Playground of the Century

PLAYGROUND OF THE CENTURY

A legend of the Gilded Age, Astor Courts is now restored to its former glory.

TEXT: Lori Fredrickson

In early March of 1902, the same year that construction first began on The St. Regis New York, the hotel’s founder John Jacob Astor IV struck ground on a very different project. Astor Courts, a sprawling 40,000-square-foot sporting pavilion alternately known as Ferncliff Casino, was constructed on the grounds of the family’s estate in upstate Rhinebeck, N.Y. Located adjacent to the family’s original manor, built by William Backhouse Astor in the 1850s, the new addition was created to provide amusement for visitors and weekend guests. Designed by famed architect Stanford White, Astor Courts’ Beaux-Arts styled construction also provided an opulent counterpart to the more imposing high-gabled exterior of the family’s Second Empire mansion. In the years following, it would become a landmark of the era’s society culture, as well as a storied part of Astor family history. 

Restored by retired Oxygen Media producer Kathleen Hammer in 2005, Astor Courts now stands as a rare landmark of architectural opulence from the Gilded Age. “Of all the historic properties I’ve worked on, Astor Courts was the most difficult,” says Hammer, who had completed nine architectural restorations previously. At the time of her purchase, the building had not only been remodeled for multiple uses but neglected entirely for more than a decade. “But the spectacular architecture and the intricate work it incorporated, together with its social history, make it the most meaningful restoration I’ve done,” she adds.

Its social history began at a time that was significant in the Astor family story, both in cultural reputation and the foundations of their legacy in New York real estate. In 1902, when John Jacob Astor IV first laid the plans for it, he had only recently returned from the Spanish-American War as a decorated colonel. Encouraged by the success of his 1897 Astoria Hotel—what would later become the Waldorf-Astoria, when conjoined with his cousin William’s Waldorf Hotel—he’d embarked on new plans in hotel development, including The St. Regis New York and, in 1906, the Knickerbocker Hotel. Astor had also become more of a fixture in New York society affairs, along with his mother Caroline and first wife Ava. The decision to build Astor Courts was both practical and symbolic.

Writer Charlotte Ballard, who has researched John Jacob Astor over the past several years for a biography, says, “The turn of the century was the age of the great weekend party. When the family brought guests up to their upstate manor, they needed to have an indoor space to entertain them, particularly in inclement weather.” Ferncliff Casino was designed to be, as the New York Times would put it in 1913, as an “amusement hall” for high society.

  It was also a symbol of the Astor family’s status, and so Astor turned to Stanford White, who was then considered one of the leading architects working in the style of Beaux Arts. A then-increasingly popular neoclassical style of architecture formalized in Paris, Beaux-Arts integrated Greek and Roman structural form with Baroque and Rococo embellishment; the combination of monumental arches and colonnades with lavish sculptural designs had become a symbol for luxury and prosperity that seemed particularly appropriate to the United States, then enjoying newfound wealth in the Industrial Age. The style was prominent both in institutions and private residences, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Columbia University to estates on Fifth Avenue, as well as hotels such as The St. Regis New York on 55th Street.

Stanford White had earned his reputation with grand designs for churches throughout New York, homes for the Oerlichs and Vanderbilts, public buildings such as the Herald Library, and monuments such as the Washington Square Arch. For Ferncliff Casino, he planned an even more opulent creation; as his model, he chose the Grand Trianon at Versailles. 

“This was a nuanced borrowing of architectural and cultural history,” explains Samuel White, the great-grandson of the architect. A historian as well as architect himself, he has documented Stanford’s works in several books, including the recent “Stanford White: Architect” (Rizzoli, 2008), and was also a primary consultant on the Astor Courts restoration. “Unlike the main façade of Versaille, which symbolized power, the Grand Trianon’s purpose was for fun—it had been created by Louis XIV to amuse his mistresses on daytrips. And so the allusion is both to play and to the glory of the House of Astor,” he says.

 Composed on the exterior with Ionic columns, on the interior with marble walls and vaulted ceilings, Ferncliff Casino held facilities for every type of fun imaginable: squash courts, indoor and outdoor tennis courts, shooting ranges, game rooms and, most notably, a Middle Eastern-styled indoor swimming pool, which was one of the first indoor residential pools in America. It also included numerous bedroom suites, as well as a ballroom. “It was very tied into the choreography of early 20th century social life,” explains Samuel White. “The accommodations were for bachelor visitors; and the ballroom allowed them to host larger events than possible in the manor.” 

 It was also technologically innovative for its day. In addition to the then-unheard of indoor pool, it featured a generator, pumping stations and a gravity-air heating system; the sporting facilities reflected recent advancements in acoustics, particularly its indoor tennis court, whose combination of steel trusses and sliding skylights gave matches greater resonance. And though unknown whether these innovations came from White alone or by the suggestion of John Jacob Astor, both Samuel White and Charlotte Ballard agree that they may have been the result of a collaboration. “Astor dabbled in engineering throughout his life,” Ballard points out, “and his hotel properties, including the original St. Regis, were among the first to introduce central heating and cooling systems. Technology was one thing both the architect and client had in common.” 

 Completed in 1904, Ferncliff Casino would host a constant flow of Astor’s society guests throughout the spring and autumn for nearly a decade, up until John Jacob Astor’s death in 1912 aboard the Titanic, at which point it passed to his son Vincent. It remained a luxury retreat until the mid-1940s, when Vincent remodeled it for residential use and moved his family there from Ferncliff Manor to live full-time. On his death in 1959, the manor house was bequeathed to Benedectine Hospital in Kingsland. The rest of the 2,800-acre estate was sold away by his widow Brooke Astor, and the now-residential Astor Courts was donated to the Catholic Archdiocese. For much of the latter half of the century, the once-luxury playground would be used as a nursing home, until it transferred back into private ownership in the 1980s. 

 By the time Kathleen Hammer and her husband Arthur Seelbinder purchased the property in 2005, its ornate designs had been painted several times over; ceilings dropped, hiding away the many skylights; neglected, the walls and floors had fallen into advanced disrepair. The prospect of rehabilitating it was daunting, but, Hammer says, a worthy challenge. “Our hope was to restore it to the original intent of Stanford White,” she adds. 

 A neighbor of the Astor property gave them copies of the original building plans. Hammer contacted Samuel White, who agreed to step in as a consultant, as well as various historic and restoration societies, such as Williamstown Art Restoration, who helped her to determine and restore original paint levels. Over the course of three years, with the help of contractors but largely by Hammer herself, paint levels were stripped and replaced, gunite removed from the exterior and intricate elements carefully restored to their original form. 

Although this work involved an intense amount of labor, it was also, Hammer says, a great process of discovery. “We found original intricate plaster moldings in the main salon [and] Faux bois plaster work in the living room, which we stripped of years of heavy white paint and repainted to match the original oak-like wood finish.” The most exciting discovery was an uncovered oculus in the back hall. “The day we put that skylight back in place, letting light flood in as White intended, was a beautiful experience,” she notes. Hammer made few changes to the original building plan, other than moving the kitchen to a former master suite, on Samuel White’s suggestion. The result is, White says, “incredibly faithful to the original design.” 

 Their work has also revealed what a masterpiece the original structure was. “The front hall of Astor Courts is one of the greatest rooms in America,” Samuel White says. “A unique, flawless combination of Italian Renaissance plaster work, French Classical architecture, Federal Revival windows, French Renaissance mantel pieces, combined in a way that hadn’t been done, and hasn’t since then.” 

 As well as a private residence, Hammer and Seelbinder have since used the building to host private events, most prominently for the July wedding of Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinksy; but also for nonprofits such as Scenic Hudson, Hudson River Heritage, the Rhinebeck Historical Society and Planned Parenthood. “We’ve had tours with the Sir John Sloane Foundation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Institute of Classical Architecture,” Hammer says, “and have allowed architectural classes, students of the work of Stanford White and restoration architects here as often as possible.” A chance in ownership may be on the horizon for Astor Courts may, as Hammer and Seelbinder have been considering selling the property over the past year. However, it’s unlikely that this architectural treasure of the Hudson Valley will be forgotten again. 

 “It’s not just a landmark of style, but of an era,” Samuel White says. “Swimming in the pool under its vaulted ceiling gives you an idea of what luxury they had.” Its grandest element, he adds, is something of a symbol of the Gilded Age itself; a sprawling marble staircase in the center of the building, which leads literally to the ceiling. “It was initially intended to climb to a rooftop garden,” he says, “which was later abandoned, though the staircase remained. When you first see it, you have the illusion that there’s a second story; a suggestion of endless space.”  

Image credit: Jonathan Wallen/Rizzoli New York, "Stanford White, Architect"