The Mount receives 2005 Preserve America Presidential Award

The Mount received the Preserve America Presidential Award from President Bush at the White House on Monday, May 2, 2005. The selection of The Mount and three other historical organizations was announced by President Bush in the Rose Garden, followed by a private award ceremony with the President and First Lady Laura Bush in the Oval Office. In honoring The Mount for its preservation work, the President quoted Edith Wharton’s comment that "there are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it," remarking that the tremendous restoration efforts at The Mount reflect Wharton’s light and will enrich our national heritage.

President Bush praised The Mount and the other award winner in its category for their contributions to America’s cultural heritage and economic development, noting that they have drawn tourists to museums and towns, created jobs, and revitalized neighborhoods. They've also opened new opportunities for learning.

Representing Edith Wharton Restoration (the nonprofit organization that maintains and operates The Mount) at the ceremony were Stephanie Copeland, President and CEO; Barbara de Marneffe and Guy Robinson, Co-Chairmen of the Board of Trustees; Pauline C. Metcalf, Chairman of the Interior Restoration Committee; David Andersen, Restoration Project Manager; and Terence Field, Chairman of the Town of Lenox Board of Selectmen.

The Mount, along with the Texas Heritage Trails program, was honored in the category of heritage tourism. Bolduc Historic Properties of St. Genevieve, Missouri and the Isaiah Davenport House Museum of Savannah, Georgia received awards as privately funded preservation projects. The federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation reviewed 40 nominees from across the country and made recommendations to the White House, which chose the four winners.

Built in 1902 in Lenox, Massachusetts, The Mount is now a National Historic Landmark. Nearly $15 million has been spent to date restoring the 42-room mansion and 3 acres of formal gardens.

Curatorial Projects at The Mount

The Restoration of Edith Wharton's Bedroom Suite

More than any other area, Edith Wharton's bedroom suite reflects the author's character as an individual, interior designer, and writer. The suite was the birthplace of some of her finest novels, short stories, nonfiction, and other work, including The House of Mirth (1905), Madame de Treymes (1907), and Ethan Frome (1911). Instead of writing at a desk in her main floor library, Wharton wrote for several hours each morning while lying in bed.

The design and size of the suite illustrates Wharton's intent for The Mount to be primarily a writer's retreat. Designed for the utmost privacy, Wharton's suite is located at the far end of the bedroom floor and laid out like an apartment with distinct rooms for individual functions. It contains a bedroom, a boudoir used as a sitting room, and a private bathroom. A separate vestibule provided access to each room, allowing household employees to come and go without disturbing Wharton's activities.

Wharton's bedroom suite was designed and furnished in accordance with the architectural and interior design principles that she presented in The Decoration of Houses (1897), co-authored with architect Ogden Codman Jr. Wharton felt strongly that only those spaces in which occupants spent time during their waking hours and received visitors should be highly decorated. Thus her boudoir, used to receive intimate friends and conduct household business, featured formal architectural paneling containing eight still-life paintings, decorative plasterwork, an eighteenth-century Louis XV bureau plat and commode with ormolu mounts, and French toile de jouy curtain and upholstery fabric.

In contrast, Wharton thought that "simplicity [was] most fitting" for private bedroom spaces. Thus, her bedroom, bathroom and vestibule were decorated simply and practically, with plain and spare architecture and an informal mixture of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Louis XV- and Louis XVI-style furniture with white-painted and French polish finishes.

Wharton's bedroom suite also illustrated one of the occasional deviations she made in designing The Mount from the ideals she discussed in The Decoration of Houses. Although she objected in theory to wallpaper because she felt it was unsanitary and obscured architectural features, recent analysis has concluded that the wallpaper fragments found in the suite's bedroom and bathroom are original to Wharton's design and likely to have been high-quality, imported papers.

In 2003, Edith Wharton Restoration embarked on a multi-year project to restore and re-furnish the bedroom suite to accurately reflect Wharton's residence circa 1905. This project has been generously supported by the Richard C. von Hess Foundation and Benjamin Moore Company, which have granted a total of $320,000 to the project. Work completed to date includes the restoration of interior architectural features, such as the parquet and marble floors and plaster walls and ceilings, complete analyses of the painted and papered wall finishes, and carefully-researched, detailed furnishings plans. In the coming months, visitors will have the opportunity to view ongoing restoration work as reproduction wallpaper and curtains are installed and the rooms are completely re-furnished with period antiques. The project is being implemented by EWR's Curator of Collections, Erica Donnis, and overseen by EWR's Interior Restoration Committee, chaired by historian and interior designer Pauline Metcalf.

Analysis and Reproduction of Historic Wallpaper

The Mount reflects many of the interior design principles that Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman laid out in their design manual The Decoration of Houses (1897). However, new evidence discovered during the ongoing restoration of The Mount has indicated that Wharton consciously strayed from her own advice on occasion. Although Wharton and Codman derided wallpapers as unsanitary and "effacing architectural lines," fragments of eleven different wallpapers have been discovered in multiple rooms in the house, including several bathrooms and service spaces. Some of the patterns are quite Victorian in nature, such as those that feature large cabbage roses; others consist of "sanitary" papers containing variations on tile patterns.

Recent analysis conducted as part of the restoration of Edith Wharton's bedroom suite has determined that wallpaper fragments found in the bedroom and bathroom of the suite are definitely original to Wharton's design and likely to have been high-quality, imported papers. Curator of Collections Erica Donnis is currently working with the design company Scalamandre to reproduce a floral tile paper for the bathroom space and is researching companies that can reproduce a solid-color blue/green paper for the author's bedroom.

The Mount receives 2005 Preserve America Presidential Award

Edith Wharton's boudoir, before restoration

Consultant paint analyst Robert A. Furhoff takes a sample in Edith Wharton's boudoir.

Read more about the mysteries of Edith Wharton's wallcoverings in the January 2006 Old House Journal Article, "Wallpaper: Puzzling Together the Pieces"

Handling Historic Wallpaper

"In a New Mold". Read the Old House Journal's July 2003 story on The Mount's restoration of plaster ornament.

"New Life for Old Finishes". Read about the conservation of historic woodwork at The Mount in this Old House Journal article.

Restoration Manager David Andersen hangs reproduction curtains in Edith Wharton's boudoir

Curator Erica Donnis consults with Scalamandre's President Robert Bitter about reproducing original wallpaper

Historical view of Edith Wharton's boudoir. Edith Wharton Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University.