Title: American homes and gardens
Identifier: americanhomesgar61909newy (find matches)
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Architecture, Domestic; Landscape gardening
Publisher: New York : Munn and Co
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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392 AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS October, 1909 Mrs. Whitehead is famous for the art with which she has revived the stately and quaint dances of our grandparents, and each dancing-night the company is surprised by another addition to the Hst already large. There are plenty of musical volunteers at Byrdcliffe, and these succeed one an- other at the piano to the delight of the dancers, to say nothing of amateurs whose talents and good nature provide the assembly with extra instruments now and then. One looks for novelty, quite as a matter of course, and is seldom appreciated. The last Saturday of the season brings with it a magnif- icent fancy dress ball, and such marvels of costuming fished up from chests where have been stored the clothing incident to studios where models must be draped for every taste. It's all a beautiful dream to me, that final dance of last These bungalows are scattered, some forty or fifty it would seem to me, throughout this great forest demesne, and the inmates live in sandals, short skirts, sailor jumpers, gypsy attire; the men mainly in the comforts of outdoor camp-life. The inmates of this great park avoid, so far as possible, the conventional paths and concomitants of resorts like Tuxedo and Onteora. 1 hey are here to draw inspiration from nature; nature is their mother; they love her and make her their model. And thus it happens that a stranger might easily drive past the whole colony and ignore its presence, for no sign is there by way of advertisement, and the bungalows are all tinted to the color of the partridge in order to attract as little as pos- sible the eye of the gossip-hunter.
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There is no more delightful objective on the slopes of the Catskills than the neighborhood of Woodstock, Ulster County autumn, the exquisite taste, the simplicity, the absence of money-display, and then the refreshments were not at a long bar, but each bungalow spread a carpet under the trees, hung Chinese lanterns in the branches, and there they enter- tained the guests who reclined like the gods of Homer and forgot the hours in the joy of festive relaxation. Byrdcliffe proper is the summer and winter home of the Whitehead family, a home in the best old sense of that word, the house of massive timber, the interior made by artists in woodwork, the whole a thing which appears to have grown out of its happy invironment. The view from the front takes in an immense range of mountain and valley, blocked to the south by the range of Lake Mohonk. In the fore- ground is the great barn, for Ralph Whitehead is a mighty farmer in addition to his other many accomplishments. All the buildings are in harmony as to color and design with the main house, none painted, merely stained to preserve the wood in its natural beauty of color. Before it had been my good fortune to meet the leading spirits of this wondrous community, I had heard of it through some carpenters who worked upon my house, some 15 miles from Byrdcliffe. "Them there folks is nothing but a passel of cranks!" "What makes you think so?" queried I. "Why, because they don't do their carpenter-work same as we do!" This it was that first prejudiced me in favor of Byrdcliffe. To write about this colony is difficult for me, because it is never easy to describe on paper a thing that depends wholly upon the spirit of its leaders for the success which it now enjoys. This success is linked with no secrets, no spies can go there and filch from it the means of making a duplicate. There is but one Whitehead couple; it is a secret as free to all as the mobilization of the German army, the wit of Mark Twain, the dramatic dominion of Calve.

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