Carolands
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Carolands, The | |
|---|---|
| (U.S. National Register of Historic Places) | |
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| Location: | Hillsborough, California |
| Coordinates: | |
| Built/Founded: | 1914 |
| Architect: | Sanson,Ernest; Polk,Willis |
| Architectural style(s): | Beaux-Arts |
| Added to NRHP: | October 21, 1975 |
| Reference #: | 75000478 [1] |
| Governing body: | Private |
The Carolands Chateau is a 65,000 square foot mansion in Hillsborough, California. Its 75-foot-high atrium holds the record as the largest enclosed space in an American private residence. Considered a masterpiece of American Renaissance and Beaux-Arts design, the building is a California Historical Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
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[edit] History
Built between 1914 and 1916 at a total cost of $3,000,000, The Carolands Chateau was at the time of its construction the second largest private residence in America, and the largest home west of the Mississippi. Paradoxically, it was lived in only briefly by its original owner, Harriet Pullman Carolan, heiress to the Pullman sleeping car fortune, who commissioned its design and paid for its construction.
Harriet Pullman Carolan, born in 1869, was the daughter of George Pullman, the 19th Century American industrialist, who became the wealthiest man in Chicago after creating the Pullman Palace railway car. Perhaps because her father was the very inventor of modern "luxury" or "first class" travel, Harriet Pullman came to expect perfection and beauty in her surroundings, and her particular tastes revolved around the French. The mansion originally occupied a 544 acre plot of land, situated at the highest local geographical point in order to "look down on the Hearsts and surpass the Crockers."
The Chateau exterior was inspired by the 17th century designs of Mansart. The project was executed by San Francisco architect Willis Polk, following plans commissioned by Mrs. Carolan from the Parisian architect Ernest Sanson, who was at the time one of the foremost designers of prestigious private homes in France and perhaps the world. Sanson, aged 76 and near the end of a long and distinguished career, never visited the California site. (Willis Polk, a distinguished American architect in his own right, was said to have chafed under the strict instruction of Mrs. Carolan to execute Sanson's French plans faithfully, despite the fact that they were intended for a different climate and notated in the metric system.) Only a portion of the magnificent landscape plans commissioned from leading French landscape architect Achilles Duchene were completed, probably due to cost.
It is often claimed that the Chateau was modeled after the French chateau Vaux-le-Vicomte, although the resemblance is remote apart from the shared circular room featured in both buildings (one of which was purchased by Mrs. Carolan intact from a 1760 Bordeaux residence). More accurately, it can be said that both share an authentic Beaux-Arts tradition, inspired by the court architecture of Louis XIV. The gardens on the original Carolans property were patterned after those at Versailles and originally consisted of 32,000 trees and shrubs, with plans for fountains, statues, and roadways.
The Chateau is occasionally called the "last of the great homes" in the U.S., a reference to a spree of mansion-building that began with the residence of W.K. Vanderbilt in 1881 and ended with Carolands, just after the national income tax was enacted in 1913. The Carolan marriage became embittered over quarrels concerning the building. In 1917, the Carolans separated and moved out of the Chateau; Harriet moved to the East Coast, Frank remained in California. After Frank's death in 1923, Harriet married Colonel Arthur Schermerhorn in 1925, and although the new couple briefly reinhabited the Chateau in the year 1927, it would remain essentially uninhabited for its first 29 years.
Harriet sold the home and surrounding 550 acres in 1946 for development. Life Magazine covered a charity event held in the house in 1947, which marked the first opportunity many San Francisco-area residents had to see its interiors; in 1948 the Burlingame High School Senior class held its prom at the Chateau, bringing the home to life in a glittering candlelight setting.
Countess Lillian Remillard Dandini, a San Francisco brick heiress (whose personal fortune derived from the re-building of San Francisco after the devastating 1906 earthquake), purchased the Carolands Chateau in 1950 and, in so doing, saved it from demolition by developers more interested in the land than in the historic architecture. The 23 years she lived in the chateau were a period of parties, of entertaining and being entertained. The Countess's generosity in sharing the house resulted in her receiving a "Woman of the Year" award from the city of Hillsborough. Sadly, when the Countess died in 1973, the Chateau was in greater risk of demolition than ever before. The Countess left the Chateau and its remaining 5.83 acres to the town of Hillsborough to be used as a French and Italian musical, artistic and literary cultural center. The Countess did not, unfortunately, leave an endowment to run such an undertaking. The city fathers ruled out any such use, saying they could not afford to pay the necessary maintenance expenses, and sold the building.
Oil and real estate heiress Roz Franks bought the Chateau in 1976 for $313,000, but lost title three years later to land developer George Benny in a legal battle. Benny in turn lost the property when he was indicted on racketeering charges in 1982. Robert Clayton offered to spend $10,000,000 to remodel the Chateau and use it as a corporate think tank, but the Hillsborough city fathers turned down the proposal on zoning grounds; the city's founding charter mandates a community of single-family residences.
In 1986 an Environmental Impact Report was conducted for a proposal to further subdivide the parcel and build additional homes thereon. The building suffered extensive (but mostly superficial) damage in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and demolition was again quietly considered. A 1991 Hillsborough Designer Showhouse revived local interest in the house, as well as a new debate on whether the home could be zoned to use as a multi-family residence or converted to alternate use. (The issue remains unresolved.)
in 1998, after many years of abandonment and neglect, the Chateau and its remaining acreage were purchased by Charles and (Dr.) Ann Johnson, of the Franklin Templeton fortune, for a purchase price just under $6 million. Dr. Johnson undertook an estimated $30 million or more worth of renovations to the mechanical systems, including asbestos removal, roof replacement, and extensive and scrupulous restoration of interiors and exteriors, which in large measure restored the building to the state originally intended by its architects. The building is of steel I-beam construction, with five-inch thick reinforced concrete floors, and while the concrete had weakened, the steel super structure remains intact. An additional $40 million might be required to bring to building to current structural code.[citation needed] Although the Caroland's walls look like large granite blocks, they are actually hollow, and made of expanded metal lath and plaster.
[edit] Design features
The Chateau's height exceeds 80 feet and presents a square shape, with four different chateau-like facades. A total of 98 rooms are enclosed by the four-and-one-half story Chateau. Some 70% of the building's volume is devoted to public and reception space. The building footprint occupies more than three-fourths of an acre, and is surrounded on three sides by a dry moat, which was originally used to discreetly service the home (designed for a live-in staff of 40). The basic construction of the Caroland Chateau is reinforced masonry.
The ground level houses the immense atrium, which rises the entire height of the building. There is a grand central staircase, which rises from the ground floor to reach the principal or second level. Also housed on the ground floor are a series of inconspicuous service rooms (kitchen, laundry, boiler), a walk-in silver vault, a pastry room, as well as a room originally dedicated to the cutting and arranging of flowers.
The principal level above contains large rooms primarily intended for entertaining: a ballroom (including a stage and, during the Dandini era, a puppet theatre), a 'State' dining room, where Harriet Pullman Carolan expected to entertain royalty invited to the 1915 Panama Pacific Exhibition (but who did not arrive, due to the war), and a panelled library (allegedly designed to exceed the dimensions of the Vanderbilt library at Biltmore). The third level is divided into seven bedroom suites, including two suites originally occupied by Harriet and Francis Carolan. Sandwiched between levels two and three is a hidden mezzanine, featuring walk-in dressing rooms and a built-in jewelry safe. The fourth level includes more than two dozen servants' rooms, minor guest bedrooms, and the rotunda. The fifth level comprises the light chamber over the entranceway. The Countess Dandini, who professed a fondness for orchids, used the glass-enclosed room as a greenhouse.
[edit] Trivia and additional information
- Historically, the Carolands Chateau has been known variously as: Carolands, Chateau Remillard, or locally as 'the Chateau.'
- Many of the homes of present-day Hillsborough — which, along with Belvedere and Atherton, is one of the wealthiest suburbs of San Francisco — were carved out of the former Carolands estate.
- In 1939, the U.S. Government evaluated the purchase of the Carolands Chateau to be used as a Western White House. It was considered again for this purpose during the Kennedy administration.
- During its years of abandonment in the 1970s and 1980s, the grounds and structure were visited by many local high school students who regarded it as "their" haunted house. In 1985, David Allen Raley, a security guard, kidnapped, tortured, and sexually assaulted two teenage women after giving them a private tour of the mansion. (He later killed one woman off-site.)
- A pornographic movie was made in the house in the early 1980s by a film crew which apparently managed to obtain access. The film, itself a rare collectible, is said to show some of the best motion picture photography in color of the Carolands interior before its recent restoration.
[edit] Current status
The Carolands Chateau remains a private single family residence on 5.83 acres, and has undergone an extensive restoration since 1998. It is occasionally opened for charity benefits and fundraisers.
A feature-length documentary film entitled "Three Women and a Chateau" tells the nearly 100-year history of the chateau. In 2006 the documentary had its world premier at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and was featured in seven other film festivals, winning Best Documentary (Grand Jury Award) at the Rhode Island International Film Festival.
[edit] References
- ^ National Register Information System. National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service (2006-03-15).
- California Department of Parks and Recreation, California Historical Landmarks (1981)
- California State Historic Building Code, California Senate Bill no. 2321, September, 1984
- C. Michael Hogan, Steven Wanat et al., Environmental Impact Report for the Poposed Nine Unit Subdivision at 565 Remillard Drive (Carolands Chateau Site), Hillsborough, prepared for the town of Hillsborough by Earth Metrics Inc, Burlingame, CA, January 15, 1986
- Chet Rhodes, The Doomed Chateau, San Francisco Chronicle, July, 1985
- John Horgan, Carolands Chateau may be Razed, Peninsula Times, June, 1985
