text: Old Long Island: 'Caumsett' Interiors
  'Caumsett' Interiors
  Some 1927 interiors to 'Caumsett', the Marshall Field III estate designed by John Russell Pope c. 1920 in Lloyd Harbor. Click HERE for more and to see 'Caumsett' as it looks today. Pictures from the Library of Congress.
  Labels: Caumsett, John Russell Pope, Lloyd Harbor
  now these are interiors! all the space and i especially like all the different round topped wall niches in almost every room. this place is stylish but the furniture looks comfortable without slipping into dowdiness. the rooms are large, grand, elegant with great drapes, fireplaces, killer library and that great corner cupboard. thanks, zach.
  security word def - "whest" - a failed attempt to make the compass more compact by combining east and west
  January 05, 2011 8:23 AM
  John Russell Pope was truly a master of grand residential scale as these interiors indicate. What a great house. And the ceiling heights of the principal rooms are perfection to my mind.
  January 05, 2011 8:46 AM
  And now for the dissenting opinion. I've always thought that these rooms, even for a grand country house, always had a sort of empty quality---nicely furnished, simply detailed, but they're scaled up to such large proportions. For once, I could do with some beefier moldings and furnishings (inconsistency is the spice of life, so what if this contradicts other things I've said in the past?)
  January 05, 2011 9:24 AM
  These rooms are beautiful! I especially love the chandeliers.
  January 05, 2011 9:51 AM
  Intriguing to follow your link to the 2008 article you'd previously posted. The modestly handsome "Winter House" seems scaled down to everyday standards of today; what does Winter House imply, I'm of too pedestrian a background to understand the implications of such a dwelling on property. Is it to be taken literally, this is where they went to get out of the drafts of the manor house? How about that comment posted from the child of the polo master who grew up in staff quarters of the stable and remembered Caumsett in its hey day, fascinating.
  January 05, 2011 11:06 AM
  I think the idea behind a winter house is that it was less costly to heat and maintain than the big house and often a winter house might be used only on an occasional weekend, so it was not worth keeping the main house open and staffed.
  All the American Mansions tried to model themselves on the English and European lifestyles. In the much older European houses, they were not well insulated or equipped with modern facilities to endure a cold winter, unlike the newer most technologically advanced American houses. But many of these families had numerous homes throughout the country and world, for various seasons.
  It's so hard to judge these rooms in black and white. (I have to keep reminding myself that there was almost certainly quite a lot of color, and that, as much as the proportions, defined the spirit of the rooms. Think, for instance, of the b&w pictures of Mirador, done about the same time, as compared to the color watercolors showing the same rooms.)
  But why didn't they bother to have dining table re-assembled for the photo shoot?
  January 05, 2011 12:04 PM
  This place is heaven!! Thank you so much for these photos.
  January 05, 2011 12:53 PM
  When I was in grade school in the 70's we went there for an overnight field trip. I wonder which building it was that we all slept in.
  January 05, 2011 7:16 PM
  "But why didn't they bother to have dining table re-assembled for the photo shoot?"
  Exactly. These photos of Caumsett make me long for what Nancy Lancaster et al would introduce a couple of decades later, i.e. to layer perimeter elements gracefully up the wall, but shift the main decorating locus to the center of the room.
  Innovations look so easy after the fact, don't they.
  January 05, 2011 9:36 PM
  Flo, marvelous observation.
  Winter cottage is exactly that. A smaller cosier retreat for Winter visits. The best articles I've seen about Caumsett were a series in Country Life in the early 1930's, covering all aspects of the estate, its use and development.
  Security word 'endette'---the finish of a novella.
  Winter turns to Summer -
  http://wikimapia.org/#lat=40.9157665&lon=-73.4669065&z=18&l=0&m=b&show=/1861922/Caumsett-Summer-Cottage
  January 06, 2011 6:35 AM
  Like Tina stated, I went here for a 3 day nature excursion in grade school, 1990. The boys got to stay in the manor house & the girls stayed outside in sort of a tiny bunkhouse. Looking at these beautiful photos, I have such guilt for having run like a banshee through the main rooms! I remember being on KP one night, doing dinner dishes & felt so incredibly comfortable in that old kitchen! Stunning photos and what a wonderful site you've got here!
  Most of these rooms where removed after the alterations of the Ball Room and Servents wing. But i love this house and have been in it many times.