LIFE

A return to the gilded age in Philly

Renee Winkler
For the Courier-Post
These side chairs were designed by Benjamin Henry Latrobe and decorated by George Bridgport. The Walns  commissioned Latrobe to design furniture for two drawing rooms. The chairs are basically Klismos chairs, featuring curved backrests and tapering outcurved legs

Furniture can be a place to rest or wait, to hold a glass or a book, or frequently today, to drop your car keys.

In Philadelphia as the 18th century moved into the 19th, furniture was part of what helped make the city become known as the Athens of America.

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One Philadelphia couple, William Waln and his new wife Mary, took steps to use available craftsmen to turn their home, especially the drawing room, into a glittering showcase of wealth.

Through Jan. 1, a collection of chair, settees, sideboards, and tables commissioned by Waln in the first decade of the 1800s to show off style and status, will be on display in two galleries of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The museum owns 10 of the 21 pieces of drawing room furniture owned by the Walns. Painstakenly cleaned and restored over six years by the museum's curators and now again aglow with gold leaf, sumptuous fabrics and hand-made trim, the pieces are a time capsule of what life was like among the really rich of the day.

One display area shows pieces placed in front of darkly painted walls, a giant step away from wallpaper used in almost all society homes of the time.

Another staging demonstrates how lighting – sunlight through candlelight -- throughout the day would affect the color and reflections from the gilded wood and mirror.

The architect of the Waln house, built at 7th and Chestnut streets when it was becoming the hot spot for upwardly mobile merchants, was Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Latrobe was born in Britain where it was not uncommon for architects to carry out their housing themes by designing its furniture.

Latrobe turned to cabinetmaker John Aitken, born in Scotland but living in the same block as Waln by 1790, to carve and assemble the pieces. They were upholstered by John Rea, whose shop also was in the area.

These are the surviving 10 pieces of furniture designed by Benjamin Henry  Latrobe and decorated by George Bridgport for the  Waln family drawing rooms.

George Bridport suggested the use of large blocks of color on the walls and decorative ornaments borrowed from Greek and Roman art and architecture. Bridport,who is credited with painting the furniture, was directed by Latrobe to work with Rea on additional decorative touches like wall hangings and window treatments. He also relied on theatrical set designer Charles Heathcote  Tatham for design inspiration.

According to a book written as a guide for the “Classical Splendor” exhibit  by its curators Alexandra Alevizatos   Kirtley and Peggy A. Olley, the Walns paid special attention to their sprawling  drawing and dining room space because they “hoped to entertain the socially suave...who would come to drink tea, coffee, and spirituous punch, each ice cream and cakes, dance, listen to musical performances, and mingle with polite society.”

Alas, the Waln fortunes fell. Waln, who had made his fortune trading with China, lost it in the Panic of 1819 and the house and its furnishing were sold at auction. An advertisement for the sale referred to the “splendid furniture of a ruined gentlemen.”

Furniture from the drawing room, described by Timothy Rub, CEO of the Philadelphia Museum of Art , “like an apartment in an Eastern fairy tale,” was split among buyers, shipped to Chicago, New Orleans and other Southern American cities.

Two of the Waln chairs “came to” the museum in 1935, Rub said; four more chairs, the sideboard, sofa and card table, arrived in 1986, and a final chair  in 1991.

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Some of the items have been on display previously but never in the restored condition they are today.

The house built for Waln was destroyed by fire in 1851. By then Chestnut Street was mainly a commercial district.

A close-up view of a sideboard from the Waln drawing rooms.

The chairs are basically Klismos chairs, featuring curved backrests and tapering outcurved legs. Some of the Waln chairs are made of tulip poplar and oak, others of maple and oak, some of mahogany and ash. They were painted black, adorned with gold leaf and red and yellow paint. Curators were uncertain of the cushion colors and made all but one in gold. The remaining chair has a red pillow, and visitors are asked to think about which would have been in place in the drawing room.  The mattress on the sofa and its bolsters are stuffed with horsehair.

Fringe under the seat rails was made by museum seamstress Beth Paolini, who said each tassel took six or seven hours to complete.

The Waln House is depicted in a small watercolor by American artist Richard Hovenden Kern (1821-1853). It was located on the southeast corner of Chestnut and Seventh streets. Demolished in 1847, te grand mansion is known only through this painting and the Latrobe suite of furniture, and some documents and written accounts.

Recalling The Gilded Age

A full century after Philadelphia's Waln family opened their home to show off furniture rich with gold leaf, America entered an era that became known as the Gilded Age.

Lasting only three decades, beginning as the Reconstruction slowed after the Civil War,  the era was marked by show-off robber barons who controlled not only banking interests but the national government. The term “gilded age” was coined by Mark Twain, who wrote satirically about the problems of a swelling population masked by a thin sheet of gold.

Many of the social issues facing America at the tail end of the 19th century are those driving politics and business today, said Dr. John L. Pesda, director of the Center for Civic Leadership and Responsibility at Camden County College.

This semester, through December, Pesda is leading a weekly class on the Gilded Age. Six of the Wednesday night sessions at the school's Blackwood campus feature nationally known speakers who will talk about the highs and lows of that time.

Pesda admits he jumped the gun a bit on the semester-long program, initially thinking it could coincide with a network series to be written and directed by Julian Fellows, the creator of the popular "Downton Abbey'' programs broadcast for six years on PBS stations. That series now is in the planning stages to be shown by NBC in the 2017-18 program year.

While the country's middle class was established in the 1870s and 1880s, the problems of the poor escalated.

“Was all the economic development worth it for the average person?” Pesda asks his class, filled mainly with retirees and some undergraduates.

“Many found better jobs in management, or as foremen in factories, but overall people who had provided items for purchase lost their jobs. Look just at the shoe-making business. It had been a craft, but now shoes were made in factories, where machines could make maybe 500 pairs of shoes. The craft was gone,” said Pesda.

Americans had such strong concerns about immigration, much like today, that the government was pushed to create strong limits on immigration, especially restricting entrance to America to all but the United Kingdom and Northern Europe, said Pesda.

Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764-1820) is shown in this oil on canvas by Rembrandt Peale, c. 1815.

“Many of the disparaging remarks made about new residents from Central America are the same as we hear today. At that time, Americans thought people from Italy were anarchists, and those from Eastern Europe were Marxists,” he said.

The government had no controls over workplace safety, women were exploited if they worked, and strong conflicts developed with the growth of labor unions, said Pesda of the time.

Racial problems escalated, especially with blacks and Asians, and the titans of industry wanted no involvement by government into their businesses, whether they were railroads or steel. Government corruption was rampant during the time and political parties gained control over the everyday operation of the business of running cities, said Pesda.

Speakers for the lectures come from universities and museums and include the growth of cities, the explosion of culture, class relationships in the home and appropriate dress for middle class women during the Gilded Age. A listing of lectures, all of which are free and open to the public, can be found at www.camdencc.edu/civiccenter. Registration for the lectures, in Civic Hall at the Blackwood campus, is suggested but is not required.

The Center for Civic Leadership and Responsibility has been operating at Camden County College for 25 years. Various five-session classes are scheduled both at the Blackwood and Cherry Hill campuses of the college.

There is a $50 fee for participation in the programs for the entire school year, which continues through August. Registration is required. For the first time, several of the classes have been filled this semester and some second sessions have been scheduled and also filled, including a five-week session on Broadway and  Alexander Hamilton.

A second series of five-session programs begins in November and includes the Black Death, controversial personalities and events during the Civil War, the American Presidency from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln, and a study of popular writing during the Gilded Age.

If you go

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is at 2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway at Kelly Drive. "Classical Splendor: Painted Furniture for a Grand Philadelphia House'' is on exhibit through Jan. 1.

The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Wednesday and Friday evenings until 8:45 p.m.

Admission is $20 for adults; $18 for seniors; $14 for students with ID and youth 13 to 18. Children 12 and under are free. Discounted tickets are available online.

Visit www.philamuseum.org or call (215) 763-8100.