Heiress and society wife. Exploring her full life and her husbands as the partnership it was is the focus of tonights talk. Mr. Moskey writes on the period between the civil war and world war ii. And the great depression. As a resident of washington dc, he has thrown himself into the world of the gilded age, and especially the lives of larz and Isabel Anderson. His new book is the first full length publication on the couple, an important addition to our understanding of the andersons. But why study them . They will never make it into your history textbooks and have never been household names, then or now. The andersons never ascended into the ranks of the carnegies or the vanderbilts, but through their lives we get a welldocumented window into our nations character and history as it charged into the modern world of the 20th century. We get an especially vibrant view of the nations capital, where the andersons were among the most important residents during the gilded age. For more, let me turn it over to our speaker tonight. [applause] mr. Moskey thank you emily for that introduction. I want to thank emily and the entire staff at the society of the cincinnati for hosting me and many visits to the library and archives for almost six years. I almost feel like this is a homecoming for me. It is a pleasure to be here in the home built by larz Kilgore Anderson and Isabel Perkins in 1935, and since 1938, the home of americas Oldest Society of the cincinnati. I am here to talk about the firstever fulllength biography isabel called larz and Isabel Anderson wealth and celebrity in the gilded age. Where the subjects of my books are looking down from a portrait hung high above this room. If you have looked at the portrait you know that larz has , a stern look on his face, but i suspect they would both be as interested in what i have to say tonight as i hope you are. I want to briefly tell you how i came to write the book, then spend most of my time this evening telling you about the isabel and larz homes and gardens in new england, the other side of their life that has not been well understood up until now. As one earlier reader said, it is kind of like a home and garden store. Tour. If that is the impression you got, then bravo. That is what i hoped for. For washingtonians, knowing more about the couples home in brookline, named in honor of isabels grandfather from whom she inherited her wealth, and isabels simple cabin in New Hampshire, will help put Anderson House in sharper focus for you. Just as the choices that larz made about the art and architecture of Anderson House, for it was larz that made those choices, and the choices he made for their home in brookline sorry, just as the choices larz made about the art and architecture about anderson has about how larz saw his places in the world. So to the choices he made for their home in brookline in made for their cottage in New Hampshire created settings for the private side of their lives both as a married , couple and as individuals. How did it happen that i came to write this book . On a very cold day in january 2010, while out for a walk in my neighborhood along massachusetts avenue, i saw a sign out in front of his house said Anderson House free tour today. I knew something of the history, that a wealthy couple had once lived here, but not that much more than that i decided to go. In for the tour and warm up. I was awestruck by what i saw. Everyone is the first moment you walk in. I immediately wanted to know more about the people who built this house and asked the docent if there was a book i could read. He sighed audibly that no one had written a book about larz and isabel. Given what i had just experienced, i was rather perplexed. In the absence of books about larz and isabel, i started to read accounts of their lives in the digitized online editions of american newspapers. Then ellen clark, the director of the society of the cincinnati found out my interest in the , andersons and invited me to read the unpublished version of larzs journals housed here in this building. The more i read, the more that i realized there was not as an just an interesting story to be told about larz and isabel, but there was also a new book to be written about the gilded age, with larz and isabel as exhibit number one. As someone who had made his way through life up to that point as a writer, editor, publisher, and researcher, the idea for a book about larz and isabel seemed to be the perfect next project for me. When i talked to washington architectural historian james good about the possibility of writing such a book, he encouraged me to do so, citing saying if you could write that book, it would be the one everyone is waiting for. At the time i was starting to work on the book, the commonly held narrative about the andersons adult lives revolved primarily around larzs career in diplomacy, their wedding, isabels work as a war volunteer and author, and their participation in elite society in the nations capital. When i started going to brookline, massachusetts i found that even less was known about them, although they had spent more time in brookline than they ever did in washington. The reason for this is clearly that Anderson House has been open is a gilded age house museum for the past 70 years. And because the society of the cincinnati has been so good about perpetuating the andersons memory in washington by welcoming thousands of visitors a year. I knew that existing accounts of larz and his wives were fragmented and incomplete. And there was no established body of scholarship i could turn to. I had my work cut out for me. I would have to establish a chronology not just for their lives, but their parents, grandparents, and distant ancestors. I would have to craft an overarching narrative for two very complex lives that stand spanned almost a century of American History. I would have to pick and choose from thousands of details and episodes in their lives to create an interesting, readable, and ultimately compelling story about two people who had been mostly forgotten by time. The book includes the early sixyear process presents the early family life education, their life in washington, brookline and New Hampshire, their foreign travels and their lazy weeks and months among their house boat. The book provides an account of larzs diplomatic postings under president taft, and an overview and assessment of isabels literary output. The last two chapters of the book, which were in a way most interesting for me to write, reconstruct isabels life after larzs death. I decided early on that i will tell the andersons story is has much as possible in their own words, supplemented by the recollections and memoirs of their friends, family, and employees. And once i started looking there were dozens of books published in their lifetime and shortly thereafter that included recollections of them. Larz and isabels writings, especially larzs, are so extensive, detailed, and candid, i could write about a most almost anything in their lives in their own words. I almost consider myself as a biographer very lucky to have actually met and talked with people who knew isabel when they were young. And they freely shared their memories of her with me. One of them, a woman in New Hampshire, had done manual labor for isabel at the box list and at the house in brookline. The other was a woman in washington whose mother had taken her to one of isabels weekly tea parties when she was a child. Her story is in the book. Talking to these ladies certainly made me feel like isabel was not all that far away in time. I also sought to anchor the story in the Historic Events of the andersons era and in the great and famous people that they associated with. President S Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard taft, henry n clover adams, Martin John Maud and john Elliott Henry james, and , Isabella Stewart gardner, and many others. As i decided which of their famous friends and acquaintances to include, i gave references to american figures rather than to foreigners since i thought this would help american readers connect larz and isabel to the broader context of American History with which they were already familiar. This should have been on the screen. Sorry. Larz and isabel were married in 1897 in boston and spent the first two years of their married life traveling abroad, first to japan and china by way of hawaii. Here they are pictured in honolulu. And then a year later to india by way of the suez canal. Larz says they needed this time to make plans for their life together. It also gave them an opportunity to experience and experiment with what life as an elite married couple might be like. It certainly gave isabel more time to become accustomed to the ways of the world they were about to enter. Larz had grown up with luxury and privilege, but isabel had not. She had been raised in an upper middle class family in a modest home in back bay boston, by somewhat reclusive parents who rarely went out or entertained beyond a very intimate and small circle of family and friends. In between those trips to japan and india, larz and isabel rented a large and stylishly decorated bellamy mansion at 1640 rhode island avenue, diagonally across where the old ymca was. They rented it for the 1898 winter social season in washington. As the temporary occupants of one of the capitals most elite homes of the late 19th century, they had an early taste of what it was like to be hosts in washington. I believe that experience helps them conceptualize and realize their dreams for this house. Isabel had not yet learned how to be the mistress of a large and Prestigious Home with servants and dinner parties for dozens. This is part of what her marriage to larz would demand. Isabel was most certainly tutored in this by larzs mother , inexperienced washington hostess during that first winter in washington. After their return from india in the spring of 1899, they were ready to start their life together. They took over the brookline estate of isabels first cousin, William Fletcher weld the second, known it during his lifetime as billy. The circumstances under which they acquired the house make for a good story of its own. A typically boston story, someone called it. Billys death at an early age his widows subsequent , remarriage to a new yorker that did not like boston or the weldy, and finally the familys somewhat cloak and dagger scheme to wrest the house back from the unpopular new yorker. When larz and isabel acquired billys brookline house in 1899, it was a quaint, cozy home in the shingle style, with nooks and crannies everywhere that fostered a sense of comfort and privacy. Larz had envisioned something grander and more on the style of an immense italian villa. However he never completely got his wish to tear down billys house and start over. Isabel was deeply attached attached to the land that had belonged to her grandfather. Larz had to settle for elaborate and somewhat awkward additions to billys house to achieve the fanciful design and style he wanted. That is what became of the house. By the time larz was finally done with his twoyear makeover of billys house, it had been transformed from a charming shingle style new England Country home into a bombastic structure of a type that i and other architectural historians have called gilded age kistch. Billys original house was encased within an architectural confection that contains several new and immense spaces, two bedroom suites. One each for larz and isabel. A living room so large that its furniture seemed a bit undersized as you will see in a , moment. And a ballroom that was rarely used. The interiors of billys part of the house remained essentially in their original condition. Isabel liked the way they were. Lets take a quick look at how larz and his architects achieved this transformation of the house. I do want to my whole Creative Team is here tonight. I want to recognize harry martin who is somewhere in the back. Harry is a washington architect who did the architectural schematics. Harry, thank you. [applause] and also Robert Weiser is here, robert did the book cover. Robert, thank you very much. [applause] here we have the first floor of so of the house. This is will writes original 1888 mansion. This is the addition. The second floor plan. All of this was isabels bedroom suite. And larz had a little bedroom suite over here. And the remainder of billys house. We dont know exactly what the floor plan looked like when will wright designed the house in the mid1880s. This is the floor plan as it existed in 1940. 1914. This is an authentic floor plan, but it might have looked a little different in its original configuration. I dont know if you can see this, but this was isabels bedroom suite. After larzs death in 1937, she moved into the smallest bedroom of the house. I think that says something about her personality. We have a longitudinal section. I know this is a little bit hard to see but you can see that larz achieved the ceiling height that he wanted by playing with the floors and the offsets between the old and new part of the house. This is another view of the from the early 1950s. Despite the expanded size of the house, it had been increased from a little over 9000 square feet to almost 21,000 square feet. All the mansions interior spaces remained essentially private and were rarely used for large functions. Weld, as the andersons called the house, was an eclectic idiosyncratic house that , reflected the private life and complex personalities of its occupants. I think that if you read the book and you compare and contrast the house with this one, you will see this is a much more public space. Certainly magnificent and sense, but notry specifically a reflection of their personalities in the way the brookline house was. Lets take a quick tour of the first floor of the house. We are in up in this section, this is the living room. The room was actually about twice this size. There was a whole other half that was photographed but i did not include here. This fireplace was actually a copy of one in the mansion that larz and isabel rented when he was the minister to belgium in 1911 and 1912. We actually know from these photographs with a fireplace looks like. The house was torn down in 1955. It no longer exists. There was also a large ballroom. This was teak furniture that had belonged to isabels grandfather that he had imported from china. This is the drawing room. Very much in a french style. This was the room as billy weld had it installed in the house. The andersons did not change it. Right here in front of this sreplace is where celia bose magnificent portrait was posed from. This is an important photograph for Anderson House and the cultural history of the art here because this is the spot where isabel stood when she had that portrait painted. This was the front hallway. The ballroom was here. This is the front hallway. Just a place where people could come in and sit down. And then the dining room im sorry. They called this the leather den because the walls had leather tacked on them. But it was their favorite room in the house. Very personal, not a public area. Not anything but the most intimate of their inner circle got to visit. There was a dining room that is not very remarkable. The dining room here is much more impressive. And then a sunroom. The sunroom had four murals, each one representing one of the four cities where larz had served in the diplomatic service. London, rome, brussels, tokyo. As you have seen in some of these photos, and certainly in this one, there were collectibles and objects set out on tables, displayed in cabinets, and hung on walls everywhere in a way that was perhaps meaningful only to larz and isabel. One poignant example of the way they arrange things in the home in brookline is this funeral shrine that isabel set up to larz in the mansion after his death. You actually most of these things are identifiable. You can tell what they are. There is shinto and Greek Orthodox and buddhist symbols spread around. This was very much part of their eclectic collecting except the , quality of material on display here in they had here far exceeded what they had in brookline. Throughout the house the things that were displayed for the andersons private viewing, not for the world at large, as they were here at Anderson House. Here in Anderson House they displayed their larger, showier and more valuable furniture. For example, their rare flemish tapestries and the exquisite Imperial Japanese lacquer ware. In brooklyn they displayed smaller more personal memorabilia, bricabrac, things like larzs collections of hats and framed certificates and newspaper clippings. Th interior. During the andersons lifetime the gardens in brookline were probably better known nationally and internationally than was the house in washington. By one count there were at least 10 gardens and landscapes in brookline, and the two with green dots, the Mission Italian gardens the ones for which there , are some vestiges. The others are completely gone. The gardens and landscaping, especially the Italian Garden, where a major part of the Emotional Center of the couples lives. Larz was also proud of these gardens and wanted the world to know about them. He promoted them to writers, journalists, and professors of landscape architecture. And personally gave tours to those that wanted to study the gardens professionally. The brookline estate had two main garden systems. As i mentioned, an Italian Garden that was on the upper level of the estate near the mansion, and an english garden, sometimes also called the lagoon, on the lower elevation. Let me start by describing the Italian Garden since this was the single most important p