AMERICAN ESTATES AND GARDENS 



and originality. The end opens into the outdoor room, which is continuous with the house wall 

 and covered by the same roof. It has a bricked floor and a beamed ceiling, and its arches 

 look out upon the beautiful formal garden. 



The dining-room, which occupies the space corresponding to the drawing-room on the 

 left of the oval hall, is paneled throughout in Italian walnut, with pilasters at the windows and 

 doors, all very beautiful in color. The ceiling is elliptical and perfectly plain. The lights are 

 girandoles. There is no mantel, but an English stone fireplace. Above it hangs a portrait of 

 Mrs. Duryea, by John W. Alexander. An open-air room, identical with that at the end of the 

 drawing-room, opens from the dining-room. 



The oval hall, for its part, provides space for two corner rooms, irregular in shape, which 

 are used as sitting-rooms. One is especially set apart for the use of Mr. Duryea. It has dark 

 green walls, on which are many old colored prints and other sporting mementos. The mantel 

 is of green marble, and the furniture of the same color. The other room is paneled in two 

 shades of gray. The curtains are red, with embroidered borders. The mantel is an old carved 

 one, with an old mirror over it. 



A flight of marble steps leads from the center of the oval hall to the upper corridor, 

 which opens into it. Here are Mr. and Mrs. Duryea's rooms, the latter a large room, with 

 a boudoir adjoining it in the corner of the house. All these apartments are delightfully furnished, 

 each with its own scheme of harmonious decoration and its own special color. More stairs 

 lead to the upper third story, the corridor here forming a picture gallery. The rooms are 

 entirely set apart for guests, and are arranged en suite with bathrooms. Each is furnished in 

 chintz, very beautiful in color and delightfully varied. 



The space immediately without the house at the back forms the formal garden. In the 

 center, between the drawing-room and the dining-room, is a long pool, with a fountain at one 

 end. At the farthest extremity this garden is enclosed with high trellises of wood, painted 

 green, with a high niche of the same material directly opposite the two ends of the wings. 

 Brilliant beds of flowers surround the house and enclose the trellises. From each side extend 

 two broad grassed walks, bounded with privet hedges, beyond which are solemn rows of cypress. 

 These are beautiful stretches of green grass, reaching off on the one side to the trees, and on 

 the other to a roadway. Behind the enclosing trellises is a thick wood, which spreads away 

 in all directions, the whole house, both front and back, being set in the woods, which have been 

 cleared away somewhat in its immediate vicinity. 



The house presents a brilliant exterior as seen from the garden, the exterior of a building 

 quite palatial in scale and palatial in expression. Every single feature, the decorated walls, 

 the delightful end porches, the novel trellises, the water garden in the center, the blooming 

 plants and vines, all help in creating an ensemble of very great charm and interest. 



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