An Update on Two National Treasures

"The American landscape has no foreground and the American mind no background."
Edith Wharton

Last year I posted about the financial troubles at both The Mount, Edith Wharton's historic mansion as well as the Mark Twain House. There's reason to be optimistic on both fronts.

The Mount in snow, from The Mount's website.

The Mount's website is reporting that they have received over $1.3 million in gifts and pledges from around the world. These gifts have given the administrators of The Mount the ability to work with their creditors to reduce their debt and continue to work to draw more visitors to The Mount by expanding their mission to not only focus Edith Wharton as author, decorator, and gardner, but also focus on the broader topic of literature. As an added bonus they've added some new photos of The Mount at various seasons and showing things not previously covered on their website like this photo of the stables.

The Mark Twain House was struggling last September with dropping donations and visitors, caused in part by high gas prices, and the weight of over $20 million in debt taken on to build a beautiful (and modern) new visitor's center. Due in large part to the media attention the State of Connecticut donated $50,000 followed by a $500,000 gift from the Annenberg Foundation in addition to numerous gifts from individuals.

The Mark Twain House celebrated Christmas with Victorian Decorations and themed activities. If I was a bit closer this year I would have loved to have made a visit.

Victorian Christmas Tree at The Mark Twain House, from The Hartford Current.

I wish both of these house museums the best and urge you to contribute to these or another small museum in your area as they're really struggling during these difficult financial times. It's important to preserve these homes and the collections therein for future generations.

Tales from the Crypt

I know, it was a really horrible show in the 80s(?), but I thought that on Halloween the title was quite appropriate for this post dedicated to the beauty of the Cementario General in Santiago de Chile.

I'm a frequent cemetery visitor on vacation looking for the final resting places of local legends and perhaps even more so, just looking for a quiet place in the city to appreciate the unique beauty of grave markers and mausoleums. Cementario General can in some ways be likened to the more famous Recoletta Cemetery in Buenos Aires made even more famous as the final resting place of Eva Peron. Certainly at its best the statuary, mausoleums, and foliage are comparable; however, Recoletta is the domain of the very rich and important while Cementario General is the final resting place of over a million folks both rich and not so rich.

Here are a few pictures from a recent trip to Cementario General:

Anywhere but Chile this would be creepy as it looks an awful lot like a vulture, but it is a condor the national bird.

Two beautiful mausoleums on a high-end "street" in the cemetery. The wealthy like to be close to their own in life and in death.

A "new money" tree lined street. Cementario General is said to have more than 4,000 varieties of trees, including a number of orange trees (no one seemed to be interested in the free fruit).

Another Beautiful street, I'm always a fan of graves that include seating for the living. The very clean lines of the center mausoleum appealed to my minimalist side.

These mausoleums had a very 60s/70s style to them. Another common feature in the cemetery are these underground mausoleums with steps below grade. I'm not fond of the thought of walking down a flight of steps to a below-grade crypt to visit.

Angel statuary wasn't as common in Cementario General as it is in Recoletta though they had some beautiful seraphi.

Another that includes a clever planter.

This part of the cemetery was the "China Town" and included this amusing see no evil, hear no evil, say no evil statue. A good reminder to the living.

This grave was very touching. It now housed both the husband and wife. He outlived her for some time, I can imagine him standing in life looking at the memorial imagining their reunion.

This was perhaps the most touching memorial. Under a beautiful tree we both shed a tear when we rounded the corner and saw this lovely piece of sculpture.

Historic Homes Struggling with the Economy

"The lack of money is the root of all evil." ~ Mark Twain

CBS Sunday Morning had an excellent story this morning on the plight of house museums all over the country struggling with large debt and decreasing donations and visitors. I've posted in the past about The Mount (previous post), Edith Wharton's historic home which was again featured in this story along with several other notable homes.

In this post I wanted to call your attention to The Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford, CT. Financial problems are nothing new for the home. Twain had to sell it in 1903 due in large part to his own financial problems.

The Mark Twain House and Museum was the home of Mark Twain (a.k.a. Samuel Langhorne Clemens) from 1874 to 1891 in Hartford, Connecticut, USA. The architecture of the 19-room house is Victorian Gothic. Twain wrote The Gilded Age, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi, Huckleberry Finn, A Tramp Abroad and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court all while living in the home.

Here's an abbreviated history of the house after the Clemens sold it from the homes' website:
The house was privately owned until 1929 when the "Mark Twain Memorial and Library Commission" was chartered to restore and manage the Twain House.

In 1955, the mortgage was paid in full and the trustees began a 20 year restoration of the house to its former glory during the Clemens 17–year residency.

The Mark Twain House was given a National Historic Landmark designation in 1963.
A visitor's center and museum adjacet to the hosue was completed in 2003 at great expense, and is largely responsible for the current financial problems facing the museum, though the Robert A.M. Stern designed museum looks like a great building in its own right. It also has the distinction of being the first LEED certified museum in the country.


Please consider making a donation to this historic home, or one closer to where you live as they need our help.

I'm back (from Chile)

Pardon my extended absence, but the Mrs. and I just got back from a fantastic trip to Santiago, Chile. The country was specatular, the weather perfect, the people friendly, the wine stupendous, and the food, well nothing's perfect. Here are a few photos from our trip to inspire a trip south for the winter. Future posts with more cohesive themes upcoming.


A massive city of six million people is built in a long valley with the Andes to the West and the Chilean Coastal range to the East. This leads to a constant haze, particularly in the winter. Spring is just starting so the smog should be lessening soon.
The benefit of smog, if there is such a thing, is colorful sunsets. The sun set behind our hotel each night, but the light reflected off the snowy caps of the Andes was magnificent.

The old, this Church in Providencia, one of the 34 comunas (semi-autonomous districts within the city), represents some of the typical colonial architecture that can be seen throughout the older and more affluent parts of the city.
This skyscraper, also in Providencia, represents the new. There's a building boom going on in Santiago with new office towers (like this one), condo buildings, and infrastructure improvements everywhere. Santiago will soon be home to the tallest building in South America, it's currently up to the 26th of its 60+ floors.

A National Treasure Facing Foreclosure

Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope. ~ Edith Wharton

I came across a story on Luxist about the fate of Edith Wharton's home The Mount back in March. The home was facing foreclosure and a future that likely involved it becoming private property no longer open to the public. The fact that this Historic Landmark might be yet another victim of the mortgage meltdown was quite frightening.


I immediately went to their website and pledged what I could and was told that they wouldn't ask for any of the donor's to send in their pledges unless they were able to raise enough commitments to restructure their debt and keep The Mount open to the public.


On August 15th I received a letter asking that I submit my pledge as they received over $1 million in donations. They're still working on suring up the future of this great house museum, but for 2008 at least they are open and it appears that if they can continue to raise funds this can be at least one happy foreclosure story. They're still hoping to reach their goal of $3 million by the end of October, so please do what you can to not only give a little but raise awareness.


Please visit The Mount website and make a donation.


Wharton, the author of Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence, designed and built the house in 1902. She wrote over 40 books in 40 years, including authoritative works on architecture and gardens and was the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The Mount is one of the five percent of National Historic Landmarks dedicated to women. It only gets around 30,000 visitors a year but is a lovely and significant reminder of a more gracious era.



Wharton designed The Mount, built in 1902, and put into practice many of the principles she espoused in The Decoration of Houses, including an enormous first floor gallery and a bedroom suite that accommodated her writing. As a Wharton fan, I’ve wanted to visit The Mount, especially as it has been substantially restored to Wharton’s original plans. Below are a few picture's from The Mount's website.