, and representatives of ten foreign countries have come to Washington to study the Diplomatic Reception Rooms and my procedures. Some nations have even changed their tax laws so that gifts to the government will be tax deductible, as they are here.

In summary, I think I was just the lucky person who happened along when something needed to be done. I assume it was my positive outlook on life that made me volunteer. However, I have never regretted it. I have had a fascinating time working in the State Department, White House, and Blair House. This has all happened because of the generous interest and extraordinary contributions of hundreds of American citizens, Americana dealers, corporations, and foundations who happily wanted to share in presenting the best possible display of the American heritage and culture to the rest of the world.

JULY 1987

121

# The Diplomatic Reception Rooms of Edward Vason Jones

BY ALLAN GREENBERG

Pl. I. Elevator hall in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms. *Faux-marbre* pilasters and entablature frame the archways, which have beautiful, oversized keystones. *Photograph by Breger and Associates, Incorporated.*

LIKE MOST GREAT architects, Edward Vason Jones (1909-1980) was self-taught. Seminal in his development as an architect was his time stationed in Savannah, Georgia, while serving in the navy during World War II. The city's great buildings initiated Jones's consuming and lifelong passion for colonial, Federal, and Greek revival architecture and decorative arts. He used every free moment to make measured drawings and photograph Savannah's buildings. His eye became so sharp and his understanding so profound that he managed to think of design problems in exactly the same manner as the original architects and artisans. It is precisely this quality of being able to enter into the mind and almost become the hand of an eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century architect that makes Jones's work so special.¹

ALLAN GREENBERG is an architect who lives and practices in New Haven, Connecticut.

Jones's challenge in redesigning the Diplomatic Reception Rooms in the United States Department of State in Washington, D.C., was a far cry from any of his restoration projects or new buildings. The new State Department building, completed between 1959 and 1961, is uncompromisingly modern, as were the Diplomatic Reception Rooms on its eighth floor.

Jones's brief from Clement E. Conger, curator of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms, was to create a suite whose architecture and furnishings would embody the unique architectural and cultural heritage of the United States. The rooms were the elevator hall, entrance hall, gallery, John Quincy Adams State Drawing Room, and Thomas Jefferson State Reception Room, which form a continuous series of connected spaces, and the Martha Washington Ladies' Lounge and Dol-

Pl. II. Entrance hall in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms. *Except as noted, photographs are by Richard Cheek.*

122

ANTIQUES

Pl. IV. Dolley Madison Powder Room. This exquisite room is a backdrop for a magnificent group of Federal furniture and paintings by Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935). The ceiling medallion was made from molds from the Greek revival Old Merchant's House (1832) in New York City.

architect with knowledge, experience and, most essen-
tial, access to the finest craftsmen.² In addition to his
encyclopedic knowledge of the architecture of the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Jones was
also an authority on the decorative arts of the period
and, together with Berry B. Tracy, a leading figure in
the revival of interest in Federal and Empire decora-
tive arts.

The practical problems in the Diplomatic Reception
Rooms were enormous. A major encumbrance was

the structure itself and the air conditioning, which had
to remain in place. Furthermore, all rooms not under
reconstruction had to be available for State Depart-
ment receptions.

Jones considered the Thomas Jefferson State Recep-
tion Room (Pls. VIII, IX), completed in 1974, to be his
masterpiece. Of it he wrote:

I tried to do something I thought Jefferson might have done,
appreciated, given his approval to. . . . I just did the room . . .
using all of the original design books in my library. I think I

JULY 1987

125

have nearly every book Jefferson had in his library. This is the way all the early architects got their design inspiration.³

The room is thirty-five feet by forty-eight feet with a nineteen-foot ceiling and is larger than any room Jefferson designed. While the architecture of the room appropriately reflects some of the character of his magnificent house, Monticello, it is also clear that this is a Jones design. For example, the floor pattern is a diagonal grid of dark mahogany squares within which are smaller mahogany squares, each surrounded by a frame of lighter yellow maple. The source of the pattern is the parlor floor at Monticello, although Jefferson's design is simpler: dark cherry squares set in a grid of lighter colored beech. Jones's more elaborate composition is appropriate to the larger scale of the Jefferson Room. The magic of the transformation grows out of Jones's ability to retain a sense of his source while subtly altering it to suit a different purpose. The same transformation is evident in the entablature of the Jefferson Room. The source is the Doric entablature in the dining room at Monticello with its alternating metopes of ox skulls and rosettes in the frieze. Jones provided a band of dentils above the frieze, which added shadow and highlights to compensate for the larger dimensions of his room. However, the proportion of the whole entablature to the wall below is a ratio of one to six and a half, similar to the ratio of the corresponding elements in Jefferson's dining room. The profile of Jones's cornice, baseboard, and chair rail have their equivalents at Monticello, as do the tall, triple-sash windows and the pedimented door leading to the terrace. Jones's master stroke is the design of the two paneled wooden doors leading to the Adams State Drawing Room and the elevator hall. They are domestic in scale—seven feet high—and play a critical role in establishing the human scale of this large room. Set on a console above the architrave of each door is a circular niche nested in a composition of plaster oak leaves and acorns. The niches contain busts of Washington and John Paul Jones (Pl. IX). Jefferson used oval portholes in his bedroom (to ventilate a mezzanine-level closet) and round windows in the dome room at Monticello, and busts on consoles of heroes of the American Revolution—including Jones and Washington— decorate the tea room at Monticello. Jones combined these two elements into a brilliant composition that articulates the scale of the room. There is none of the pomposity that is sometimes characteristic of large rooms; the human scale is so Jeffersonian that we can palpably feel the presence of the man in this room. From the purely architectural viewpoint, ignoring symbolism and sentiment, this sense of human scale renders redundant the statue of Jefferson set in a niche in the north wall. The statue is a modern copy of the 1883 bronze by Pierre Jean David d'Angers (1788–1856) in the United States Capitol. The noble cove of the tray ceiling was probably inspired by the ceiling of the Masonic Lodge Room (1790) in the Masonic Opera House in New Bern, North Carolina, and the ballroom at Mount Vernon (1776–1778). The plaster medallion, which combines Greek revival and Adamesque elements, completes Jones's design.

Jones's most brilliant room in the State Department is the elevator hall of 1979 (Pl. I), which, together with the entrance hall, was his last completed project. Although the hall was inspired by the small mid-eight-

eenth-century painted and paneled room from Marion in King George County, Virginia, and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it is very different. It has a monumental, Roman grandeur, with tall groups of paired, marbleized pilasters framing the arched architraves around the elevator doors. Framing an arch with pilasters is a Roman device, which is most appropriate given the importance of ancient Rome in our architecture. The wall paneling is treated as a monochrome surface filling in the spaces between the pilasters. The floor is probably the largest expanse of King of Prussia marble in existence. Jones said that this beautiful, rare material was as "American as apple pie." It was used for mantel facings and occasionally for floors in some of our finest houses up to 1830, when the quarry was exhausted. Conger found a cache of this marble buried on a Pennsylvania farm. The elevator hall was dedicated to Jones's memory in 1981, and it is now officially known as the Edward Vason Jones Memorial Hall.

Like the elevator hall, the entrance hall (Pl. II) was completed in 1979 and is windowless, but such is Jones's skill that one is not aware of any sense of opressiveness. Similar raised paneling above the wainscot occurs in many Virginia houses. The beautiful entablature incorporates a Greek fret design in the frieze and dentil course, which is echoed in the chair rail. To make the elaborate rococo ceiling Jones used molds of the ceiling decoration of the front upstairs parlor of the Powel House (1765) in Philadelphia, now installed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art,⁴ and added elements taken from the Andrew Low House in Savannah, Georgia, which Jones had restored. The musical instruments, garlands, ribbons, small masks, and flowers, all strike an appropriately festive note. The room has the feeling of a drawing room in a great James River, Virginia, mansion without actually recalling a particular prototype, although both the entablature and the split pediments above the doors have affinities with details at Shirley Plantation (renovated c. 1770) in Charles City, Virginia.

The gallery of 1969 was the first of the State Department rooms that Jones rebuilt (Pl. III). The passage-way between the entrance hall and the gallery was inspired by the hall in Woodford (1759–1772) in Philadelphia and has a Doric entablature atop square, attached columns set on pedestals beginning at the height of the chair rail. These are repeated as pilasters in the center of the gallery. The main feature of the gallery is the two doors with pediments set directly on the architraves. A Greek fret design similar to those in the entrance hall forms a dentil band in the pediments. Decorating the frieze is a superb composition of shells and flowers brilliantly carved by Herbert Milard in the three-dimensional manner of Grinling Gibbons (1648–1721), the English carver.

The John Quincy Adams State Drawing Room is the largest of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms (Pls. VII). It is seventy-three by thirty-one feet and is perhaps the largest room in the colonial style in the United States. It was Jones's second project, started after the gallery and completed in 1972. Forced to deal with an extremely low, ten-foot, ceiling, his solution was characteristically brilliant. On the long south wall Jones built a boldly scaled door topped by an arched fanlight and flanked by Ionic pilasters. On the north

126

ANTIQUES

Pl. VI. Center section of the south wall of the Adams State Drawing Room.

wall he placed a projecting central fireplace, also
framed by square pilasters. This establishes a strong
central axis which effectively stops the eye in the mid-
dle of the room so that one tends to measure floor to
ceiling height against only half the length of the room.
The pilasters are repeated in the corners of the room
to reinforce this sense of scale. On either side of the
south door the wall is subdivided by three windows.
So strong is their insistent vertical rhythm that move-

ment of the eye along the wall is discouraged, and one
is forced to measure floor to ceiling height against
each of these vertical elements in turn rather than the
full or even half-length of the room. The fireplace op-
posite the door has a powerful overmantel, and the
wall on either side of it is divided into two parts by a
tall, arched, pedimented display cabinet with wooden
doors. The vertical emphasis here is stronger, but less
insistent, than on the window wall. The simple rhythm

128

ANTIOUES

Pl. VII. East end of the Adams State Drawing Room.

of the tall, recessed paneling reinforces the verticality of the major elements and provides a simple background against which the windows and display cabinets stand out.

The mantel and overmantel, inspired by the Powell House mantel in the Philadelphia Museum, is Herbert Millard's masterpiece in Washington (Pl. V). The bold play of shadow and highlights across the elaborate, deeply undercut, naturalistically carved surfaces is the

spectacular feature of the room. The overmantel cartouche, egg-and-dart molding, and bold consoles are the focal points of the composition. The Ionic capitals on the flanking pilasters are beautifully carved with grapes and leaves hanging from the spiral volutes, echoing the festive theme more forcefully developed on the ceiling of the entrance hall.

The Martha Washington Ladies' Lounge and the Dolley Madison Powder Room (Pl. IV) were incom-

JULY 1987

129

Pl. V. Corner cupboard in the small waiting room. The Chinese export miniature tea service dates from c. 1800. The eighteenth-century silver is English and American.

rhythm at every point—the walls are rarely flat, for example, and thanks to frequent pilasters and panels the planes shift, never frantically, but always enough to keep the eye involved.

For Greenberg classicism is a question of proportion, scale, and rhythm, not of propriety. He follows precedent more than he breaks it (the corner modifications that he so favors are a notable departure for him), but however much his classicism breaks from

convention or follows it, it is clear that he designs out of an inherent sense of basic architectonic truths. He understands space, and color, and scale, and the State Department interiors show this.

Secretary of State George Shultz told Greenberg when the architect embarked on the redesign that he wanted an office "that would serve the needs of today and also be a room that Thomas Jefferson would have felt at home in." Greenberg took this literally, includ-

136

ANTIQUES

Pl. VI. Doorway in the room shown in Pl. VII.

ing not only facilities for computer equipment and television (neatly hidden behind well-crafted wall panels) but also a drapery fabric based on a textile Jeffer- son himself favored. Shultz preferred to use the largest room of the suite (Pls. VI-VIII), which most of his predecessors had used as their office, as a ceremonial meeting room, and to put his own desk in a smaller room behind it. Although the design of the suite would permit a subsequent secretary to return to the original

arrangement, in the large central room Greenberg took Shultz's priorities as his guide: it is a formal re- ception room, with strong pilasters setting a rhythm around the perimeter and an exceptionally elegant chimney piece modeled after eighteenth-century Phila- delphia designs as the visual focal point. The fireplace is faced with King of Prussia marble in the center of which is a double keystone, and the chimney piece is topped by one of the two pediments in the suite. (The

JULY 1987

137

Pl. IX. West elevator hall in the Treaty Room suite.

(Text continued from page 137)

other is over the double door in the same room.) Air vents, meanwhile, are masked by exquisitely crafted grilles. The walls are a soft yet crisp beige with a hint of green; several of the other rooms in the suite have similar colors, often a bit grayer or murkier. "I have a theory that all eighteenth-century colors are stone colors—so that if you keep within that range you will be all right," Greenberg says.

Shultz's private office, behind the ceremonial room, is paneled in cherry wood, and has a pleasing intimacy to it, with details that are consistent with those of the reception room but less ornate.

The adjoining rooms, called the Treaty Room suite (see Pls. XI, XII), were crafted out of three large reception rooms, which in their original form were reminiscent of a ballroom foyer in a 1960's hotel. This suite of now nine rooms, with a combined length of 172 feet, has at its center the elliptical Treaty Room which was underwritten in part by the American tobacco industry. It is gracious and intimate, but not at all tiny. It is

even more rhythmic in feeling than the secretary of state's rooms, as if Greenberg this time wanted to make his classicism dance a bit. It is a formal dance, to be sure, but a dance nonetheless: engaged double columns with exquisite acanthus-leaf capitals (inspired by John Russell Pope's capitals at the National Archives) ring the ellipse and at the openings at each end of the room become freestanding, adding variety to the rhythm and emphasizing these columns' added role as definers of the doorways. The ceiling has a superb centerpiece of molded plaster, and the floor is of inlaid maple, ebony, and mahogany in a geometric star pattern that gracefully makes the transition from a circle at its center to the ellipse at its perimeter.

The room is not symmetrical despite one's first impression. Here Greenberg's real gift for using classicism to solve architectural problems becomes clear,

Pl. X. Details showing various door architraves.

140

ANTIQUES

Pl. XII. View from the east reception hall through the east antechamber and through the Treaty Room.

and the carved roses in the architraves—at once sump-
tuous and delicate—and the larger elements such as
doors, floors, and moldings.

Most visitors' first glimpse of Greenberg's work in
the Department of State is of one of the two identical
small elevator halls at either end of the Treaty Room
suite (see Pl. IX) with their patterned marble floor,

Doric columns, and gently vaulted, coffered ceiling.
They are a bit stiffer in feeling than the other spaces, a
bit more banklike, but this is clearly no accident, for
what Greenberg is doing here, quite knowingly, is es-
tablishing a transition from the harder world of the
original State Department architecture to the altogeth-
er gentler and more civilized world of his own.

JULY 1987

143

# Rooms architecturally redesigned by John Blatteau and Walter M. Macomber

BY FREDERICK D. NICHOLS

Pl. I. Corner of the Benjamin Franklin State Dining Room, designed by John Blatteau. Photographs are by Richard Cheek.

THE LAST OF THE eighth-floor Diplomatic Reception Rooms to be redesigned was the Benjamin Franklin State Dining Room (Pl. I), completed in 1985 to the design of John Blatteau (b. 1943) of Philadelphia. This, the largest of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms, has freestanding Corinthian columns along the long walls and engaged Corinthian columns along the short walls. Of simulated French red marble, they are surmounted by a richly ornamented entablature and a coffered cove, both parcel gilded. The obverse of the Great Seal of the United States, modeled in plaster, ornaments the center of the ceiling and is flanked by eight monumental chandeliers designed especially for the room.

In 1982 and 1983 Walter M. Macomber (1894–1987) of Washington, D.C., designed the James Monroe State Reception Room (Pl. II) and the adjoining James Madison State Dining Room (Pl. III), the Walter Thurston Gentlemen's Lounge, the Van Buren Reception Room,

the Henry Clay Dining Room, and the Martin Van Buren, Daniel Webster, James Buchanan, and Robert Livingston executive dining rooms. The Monroe and Madison rooms are united by the use of nearly identical columns. In the Monroe room their placement on the window wall was determined by two structural steel uprights which stood three feet into the room. By masking them with architectural columns Macomber created an alcove with a working fireplace adorned with a Massachusetts Federal mantel. In the Madison dining room the columns screen a curved bay of windows which skillfully extends a small room that otherwise would not have accommodated the dining table when fully extended.

FREDERICK D. NICHOLS is emeritus professor of architecture at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

144

ANTIQUES

Pl. III. *John Jay* (1745–1829), by Gilbert Stuart (1755–1828), 1783–1794. Oil on canvas, 50¼ by 41¾ inches. Among the glories of the State Department’s portrait holdings is a group of works by Gilbert Stuart, of which this is unquestionably the most imposing. (Others are an Athenaeum likeness of Washington and a strong pair of bust-length portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Winthrop Sar-gent.) Stuart began work during Jay’s visit to London in 1783 after signing the Treaty of Paris. Through economy of design and elegantly controlled highlights Stuart created an image of sim-plicity that conveys an aura of self-assurance and intellectual clarity. *Gift of the Freed Founda-tion, Incorporated, and David and Juli Grainger*.

Pl. IV. *The Flutist*, artist unknown, early nineteenth century. Oil on canvas, 35 by 28 inches. This sensitive and sympathetic early portrait of a black in America was once attributed to Gil-bert Stuart because of the crisp highlights and broad brushwork. The subject may be the Ameri-can Revolutionary War soldier and fifer Barzillai Lew (1743–1822) of Boston or one of his sons. He holds sheet music inscribed "Six/Duets by/W. Shield," for William Shield (1748–1829), an English musician and composer. *Gift of Mildred and Jack L. Bowers; photograph by Will Brown.*

148

ANTIQUES

Pl. VI. Robert Chamblett ("King") Hooper (1709-1790), by Copley, c. 1767. Inscribed "Robert Hooper/Died at Marblehead/May 25, 1790. Age 80./Copley, Painter." on the back of the case. Watercolor on ivory, 1¼ by 1 inch. This is one of several choice miniatures in the collection painted by both American and English artists. With soft but clear colors and tightly controlled, almost pointillist brushwork, Copley has conveyed convincing modulations of light and shadow, the different textures of hair, skin, and clothing, and the smooth modeling of rounded forms. The sitter, known as "King" Hooper, was a wealthy and powerful merchant and shipper in Marblehead, Massachusetts.

(Text continued from page 147)

der Healy's of Daniel Webster; Daniel Huntington's of Hamilton Fish; Irving Wiles's of William Jennings Bryan; Howard Chandler Christie's of Charles Evans Hughes; and the two most recently acquired, Henry Inman's likeness of John Marshall and John Singer Sargent's full-length portrait of Thomas F. Bayard, the secretary under Grover Cleveland, between 1885 and 1889. Together these images form the imposing core of a collection in which the high moments of national and art history converge.

Although the State Department's collection is overwhelmingly American, there are a few significant pieces by foreign artists, appropriate for a country that has so often adopted immigrant painters into the national tradition and equally often sent native aspirants to Europe and the Orient for study and subject matter. Among the likenesses of figures central to America's political and diplomatic history painted by foreign artists is a striking pastel of Benjamin Franklin drawn

from life in 1777 by Jean Baptiste Greuze (1725-1807). With its soft blues, warm browns, and white satins in highlights, it combines elegance with an unusual sensitivity of direct observation. It makes an interesting comparison with a terra-cotta bust portrait of Franklin from the studio of Jean Antoine Houdon (1741-1828), also in the collection. A second piece of sculpture of singular quality and historical value at the State Department is a life-sized bas-relief of James Madison by the eighteenth-century Italian marble carver Giuseppe Ceracchi (1751-1801), which came to the State Department at the end of the nineteenth century, one of the first major acquisitions for the fine arts collection. Also on view are handsome portraits by the expatriate American painter Charles Robert Leslie of Mr. and Mrs. John Quincy Adams, painted from life in London in 1816, when Adams was serving as minister to Britain.

Besides individuals, the principal subjects of works

(Text continued on page 156)

150

ANTIQUES

Pl. VII. *The Landing of the Pilgrims*, by Michele Felice Cornè (1752-1845), 1803. Inscribed "Michael Corne Pinxit in 1803" at lower right; and "Dec. 22.- 1/1620-" on the rock in the center foreground. Oil on canvas, 36 by 56 inches. Cornè was among the first wave of talent-ed European artists who came to America during and after the Napoleonic wars, lured by the prospects of a developing na-tion burgeoning with opportu-nities for aspiring artists. Al-though the costumes, figures (the Pilgrims saw no Indians during their landing), and even the shore line are largely inac-curate, the scene has a spa-ciousness, brightness, and charm appropriate to its patri-otic subject. *Gift of the National Art Association of Los Angeles.*

Pl. VIII. *Seascape*, by Thomas Birch (1779-1851), 1816. Signed and dated "T Birch 1816" at lower right. Oil on fabric, 24⅜ by 36¼ inches. Birch introduced an awareness of the Anglo-Dutch tradition of marine painting to American art, adapting that school's love of the low horizon and fresh palette to his American subjects. He painted extensively around the major harbors and along the coast line of the mid-Atlantic and New England states, documenting the growing variety of vessels and commerce with a sure sense of America's new prominence as an international sea power. *National Art Association of Los Angeles* gift.

JULY 1987

151

Pl. IX. *View on the Kiskiminetas*, by Joshua Shaw (1776-1860), 1838. Signed and dated "J. Shaw. 1838. X" at lower right. Oil on canvas, 32¾ by 48 inches. One of several English-born artists to come to America during the early nineteenth century, Shaw soon found ample work painting views and making lithographs of American scenery up and down the Eastern seaboard. The Kiskiminetas is a tributary of the Allegheny River about fifteen miles north-east of Pittsburgh. Probably shown here is the town of Freeport, Pennsylvania, at the confluence of the two rivers. The view is the archetypal image of the American dialogue between nature and civilization, wilderness and technology. On one side of the river are cows, trees, water, and sky; on the other, factories billowing the clouds of industrial progress. *Freed Foundation gift.*

[LC]

Pl. X. *Niagara Falls*, by Willem Tjarda van Starkenborgh (1832-1885), c. 1860. Inscribed "No 64/View of the Falls of Niagara/By Van Starkenborgh" on the back. Oil on canvas, 26 by 38 inches. Of all the natural wonders of the New World, Niagara Falls early and lastingly laid claim to explorers, adventurers, artists, and soon the touring public. This is one of three impressive views of the Falls in the collection. (The largest and perhaps best known is a huge painting by Ferdinand Joachim Richardt [1819-1895]; the third, by Fred H. Holloway [w. 1840-1853], has a more modest and primitive charm.) All three were painted in the middle of the nineteenth century, when the Falls' grandeur and bursting energy perfectly suited the nation's sense of self-confidence and territorial expansiveness. Van Starkenborgh's painting is surprising for its unexpected technical strength, bright coloring, and spacious clarity. A Dutch artist who exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia in the 1850's and 1860's, van Starkenborgh also worked in Holland and Germany, usually in this meticulous realist style popular with a number of American painters. *Gift of the Rockwell International Corporation Trust.*

Pl. XI. *A Boating Party*, by Thomas Doughty (1793-1856). Oil on canvas, 27 by 34 inches. Doughty is recognized as one of the founding fathers of American landscape painting, and his gentle views of nature convey his affection for the enduring beauty of the countryside. Painting conventions in the early nineteenth century called for grouping landscapes in basic categories such as "from nature," "from recollection," and "compositions." This view appears to be a combination of the first two. It shows Echo Lake near Franconia, New Hampshire, with White Horse Ledge and Mount Washington in the distance, but the softened contours and the generally pastoral mood suggest Doughty's impulse to improve nature's rough irregularities and affirm the purity of the American wilderness. *Gift of the Mars Foundation.*

JULY 1987

153

Pl. XVI. *Boston Harbor*, by Fitz Hugh Lane (1804-1865), 1852. Signed and dated "F H Lane. 1852" at lower right. Oil on canvas, 23¼ by 34¾ inches. Lane has emerged as the major American marine painter of the mid-nineteenth century, one of the pre-eminent recorders of the coastal landscape of New England in its commercial heyday, and an original exponent of the luminist style. This is one of more than half a dozen views of Boston Harbor that Lane painted during the 1850's, documentating the city's rapid growth in shipping, industry, and architecture. But beyond its celebration of American energy and productivity, the picture embodies Lane's increasing sense of panorama and broad sunlight as emblems of mid-century optimism and spirituality. *Cheney gift.*

The nation's coast lines and mountain ranges, rivers and waterfalls, as well as life on the Western frontier and the changing profile of growing cities are depicted in views that trace the stylistic development of American landscape painting—from the imaginative romanticism of the early nineteenth century, through the more scientific realism and light-filled canvases of luminism in the middle decades of the century, to the dappled colors of impressionism at the end of the century.

Still another aspect of the national identity is arguably evident in the few still-life paintings in the State Department's collection. In three luscious mid-nineteenth-century fruit and flower compositions by Severin Roesen (w. in America 1848-c. 1871), for example, nature's bounty evokes the period of optimistic expansionism and achievement in the years before the Civil War. Together, the pictures in the collection offer citizens and foreigners alike a special vision of a dynamic and diverse America.

JULY 1987

157

Pl. XVII. *Barter for a Bride*, by John Mix Stanley (1814-1872), c. 1850. Oil on canvas, 40 by 63 inches. Stanley was one of the most important painters of Indian and Western life in the middle of the nineteenth century, and this is one of his largest and strongest compositions. He visited these Blackfoot Indians when on a railroad survey about 1850 in what is now Montana. He depicts them as a proud and heroic group arranged in a nearly pyramidal design starkly set off by the open horizon. Visible in the background are the Great Falls of the Missouri, a site visited by Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) and William Clark (1770-1838) on their expedition of 1804-1806. *Gift of the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation*.

Pl. XVII. *Our Elk Outfit at the Ford*, by Frederic Remington (1861-1909), 1880-1900. Signed "Frederic Remington" at lower left. Oil on masonite panel, 15 by 23 inches. The two major artists associated with the American West at the end of the nineteenth century, Charles Russell (1865-1926) and Remington, are well represented in the collection, the latter by this grisaille painting. It is one of a number of very striking images Remington executed in monochrome. In their stark contrasts, linear emphasis, and often foreshortened compositions these works suggest provocative parallels with photography. The second figure from the left is identifiable as Theodore Roosevelt, whose turning glance holds together the crucial central portion of the painting. *Gift of John A. Hill*.

158

ANTIQUES

*Bombé* serpentine-front chest of drawers, Boston, c. 1770. Mahogany and white pine; height 30 3/4, width 36, depth 20 1/4 inches. The *bombé* shape with conforming drawers makes this one of the rarest of the Massachusetts *bombé* group. Very few of the known examples have ogee bracket feet and chased rococo handles. In all respects this is one of the greatest masterpieces in the State Department. *Gift of the Honorable C. Douglas Dillon and Mrs. Dillon; Breger and Associates photograph.*

Looking glass, American or English, c. 1760. Gilded walnut; height 81, width 32 inches. The mirror glass and finish are original. The distinguished architectural quality, variety and perfection of detail, and superb carved eagle make this among the best looking glasses of the period. *Gift of Mrs. John A. McCone; Breger and Associates photograph.*

Sideboard, Maryland, c. 1790. Mahogany and satinwood; height 40 1/2, width 72 1/4, depth 27 3/4 inches. This sideboard was on loan to the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art when it was owned by the late Mitchel Taradash. It is considered by many to be one of the choicest examples extant. The serpentine apron characteristic of the best Maryland design, the lavish urn-and-husk inlay, and the perfection of proportion contribute to the acknowledged superiority of this sideboard. *Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Mitchel Taradash; photograph by Richard Cheek.*

JULY 1987

163