DLN Member Thomas A. Kligerman hosted a discussion around the extraordinary life of newspaper publisher James Gordon Bennett, Jr. This webinar focused not only on the eccentric personality that was James Gordon Bennett Jr., but even more so on the client-designer relationship in architecture and design. See some highlights below.
- The New York Herald was a newspaper started by James Gordon Bennett Sr., a Scottish immigrant. It was a significant news source in its time – Abraham Lincoln used information from the Herald during the Civil War.
- To begin selling more copies, Sr. decided to turn it into more of a tabloid– he featured stories about grizzly murders, interviewed prostitutes and even talked about his wife’s nude body in detail.
- James Gordon Bennett Jr. was born and raised in Paris until his 16th birthday, when he was brought back to the US and given a 100 ft sailboat from his father. Always being in the right place and with important people, he helped win the battle of Port Royal in SC during the Civil War.
- Jr. was quite a character. On his 300 ft. boat, the Liz Estrada, he kept a cow onboard for fresh milk. He was the first to ever drive a car on the island of Bermuda, and would tear around to the degree that Mark Twain and Woodrow Wilson even wrote letters complaining. Jr. would also race through Central Park in Manhattan at midnight hours on a carriage while nude, and was the youngest ever Commodore of the New York Yacht Club.
- He hosted the first ever tennis match in the US, and was also the first to bring the sport polo to our country. After a fuss at a polo club where he was a member, he decided to build his own club. To design his new polo club, he hired up-and-coming architecture firm McKim, Mead & White in 1879.
- Finished in just one year, they built what is now the Newport Tennis Hall of Fame (at the time named the Newport Casino). The exterior design is one of the early shingle-style buildings, designed mostly by McKim. Inside is a courtyard with arches, curves, and an overall “less sharp” appearance in detail than the exterior. The interior of the building was designed largely by White. It is open today to the public!
- This firm drew heavily on the Japanese Pavilion at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia for inspiration, notably as it pertains to wood screens and pebble dash – pieces of glass stuck into stucco.
- McKim, Mead & White were then commissioned to design the Samuel Tilton House, which also features elements inspired by the Japanese Pavilion. The overall appearance is a bit frail and Victorian, with thin walls like screens and many porches. The staircase, one of which can be found at the Metropolitan Museum, features the firm’s iconic woven wood.
- Jr.’s sister, Jeanette, married a man named Isaac Bell, a cotton broker from a wealthy family who retired at age 32. He hired McKim, Mead & White to design the Isaac Bell House, completed in 1883, which is now owned by the Newport Historical Society and you can visit! Thomas A. Kligerman goes at least once per year.
- This house also features Japanese-inspired elements, like the bamboo poles. But overall, it is more robust and “muscular” in appearance. The shingles on the house feature scale and wave patterns, and the living room features huge windows that you can walk through allowing access to the patio outside.
- From this project, the firm took off and became “the firm to hire” for building significant homes. They began to look more to European influences, and created homes like Beacon Rock in 1885 and the HAC Taylor House in 1886.
- Jr. decided he wanted to build a beautiful new building for his newspaper, and turned to McKim, Mead & White to design it. It was a spectacular building, featuring Italian-inspired arches, a grand statue of Minerva (sitting today in Herald Square), 26 owl statues along the perimeter of the roof with lights in their eyes, and windows along Broadway that provided a view down into the printing presses.
- Jr. hired McKim, Mead & White to design his tomb, featuring a massive owl statue 100 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty. This project was never built, and eventually the Herald Building was torn down in two phases (in completion in 1935).