by Joseph Hayes
February 2009

The Morse Museum's new exhibition wing will showcase the glories of Louis Comfort Tiffany's Laurelton Hall

In 1902 artist, designer and businessman Louis Comfort Tiffany began construction on a multimillion dollar estate on the western shore of Cold Spring Harbor in Long Island, N.Y. He named it Laurelton Hall and designed every aspect of the 84-room house, from its copper roof to its furniture to the silverware on the dining room table. Taking three years to complete, it would become a testament to his immense and wide-ranging talent. It also was considered Tiffany's greatest work.

This spring the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art plans to begin construction of a permanent exhibition wing representing Laurelton Hall. The expansion of the Morse will add 12,200 square feet to the existing building and will display major aspects of Tiffany's estate, some never seen before in Winter Park. Approval by the City Commissionon Jan. 12 means that the $7 million project should be complete by spring of 2010.

Morse Museum Director Laurence J. Ruggiero wants the exhibit to establish a new degree of appreciation for the master's art. "WithTiffany," he said, "the first level of wisdom is the lamps and windows. The next level is his interiors." Tiffany and his design firm, Associated Artists, were commissioned by Mark Twain and the Vanderbilts, and decorated President Chester A. Arthur's White House.

"The ultimate wisdom is an appreciation of his workas an architect, designer and painter, where whole environments are created.Tiffany was 54 when Laurelton was started, and [he] had already reached a certain level of maturity. He considered this house as a legacy; it was the single most important thing he did," Ruggiero added.

Author and architectural historian Richard Guy Wilson calls Laurelton Hall "the most unusual modern design of the very early 20th century. Tiffany was obsessed with this house, he poured everything,including way too much money, into it." The 84-room estate included a ballroom, a theater complete with closets full of costumes, a bowling alley, rooms for displaying his collections of armor and Native American art, squash courts (later converted into a movie theater), workshops, stables and farmbuildings. Moving water was an important feature of the eight-level house,where a continuous stream flowed through outdoor and indoor fountains and open marble culverts, cascading over terraces and spraying from the mouth of a giant green enamel dragon.

"Tiffany was one of the great American artists," said Wilson, who holds the Commonwealth Professor's Chair in Architectural History at the University of Virginia and is known for his appearances onA&E Television's America's Castles. "We think of him as a decorative artist — lamps — but at the turn of the century he was one of the best-known American artists in the world, praised in Paris, England, Vienna, Italy — you didn't see any other American names of that caliber in Europe. He ranks with Frank Lloyd Wright in Chicago and the Greene & Greene Arts and Crafts designs in California."

Louis Comfort Tiffany's popularity ("Always Louie," Wilson said, "not Louis; he was French." ) hit its peak around 1905, when Laurelton was completed. But by the time the main building burned down in 1957, tastes had changed and his style had fallen outof favor. The stained-glass windows that are now so adored had to be rescued from the rubble, cracked and with their leading melted. The Morse's most intensive job is the preservation of those neglected masterpieces— parts of the Tiffany Chapel sat in the warehouse under slow restoration for 40 years. "The irony of it was interest in Tiffany's work was just reawakening. If the house had lasted 10 more years they might have made an effort to save it."

Oddly enough, for an artist known for exerting complete control over every aspect of his work, Tiffany recorded very little about the layout of the house. "Tiffany didn't keep a plan of where everything in the house was kept ... he had the house," said Ruggiero. "He expected it to last forever." The press always has been fascinated by Tiffany's homes, but while photos of the main public spaces abound — the fountain court, living room and dining room are heavily documented— almost nothing is known about the private areas of mansion. "We know they must have had them, but I have no idea what the bathrooms looked like" — there were 25 of them. The colors of bedspreads or drapes, where pieces of art were placed, and which bedroom was Tiffany's, all are mysteries. That missing knowledge elevates Laurelton to an almost mythological status.

Tiffany took the fundamental principles of Arts and Crafts — a unity of design, the totality and control of the environment— and added an Art Nouveau sensuality and an appreciation of the mystical. "There are so many levels to his work," Ruggiero said. "You can certainly appreciate the vases as a wonderful place to put flowers. But there's also a spiritual element, where he is seeking to lift you up. He was a great user of Islamic, Japanese, Spanish, Chinese, Spanish, exotic sources." He also paid attention to his designing peers; there were suggestions of Frank Lloyd Wright in some Laurelton window accents and hints of furniture maker Gustav Stickley in the woodwork.

"One of the things the Morse is so good at is presenting the complete work of the man," Wilson said. "Tiffany is a lot more complicated and complete, multidimensional, not just an item on atable."

Unlike many important museums, the Morse isn't isolated: It's nestled in the heart of downtown Winter Park. Scott Laurent Gallery has been a fixture on Park Avenue for more than 17 years, and art consultants Scott Alles and Laurent Nicastro consider the Morse a great benefit to the community. "It's unusual to have a world-class museum right across the street," Alles says. "People come in with the little museum sticker on their lapel, and I know they can appreciate what we offer." Nicastro sees direct connections between the Morse and his business. "We share the same vision: glass, lighting, handmade art. We can point people from a great master to someone who might be in a museum himself someday."

Jeannette Genius McKean opened the Morse at Rollins College in 1942 and named it for her grandfather. Her husband, Hugh F. McKean, served as museum director. It moved to East Welbourne Avenue in 1977, and it opened inits present location on Park Avenue in 1995. The last major renovation was the reconstruction of the Tiffany Chapel in 1999. Like Laurelton, the chapel is, in its way, a place to worship art. The intricacies and dimensions of the design,and inclusions of Buddhist, American Indian, Spanish and Islamic traditions,echo intimate holy places such as Sainte-Chapelle in France and Roslyn Chapel near Edinburgh, Scotland, with every surface covered with elaborate, sometimes hidden, symbols.

Laurelton Hall is the last element of the vision of Tiffany — and of the Morse museum founders — to be brought to life. The Morse's exhibits are stocked from its own massive collection, much of which is housed in a fabled warehouse in Winter Park, the contents of which still surprise the staff. Harold A. Ward III is chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Charles Hosmer Morse Foundation and the Elizabeth Morse Genius Foundation. "The Morse Museum is a continuing recognition of the generosity of Mr. and Mrs.McKean," Ward said. "It is quite unusual for a donor to give not only a world-class art collection and a building to house it, but also to provide the endowment necessary to operate and sustain it for the future." No items are borrowed from other museums, and no public funding is used to keepthe museum open.

The new wing will be behind the Tiffany Chapel, taking up an existing museum parking area along Canton Avenue.

A glass-enclosed courtyard will feature the Daffodil Terrace, eight faceted marble columns topped with bouquets of yellow daffodils crafted in glass, which has never been seen in Winter Park. Visitors walking through the exhibit entrance will first see the terrace, a water feature from the mansion's Fountain Court, then the Laurelton Hall dining room, including the complete table and chair set, a marble mantel and a domed leaded-glass chandelier.

In 2006 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York opened a six-month exhibit of Laurelton's Daffodil Terrace and dining room, culled from the Met's collection and more than 100 works lent by the Morse. About 325,000 people visited the show. "We were always going to do the exhibit of Laurelton," Ruggiero said. "The Met show gave us an excuse to do conservation work on pieces that, up until then, had been mysterious things in boxes."

"We're not rebuilding Laurelton; we're creating a sympathetic environment. We want to provide a sense of what the building looked like," he added. Some pieces, such as the fireplace andthe wooden coffered ceiling of the terrace, have not been seen by the public since Laurelton was briefly open for tours in 1935.

The design of the new wing echoes the existing, utilitarian style of the existing building. "It was Tiffany's idea that the outside of a place like this be plain, but the inside would lift you up from the world," said Ruggiero. Construction will not interrupt daily museum activity, and when completed in 2010, visitors will see a complete depiction of Tiffany's ideas, from the well-known lamps, to the inspiring Chapel, and then to Laurelton.

Author/historian Wilson expects the expanded museum to be a winner. "Laurelton was like walking into a Tiffany window, a total world. I've watched people walk into the chapel and their jaws drop. This will be the same thing when they walk into this exhibit. Art isn't just what you hang on the wall."

Joseph Hayes writes about music, travel, food and the arts for worldwide publications both print and online. A native New Yorker, Joseph is an award-winning playwright and trained chef, in his "spare" time produces an annual festival of new jazz in Orlando.

Laurelton Hall: Monument To Tiffany's Artistry

Tiffany's grand estate, Laurelton Hall, was built in the village of Laurel Hollow on New York's Long Island. The project, estimated at $2 million, began in 1902 and took three years to complete. The house, ironically considering its final fate, was built on the foundation of the Hotel Laurelton, which burned in 1900. In addition to 60 acres of meticulous landscaping, tons of sand were brought in to extend the beach, held up by a concrete wall. The beach was so contentious that at one point angry villagers marched through the estate with flaming torches to reclaim their access rights.Tiffany supposedly dynamited the barrier rather than give up his beach.

In 1918 he established the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and deeded to it his entire collection of paintings, glass and art objects, the house and 80 acres, along with $1 million for the purpose of training artists. The Tiffany Foundation briefly opened the house to thepublic, and during World War II the foundation lent its buildings to the United States Navy for secret camouflage testing. In 1949 the foundation, no longerable to afford its upkeep, auctioned the contents and sold Laurelton for $10,000 to a private owner, who never actually lived in it. Preliminary plans were afoot to turn the empty main house into a school when fire gutted it in 1957. Hugh McKean, a one-time student at Laurelton, was able to salvage windows and furniture from the ruins for the collection at the Morse. Now little remains on the grounds of Tiffany's masterpiece, save a minaret and disused clock tower.

Fire seems to follow the works of Tiffany. A floor-to-ceiling stained-glass screen built for Chester A. Arthur's White House was ordered destroyed by Theodore Roosevelt in 1901. It was instead auctioned for $275 and installed in the Belvedere Hotel in Chesapeake Beach, Md. that burned in 1923.

Tiffany died in 1933 of pneumonia and is buried inGreen-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, coincidentally the final resting place of telegraph inventor Samuel Morse, a relative of Charles Hosmer Morse. Morse, inturn, was the grandfather of museum founder Jeannette Genius McKean.

Arts and Crafts exhibit to open at Morse

"The Virtues of Simplicity — American Arts and Crafts" opens Feb. 17. More than 50 examples of the American arm of the movement, including works by Frank Lloyd Wright, Gustav Stickley and the Roycrofters Guild, will be on long-term display. American Arts and Crafts stressed the value of the craftsman, local materials and simple, natural forms. Museum Director Laurence J. Ruggiero says that Arts and Crafts, at its height between 1880 and 1910, coincided with Tiffany's popularity. "It was part of the same end-of-century impulse to return design from the excessive influence of science and technology." The exhibit will showcase the regional differences that the movement exemplified, showing how local guilds and craftsmen reflected their environment. Jennifer Perry Thalheimer, collection manager at the Morse, equates arts and crafts to an American story of rebirth. "When Chicago wasrecovering after the devastating fire of 1871, people like Wright and Stickley had an opportunity to rebuild from the ground up. And Charles Morse was right there." Osceola Lodge, Morse's home in Winter Park, near the Rollins campus, still reflects the Arts and Crafts sensibility as he designed it in 1905. Details: 407.645.5311 or morsemuseum.org