Another Day, Another Du Pont

June 30, 2012

Today we will continue our study of the du Pont family (and their wealth) as we tour Winterthur...the estate of H.F. du Pont. For those of you keeping track on a scorecard, here's how this one plays out...E.I. du Pont (the gun powder guy) bought the property and it passed to his daughter when he died; the daughter lived there and then died; E.I.'s son Henry (who ran lived at Hagley and ran the powder operation) buys the property from his nephew for his own son H.A. du Pont (who lived at Hagley and ran the powder mill after his father Henry); H.A. has a son H.F. who inherits the property and establishes it as a dairy farm and country estate. H.F. is the last owner and he turned it into a museum before he died.

Here's something that made us chuckle while we listened to the tour guides at Nemours, Hagley and Winterthur...the guides would say that this or that seriously wealthy du Pont was a "gardener"...well, I think if we are going to be accurate we should say that these guys were wealthy from family inheritance and spent a small portion of their vast fortunes on designing gardens and paying a staff of gardeners to create and maintain their gardens.

Now, to be fair to H.F., he did breed a type of dairy can that is now responsible for providing more than 80% of the milk produced in the U.S. today, so he did stay busy with something productive. But other than that, he really only spent his time and energy (and serious wealth) on planting an impressive array of trees, shrubs and flowers on his vast estate, and then buying an unnatural amount of early American furniture and household items...which is why he ended up building a 175 room mansion...so he had a place to put his 60,000 purchased items...

The Winterthur estate is a beautiful piece of property - 1,000 acres of rolling pasture and woodland, with a creek running through it. After parking at the visitor center we shuttle up to the mansion to take a look at an exhibition that immediately caught our eye...it's called Uncorked...so of course it's our first stop.

As we said, this H.F. guy bought everything he could lay his hands on, so when it comes to glasses, jugs, flasks, punch bowls, decanters and anything else that has to do with how earlier Americans enjoyed their wine. So we stroll through the exhibit, but cut it a little short so that we can visit the mansion itself.

The mansion is less of a mansion than the other places we've visited, and it is really more of a formal museum. We are guided through the house and most of the rooms are not accessible to us unless we upgrade our tickets to get us in to a more expensive and extensive tour. So we walk through the house and honestly, it is a little strange seeing random collections of furniture pulled together simply because they are from the same time period. Another thing H.F. would do is buy a house that was being torn down and move entire rooms (including walls, floors and ceilings as well as furniture) into a room in his mansion.

After we finish our tour of the house, we are a short walk to the atrium which connects the mansion to the research library...the atrium is where they display their collection of soup tureens that they got from Campbell's Soup...they have some awesome vessels for serving soup, kind of creates a pretty high level of expectation around the soup that's inside!

They even have a soup tureen for serving Turtle Soup!

We end our day on the tram that takes us around the grounds of the estate so we can see all the various sorts of gardens created by H.F. du Pont. These gardens are really more like areas than gardens...he chose particular areas to plant specific types of plants...like an azalea garden, or an area jammed with different kinds of bulbs. This is Ted, our tram driver and guide through the gardens...

Where we come from, this would not qualify as a garden, just a clump of evergreen trees...

After the open-air tram ride in nearly 100 degree temperatures with suffocating humidity we decide to head home and come back the next day to finish our perusal of the galleries. We head home for happy hour...

...then it's off to dinner for Italian! When the restaurant hostess asked us if we wanted to sit outside or inside, we didn't even pause to think...it feels like a pizza oven out there...!

To finish off the day we make a delicious stop at a local dairy farm that knows how to do ice cream...seriously good ice cream...and you eat it outside where you can smell the aroma of the cows who gave the cream!

As you can see in this photo, it is so humid this evening that the moon appears to be in a fog...

We returned to Winterthur the following day to take advantage of our two-day tickets, and to see the rest of the collection on display. On the drive home we took the scenic route and saw some quintessential rural northeastern scenery...a red covered bridge crossing a creek...

And this is a private train, operating on about four miles of track...and everyone on it seems to be in a great mood, they are all waving at us as we wait for them to pass...!

Another great day of seeing how the 1/10th of 1% lived back in the day...Combined with our last visit to Delaware when we saw our first du Pont home and gardens (Longwood, the 1,000 acre estate of Pierre du Pont, great grandson of E.I., ran du Pont Company and GM), we have now seen all but two of the du Pont family estates...we're still trying to get the family tree straight in our heads, so we'll save those for our next visit...

 

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Delaware and Du Ponts

June 28-29, 2012

Well, we've been home for four days, so it's time to hit the road again...! This time we're off to Delaware to visit Michael's aunt and uncle John and Mary Helen. And we've timed our visit right...it's going to be in the 90's with humidity to match...thank God we did some training in Cambodia before we came here!

We've visited John and Mary Helen before, and they are wonderful hosts...we always see new and interesting sights, and of course we have great conversations (often over a glass of wine).

We arrived on Thursday evening and are informed by John that we have 9:00 AM tickets to see Nemours Mansion and Gardens, so we have a nice dinner and spend the evening catching up. Michael's cousin Matt stops by with his wife Lisa and son Jeremy, which made the evening even more enjoyable. Jeremy is seven years old, and made us all feel a little slow when he named all the U.S. presidents along with their place of birth...and then answered our extensive quiz about U.S. state capitals...!

Friday morning we get going and arrive at Nemours a little early. We find out that, due to a scheduling snafu, no one else was allowed to purchase tickets...so we get a private tour for just the four of us!

A little background on Nemours...well, that requires a little background on the du Pont family...which is a complex family tree, so we'll try to keep this simple. Pierre S. du Pont came to America from France after avoiding the guillotine (twice), and made his way to Delaware...even though his buddy Thomas Jefferson (whom he knew through their work together on the Louisiana Purchase) insisted he should live in Virginia. Pierre didn't succeed at much, but his son, E.I. du Pont, knew how to make gun powder and set up a powder mill on the banks of the Brandywine River in Wilmington, Delaware. That's how the fortune began, and the family fortune made its way down through the generations...which is a good way to get us to the Nemours story.

Nemours Mansion is the former estate of Alfred I. Du Pont, referred to in these parts as A.I., who was the great-great grandson of Pierre S. A.I. worked his way up in the powder business, and eventually became one of the three partners who owned the company. He had a tumultuous life, divorced his first wife, got shot in the eye while hunting, his second wife died young, he got kicked off the board of the du Pont company, got outmaneuvered for control of the du Pont company, sued and lost, went bankrupt, married his third wife, rebuilt his fortune (eventually owned 8% of Florida), started a children's hospital, established a foundation, and died at the not so old age of 70.

A.I. tried to convince his second wife how much he loved her by building a Versailles-like estate on 3,000 acres in Wilmington. The mansion itself is 47,000 square feet, and the footprint of the house is approximately one acre...and it has the most amazing amenities and furnishings inside the house.

We started our tour at the Visitors Center, and learned about A.I.'s life as a powderman, businessman and philanthropist. Then we begin our private tour...

We drive up to and through the Wimbledon Gates, and as we walk to the front door we get our first view of the magnificent layout of the estate...

We are not allowed to take photos inside the mansion, but we'll give you some of the highlights...the rooms are magnificent, many with gilt accents in the ceiling; there are large oil paintings of du Pont family members here and there; and many of the furnishings are quite historical in nature - George Washington's chair, or chairs from the coronation of one of England's kings, etc. - and yet the mansion feels like it was still a very livable family home.

The house has a receiving room, conservatory, huge dining room for 70 people, dens, studies and offices..all the necessities required by landed gentry like A.I. du Pont. Downstairs is for the men...full-on man cave...billiards room, locker room, bowling lanes, fitness room, movie theater, trophy room, and A.I.'s office.

Now, let's talk about the incredible array of state-of-the-art systems in this house...and remember, this was built in 1902...fully electrified, central heating, ammonia ice-making system (to keep the ice cream frozen), central vacuum system, internal bell system to call servants, elevators, internal phone system, and even a water carbonizing and bottling system. And all the major systems were redundant...two side-by-side systems to ensure full back-up...amazing.

From upstairs, we get a view of the formal garden, the reflecting pond, and the servants wing...A.I. du Pont took great pains to take care of his servants...putting cork floors into the kitchen and workspaces to make it easier on their legs, backs and feet...and tunnels to outlying buildings to keep them sheltered from bad weather...

Back outside after our tour inside, we get a chance to walk the estate. We make our way down to the colonnade...

There is a swimming pool with a fountain...the pool is one acre in area, so large that folks would use a row boat to get around it...it takes 800,000 gallons to fill the pool...And now we can look back at the mansion...

Beyond the swimming pool lies another maze garden with a statue of Triton as its centerpiece...this is gilt in 23 carat gold...!

Past the maze garden is the colonnade which creates the centerpoint in this long corridor of gardens, pools and statuary. The columns of the colonnade frame the top of the marble fountain that forms the wall of the sunken gardens.

The sunken gardens are cut into the landscape and the fountain features carved marble and bronze figures...

At the end of the sunken gardens lies another pond, beyond which lies the Temple of Love that houses a Dionysus statue by Rodin.

The grounds also include a carillon that houses the remains of A.I., his third wife, and his brother-in-law (who helped him rebuild his fortune)...and his dog...

Our last stop is the garages and chauffeur quarters...check out these cars...the first is a 1924 Cadillac that A.I. sent back to Cadillac in 1934 to be put on a new chassis and updated with all the new systems and options. There is also a Renault limo that he did the same thing with, and then two Rolls Royces, and a Buick coupe...the two-tone Rolls is one of four - one belongs to the Queen of England, one to Wayne Newton, and one to Elton John...

This tour really showed us how the real monied folks lived around the turn of the century...it also showed us that these folks had the same family dysfunction as the rest of us (or perhaps worse), as evidenced by the wall A.I. built around his property...look at the top of the wall...shards of glass embedded in the concrete cap..."to keep the rest of the du Ponts out..."

After lunch, we decide to see the source of the family fortune...the powder mill founded by E.I. du Pont. (E.I. is the son of Pierre S., the guy who avoided Robespierre and the guillotine) This mill sits on the banks of the very scenic Brandywine River which was selected because it could provide the power needed to prepare black powder.

The demonstration mill is still powered by water, and the tour guide opened the floodgates to get the mills started...

These stone buildings facing the river are where the powder was ground...they were built and fortified in such a way that any explosion would direct the force of the blast (and the unfortunate workers) across the river...

Here is an actual pair of eight ton grinding wheels, powered by water, working as they did one hundred years ago...

We also got a demonstration of how they test the explosive power of a batch of black powder...a small charge goes into a tube attached to a weighted wheel and is ignited...the amount of rotation of the wheel indicates the blasting effectiveness of the sample...

Up the hill from the mill is the house in which several members of the du Pont family lived as they oversaw the powder mill operation. The house was remodeled several times, including this art deco porch placed on top of the classical porch below...and this dedication to the du Ponts who lived here.

There is a small garage...this is no Nemours, but they do have this du Pont automobile...I've never seen one before, and did not realize that there was even a du Pont car company! Another interesting fact of history, the du Pont family were the majority shareholders in General Motors up until the 1950's...

On our way back to the shuttle bus that will take us back to the visitors center, we see another demonstration of how the du Ponts loved their dogs...here, above the mill site, there are three headstones, and they are not for the humans who lived (and died) here, they are for the the dogs the family had at different times...and take a look at the one on the left...a dog who lived at an explosive black powder mill operation - named Sparky!

What a day of du Ponts...but there is more to see...on Friday we go to see Winterthur, the home of another great-great grandson of Pierre S. du Pont...we've got to study the family tree a bit more...today we learned about Pierre S., E.I., A.I, Henry, and Henry A. Du Pont...tomorrow it will be Henry F.

 

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