the three 
LOUIS 
N E W 
YORK 
I N 
Since the Days of the Huguenots French Furniture Has Journeyed 
to the Metropolis to Play Its Part in the Early American Scene 
WEYMER MILLS 
T HE writer attempting a Gotham 
chronicle of the furniture of three 
decorative periods known as Louis 
Quatorze, Louis Quinze and Louis Seize 
might do well to pause and contemplate his 
goose quill. 
If a sense of history could give us very 
far reaching eyes into the past we might 
quicken into life the dust 
of forgotten centuries 
dreaming under lower 
Broadway skyscrapers. 
That far time of Governor 
Peter Stuyvesant and his 
French wife, born Judith 
Bayard, must have seen the 
arrival of the first French 
furniture at the Battery 
wharves. Before and after 
the Revocation of the Edict 
of Nantes, Stuyvesant held 
out welcoming arms to 
storm-driven French Prot¬ 
estantism. We read of 
thousands of emigres jour¬ 
neying from Bretagne, Nor¬ 
mandy and Picardy, and in 
the same ships came Wal¬ 
loons from Lisle, Mons, 
Antwerp, Ghent and Mech¬ 
lin. 
As the French congrega¬ 
tion sat in the church of 
L’Eglise du St. Esprit, I 
know of one good man, a 
sturdy Freneau, whose 
thoughts must have wan¬ 
dered happily to his great 
cherry nuptial bed, and his 
stout oak cupboard fash¬ 
ioned from trees on his be¬ 
loved domain and safe at 
last in a land of liberty. 
Louis XIV ascended his 
throne at the age of five 
years in 1643, but in the 
history of art his reign does 
not begin until some twenty 
years later with the founding of the Manu¬ 
facture Royale des Meubles de la Couronne. 
From then until the 18th Century, the. rich¬ 
est of the Huguenots no doubt brought many 
pieces of new and costly French furniture 
with their older lares et penates. The 
Quintards, Le Contes, Lorillards, Allaires 
and de Lanceys were all families of high 
condition. The Dutch, English and French 
exchanged their native fashions in that 
little colonial world. 
In ‘‘The Furniture of our Forefathers,” 
by that painstaking historian Esther Single- 
ton, we read that the bedchamber of Cor¬ 
nells Steenwvck, a Mayor of New York who 
died in 1686, held a cupboard of French 
nut wood. A descendant 
of Lord Bellemont, the 
early English Governor, 
possessed a cabinet of mar- 
queterie work said to have 
been fashioned by the cele- 
brated Andre Charles 
Boulle and brought by his 
lordship to New York. 
Later the Beekman family, 
who built Mount Pleasant, 
about 1763 imported 
French furniture for their 
ball room. 
These are among the 
first frail records of French 
taste in New Y'ork. A 
search through old news¬ 
papers for furniture 
brought by the white 
winged ships,—those long 
vanished “Neptunes,” “Ne- 
buchadnezzars,” “Roberts,” 
“Marys,” and “Swift Sal- 
lys” does not reveal much 
in the way of importations 
for the New Y'ork market. 
Just before the Revolu¬ 
tion, when Mrs. Belton 
taught French and French 
tapestry-making to our very 
great great grandmothers, 
French things were becom¬ 
ing more in demand. The 
Tory ascendancy may have 
atrophied the fashion, but 
when the war was over the 
arrival of a French ambas¬ 
sador and the constant 
stream of gifts to the fair 
Bruguiere 
A painted screen , Louis XV bergere a la gondole, a gueridon 
or stand of the Louis XVI era and a terra cotta bust dating 
from the 18th Century form this pleasing group in the home 
of Mrs. Edgerton Winthrop, New York City. The illustratiotis 
accompanying this article are all views in the same residence 
