740 Park Avenue and The Shelburne Museum

I love coincidences especially when they converge and can be connected into conspiracies. I love conspiracies. An entertaining TED talk (8 minutes long) takes the happenstance of coincidence to the height of conspiracy. But  here's what happened last week to me. We'll have to go around Webb's barn to get there, though.

We get our mail forwarded through Sioux Falls, SD. South Dakota is one of a few states that allow nomads like us to establish residence, register our vehicles, even register to vote. Oh, and they also: don't tax pensions, and don't have a state income tax or personal property tax. We would have to go there to establish more than a mail drop box with our own personal address and we are considering it. But for now, when we know that we are going to be in or near a central post office for a week or so, we go in and fill out a short form to register for General Delivery. Yes, Virginia, the United States Postal Service still has General Delivery service for people with no fixed address. (Isn't that how the newspapers often describe alleged perps, the homeless and drug addicts?) Having registered, we then call Sioux Falls and tell them to send our mail to that post office. We try to limit delivery to once a month.

The package of mail is sent in a Priority Mail envelope so we can track it from South Dakota right into the Post Office where we will pick it up. Two weeks ago we got our second mail package. Along with some Medicare statements and other wasteful and redundent statements available online, we received  2 New Yorker issues. We thought we had specified that magazines were not to be forwarded since we were paying by weight as well as volume for the mail forwarded. When we called Sioux Falls, we were told our package was light and had room so they threw in the two New Yorkers.

I had quit the New Yorker cold turkey when we left. Fran kept her iPad subscription but I have never mastered the page swipe. (Is it up in the article and across to the next article?) So I just gave it up as I have logging onto a newspaper regularly. Don't know squat about what's happening in the world and proud of it! But here were these two issues so, before falling asleep, I reached for one. The first article was entitled:  A Word From Our Sponsor by Jane Mayer. Mayer's piece recounts the saga of an Alex Gibney documentary,  Park Avenue: Money, Power and The American Dream,  about the building at 740 Park Ave. in New York City and the residents who live there.

740 Park Ave built in 1932

Front Door

A net worth of $100 million is a very preliminary qualification for getting through that front door. Barbara Streisand, Neil Sedaka and Russian Oligarchs have been blackballed.

John Thane, Ronald Lauder, David Granek, David Koch, Vera Wang
just to name a few

There is even a book about the building. And if you become addicted  to the soap opera which is life in the building,  Michael Gross, the undisputed master of shelter porn, will keep you up to date.

To make short work of Mayer's piece: One of the themes of Gibney's film is that the rich are rigging the game. Shocked, are you? When the rough cut was finished, certain residents of the building, most notably David Koch, allegedly were not happy. Koch is on the board of WNET, the PBS station in NYC. Shortly thereafter WNET and the producers, ITVS, pulled the plug.

I put the New Yorker aside after this one article.  Money talks. Tell me something I don't know.  So there goes Mr. Rogers' Neighbor. I hope Bert and Ernie get married soon while they both still have jobs and, I assume, health insurance. (Do puppets get residuals?) I had forgotten that the media sell conflict and confrontation. Anger and outrage mean profits. So as Candide might say, "Excellently observed...but let us go and cultivate our garden."

For me that meant a scheduled visit to Shelburne Museum. We had passed it several times on our way to and from Burlington from Button Bay. I had refrained from going because I assumed it was one of those hokey places where people dress up in period costumes and spout the party line. It's not! It is a tapas bar of a museum. A smorgasbord. A meze feast. I ended up spending most of two days there and still only enjoyed less than half of what is on offer.

Map of the grounds of the Shelburne Museum

The Museum was founded by Electra Havemeyer Webb. Her life long passion for collecting included, among many other collections,  dolls, Impressionism and early American buildings, some 22 of which she purchased from around New England and moved to Shelburne. 

Electra and her mother by Mary Cassatt

Electra on the Carousel

Electra and her dogs

The beauty of the museum lies in the fact that each building contains a collection or part thereof.  For example: The Round Barn (East Passumpsic, VT 1901) contains a collection of horse-drawn vehicles. Now, the antecedents to the automobile were not of burning interest to me but my brief tour of the barn elicited more interest from me than I would ever had expected.

Coach with leather suspension which made for a smoother ride

Any early food truck selling popcorn

   

Hearse with an actual woven wicker casket

Perhaps the magic of the museum lies in the fact that no single part is overwhelming. Take the Webb Gallery, for instance. It was constructed on site in 1965 and consists of an entry hall and three rooms. Currenty there is an exhibit of the works of N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth and Jamie Wyeth, each occupying one of the rooms. A half hour tour of the three rooms with the informative commentary of a docent both wet my appetite for the Wyeths and sated it, at least temporarily.

One final example of the conceptual brilliance of Shelburne is the 518 foot long, horseshoe shaped circus building erected in 1965.

The horseshoe Circus Building on a postcard

The natural cedar building houses three collections and is itself the backdrop for a working carousel and  a most magnificent stepped garden including a very extensive collection of day lilies.

Profusion of day lilies necklace the Circus Building

Within the horseshoe is the collection of circus posters, restored carousel animals, a hand carved three ring circus and a to-scale circus parade that must be 400' long. After a half hour of total immersion in the aura and ethos of the circus, I had a just of glimmer of what the coming of the circus with all of the exoticism must have meant in rural America.

Circus Day is gone from the American Scene

Three ring circus of more than 4,000 pieces carved with a pen knife

The Sudan Tableau pulled by 16 camels

There is one building, though that is a little different from the rest.

Electra Havemeyer Webb Memorial Building 

The building was erected on site and modeled after one of Electra Webb's favorite Vermont houses. When you enter the dimly lit foyer you are met by a docent who informs you that you are no longer in Vermont.

You are at 740 Park Avenue in New York City. The Webb's lived here from 1932 to 1960. Seven of the eighteen rooms of the three story penthouse have been moved and installed here.  Everything here is original with the exception of the Tiffany room.

Living Room at 740 Park

A half-dozen Manets, a Corot and a couple of reputed Rembrandts a living room doth make.

As I left 740 Park Avenue I recrossed the grounds to take another look at the Ticonderoga.

The Champlain Lake Steamer Ticonderoga

The video on the ship testifies to the feat of engineering it took to move the 220 foot, 892 ton vessel from Lake Champlain, two miles over land and up a hill, to a hollow on a hillside in Shelburne. The video makes no mention of how much it cost. In fact, Shelburne Museum is so tastefully done that the question of cost never crossed my mind while I was there.

I can only observe that, at the least, this previous resident of 740 Park Avenue somehow seems far less objectionable to me than all of the current ones. Now, let us go and cultivate our garden.