215 E. 79 St.
Stone-blossom, Clinton, NJ 08809, USA (40.65216, -74.92672)
Haymeadows, Wescott Preserve, Raven Rock Rosemont Rd, Stockton, NJ 08559, USA (40.4265, -75.01584)
Buried: in the small farmer's graveyard hidden behind a rock wall and trees at the farm at Haymeadows (New Jersey) (ashes)
Find A Grave Memorial# 150409173
Glenway Wescott was an American novelist and an important figure in the American expatriate literary community in Paris during the 1920s. Upon receiving a small printing press as a gift from his father, Monroe Wheeler began producing chapbooks of poetry under the imprint, Manikin Press. One of his first works was The Bitterns, a collection of poems by Wescott, whom he had met at the University of Chicago in 1919 and who would become Wheeler's long-time companion. 1927 brought a new challenge to their pairing: George Platt Lynes fell passionately in love with the strikingly good-looking Wheeler. Wheeler, for his part, was entranced by Lynes's "full, luscious mouth and his wasp like waist." The ménage a trois ended in February 1943 when Lynes moved out of the apartment that the three men shared, thus bringing to a close one of the longer chapters that supplemented the sixty-plus years relationship between Wescott and Wheeler. Lynes would eventually succumb to cancer in 1955 at the age of 48. Wheeler died in 1988 at the age of 89, 18 months after the death of Wescott.
Together from 1919 to 1987: 68 years.
Glenway Wescott (April 11, 1901 – February 22, 1987)
Monroe Wheeler (February 13, 1899 - August 14, 1988)
Days of Love edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1500563325
ISBN-10: 1500563323
Release Date: September 21, 2014
CreateSpace Store: https://www.createspace.com/4910282
Amazon (print): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1500563323/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
Amazon (kindle): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MZG0VHY/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
In 1936 Lloyd Wescott purchased a 1,000-acre (4.0 km2) dairy farm along the Mulhocaway Creek in Union Township near Clinton in Hunterdon County, New Jersey. Mulhocaway Farm, as it was known, became the headquarters for the Artificial Breeding Association, a pioneer in the artificial insemination of dairy cows. Glenway Wescott along with Monroe Wheeler and George Platt Lynes took over one of the farmhand houses and called it Stone-Blossom. In the 1950s, Mulhocaway Farm was acquired by the State of New Jersey under eminent domain in order to create the Spruce Run Reservoir.
Address: Clinton, NJ 08809, USA (40.65216, -74.92672)
Type: Historic Street (open to public)
National Register of Historic Places: Clinton Historic District (Roughly, along Center, W. Main, Main, E. Main, Halstead, Water, Leigh (Library) and Lower Center Sts.), 95001101, 1995
Place
Clinton is a town in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, located on the South Branch of the Raritan River. As of the 2010 United States Census, the town’s population was 2,719, reflecting an increase of 87 (+3.3%) from the 2,632 counted in the 2000 Census, which had in turn increased by 578 (+28.1%) from the 2,054 counted in the 1990 Census. When the Clinton post office was established in 1829, it was named for DeWitt Clinton, Governor of New York and the primary impetus behind the then-newly completed Erie Canal. Clinton was incorporated as a town by an act of the New Jersey Legislature on April 5, 1865, within portions of Clinton, Franklin and Union Townships. Clinton gained full independence from its three parent townships in 1895. The town is perhaps best known for its two mills which sit on opposite banks of the South Branch Raritan River. The Red Mill, with its historic village, dates back to 1810 with the development of a mill for wool processing. Across the river sits the Stone Mill, home of the Hunterdon Art Museum for Contemporary Craft and Design, located in a former gristmill that had been reconstructed in 1836 and operated continuously until 1936. In 1952, a group of local residents conceived of a plan to convert the historic building into an art museum, which is still in operation today.
Life
Who: Glenway Wescott (April 11, 1901 – February 22, 1987), Monroe Wheeler (1899-1988) and George Platt Lynes (April 15, 1907 – December 6, 1955)
The Elizabethtown Water Company of New Jersey was first drawn to the idea of building a reservoir at the confluence of Spruce Run and Mulhockaway Creek just before 1929. Land speculators bought almost 2,100 acres in anticipation of selling it to the water company, but the Great Depression waylaid everybody’s plans. The state acquired 1,500 acres to build a game preserve, and in 1936, the remaining 600 acres went to Lloyd Wescott and his wife Barbara for $70 an acre. After they moved into their red clapboard farmhouse, the Wescotts restored the old farm buildings and built new metal barns. Farm tenants lived close to each of three complexes of cow barns. Lloyd’s brother, Glenway Wescott, parents and other relatives lived in other separate homes on the property, which he called Mulhocaway Farm (intentionally spelled differently from the name of the creek.) The Westcotts intended to breed healthy livestock, and when the Hunterdon County Board of Agriculture was introduced to the concept of artificial breeding of dairy cattle, Lloyd proposed to construct housing for Guernsey bulls. The farm’s facility became the first artificial insemination station in the country. The old colonial house was refurnished by the Wescotts and given the romantic name Stone-blossom by Glenway Wescott. George Platt Lynes wrote to Katherine Anne Porter in 1938: “You would never know Stone-blossom. There is an acre of lawn, and a little newly-planted flower garden, and there are new stone walls and new trees. Why aren’t you here?” The three men were to remain together in New York and at Stone-blossom until 1943, when George ended his relationship with Monroe Wheeler and moved out. In 1956, the State of New Jersey revived the plan for a reservoir in the fertile valley. The Westcotts negotiated a selling price and relocated to another farm in Delaware Township in 1959, considering the move a blessing since the structures and equipment had become obsolete. Theirs was the only farm to be inundated by water from Spruce Run Creek.
Conversation Piece (Monroe Wheeler, Glenway Wescott and George Platt Lynes). Paul Cadmus Stone Blossom in the background
Queer Places, Vol. 1 edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1532901904
ISBN-10: 1532901909
Release Date: July 24, 2016
CreateSpace Store: https://www.createspace.com/6228297
Amazon (print): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1532901909/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
Amazon (kindle): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IZ1BU9K/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
Immediately after the death of her father, Alice Delamar rented a house on Park Avenue 270.
Address: Park Ave, New York, NY 10017, USA
Type: Private Property
Place
Park Avenue is a wide New York City boulevard which carries north and southbound traffic in the borough of Manhattan, and is also a wide one-way pair in the Bronx. For most of the road’s length in Manhattan, it runs parallel to Madison Avenue to the west and Lexington Avenue to the east. Park Avenue’s entire length was formerly called Fourth Avenue; the title still applies below 14th Street. Meanwhile, the section between 14th and 17th Street is called Union Square East, and between 17th and 32nd Streets, the name Park Avenue South is used. In the Bronx, Park Avenue runs in several segments between the Major Deegan Expressway and Fordham Road.
Notable queer residents at Park Avenue:
- No. 270: real estate titan Dr. Charles V. Paterno formed the Vanderbilt Av. Realty Corp. and commissioned the architectural firm of Warren & Wetmore to design a massive U-shaped neo-Renaissance building. Paterno envisioned two distinct sections—the mansion-like apartments that took the address 270 Park Avenue, and the apartment hotel that used the name Hotel Marguery. The residents would share a 70 by 275 foot garden with a private drive. As the restrained brick and stone structure rose, Manhattan millionaires rushed to take apartments. Construction was completed, as predicted, in the fall of 1917, at a cost of around $8 million, exclusive of the land. Twelve stories tall, there were 20 acres of floor space divided into 108 apartments. Deemed the “largest apartment building in the world,” a Dec. 1917 advertisement counted “1,536 living rooms; 1,476 closets; 100 kitchens; 100 sculleries.” Potential residents could choose apartments of 6 to 10 rooms with three or four baths, at an annual rent of $4000 to $6500. Larger apartments, from 12 to 19 rooms with four to six baths, would cost $7000 to $15000. The highest rent would be equivalent to about $23,000 per month in 2015. The moneyed residents could enjoy the convenience of the downstairs restaurant, run by the Ritz-Carlton restaurant. Rudolph Guglielmi had a spacious apartment in the building in Nov. 1925 when he applied for United States citizenship. Better known to American audiences by his screen name, Rudolph Valentino, the movie star had to dodge a battery of questions. His failure to do military service during the war was brought up—he explained it was due to “a slight defect in the vision of his left eye.” The Italian Government had listed him “as a slacker.” The New York Times reported that “it was discovered to be an error which was later corrected.” Then there was the question about why Valentine’s wife, Winifred, was living on 96th Street and not in the Park Avenue apartment. “Mrs. Valentino said that the only issue between her husband and herself was that he wished her to give up all business and settle down into home life, and this she would not do.” The 1920s saw the comings and goings of other internationally-known names. In 1926 Queen Marie of Romania stayed briefly in the apartment of Ira Norris; and a year later Charles Lindbergh’s family, including his mother, stayed at No. 270 Park Avenue following his triumphant June 1927 return from Europe. Acclaimed stage actress Gertrude Lawrence (rumoured to be the lover of Daphne du Marier) took an apartment in 1929. No. 270 Park Avenue occupied the entire block between Madison Avenue and 47th and 48th Street. The 12-storey complex containing 108 suites in two separate sections, which were connected by the architects by two triumphal arches over the Vander Bild Avenue. Alice DeLamar rented the largest apartment. The apartment building stood near the Delamar Mansion, which had to be sold. An American magazine, the St. Louis Star “told” the adventures of Prince Carol of Romania (future Carol II of Romania, son of Marie of Romania) overcome by love for the fair miss De la Mar, offering his heart and his titles, but without achieving the desired result. Miss De la Mar told in a few words: “I did not want to marry the prince because I didn’t love him. I own $10 million and if I want to marry then I do not wish to give up my freedom to marry without love." The prince wrote: "The American press blew the rumor that I came to America to find a rich woman. The Daily News even picked a few candidates ahead of me: Miss Millicent Rogers, Miss Abby Rockefeller and Miss Alice Lamar." King Carol II ruled from 1930 to 1940. Carol is more known for his amorous adventures than for his way of ruling: in it, he does not seem to have excelled. In 1920 Alice Delamar moved into a beautiful house on Sunset Boulevard in Palm Beach. The inherited house of Pembroke was sold a few years later. The auction took place on August 16, 1924 in the Great Reception Hall of Pembroke. On June 24, 1947 plans were filed by architects Harrison & Abramovitz for the more than $21 million Time Life Building. The Hotel Marguery, once the largest apartment building in the world, and its astonishingly colorful history, was soon bulldozed. In 1971, Alice wrote that the complex has long been demolished. Today the site is occupied by the JP Morgan Chase Tower, constructed in 1960 and designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
- No. 410: Monroe Wheeler and Glenway Wescott’s latest apartment was in a very grand building at 410 Park Avenue, and they gave a large party for their friend. Maugham enjoyed the gathering, but when their upstairs neighbour Marlene Dietrich appeared, he felt upstaged and left. By the late 40s, Monroe Wheeler was a high profile New Yorker. His full-page portrait appeared in the Nov. 1948 issue of Vogue. At his parties at 410 Park Avenue were such celebrities as Cecil Beaton, Francis Bacon, Ben Shahn, Gore Vidal, and Christopher Isherwood. Among the regulars were Paul Cadmus, Marianne Moore, Katherine Anne Porter, Pavel Tchelitchew and Charles Henri Ford, Diana and Reed Vreeland, Joseph Campbell, the Kirsteins, E.E. Cummings, Brooke Astor, Philip Johnson, and others. Wheeler’s most amusing annual guests were Osbert and Edith Sitwell, the brother and sister poet famous for their double wit and set-up dry humor. In 1958 Monroe Wheeler learned that the grand old building at 410 Park Avenue would be demolished and replaced by a office tower. He found a small apartment at 215 E. 79 St. in a tall pale-blond brick building called the Thornely. They lived there for two years.
- No. 465, The Ritz Tower: Built in 1925 as the city’s most elegant apartment hotel, The Ritz Tower today remains one of Manhattan’s most luxurious and sought-after residential cooperatives noted for its spacious and elegant apartments, each one unique. Greta Garbo lived here for a time in the 40s. Most happy about this move was probably Mercedes de Acosta, who had an apartment at 471 Park Avenue, from where she could see Garbo's north facing rooms. Mercedes told the story that during the wartime, when people were not allowed to show light at night “we gave each other signs with candles. Why we were not arrested for this offence is still today a riddle to me.” In 1951 Garbo moved from the Ritz into a suite with four rooms located on the seventeenth floor of The Hampshire House at 150 Central Park South.
- No. 530: In 1950, Alice DeLamar’s address is still a house in New York at 530 Park Avenue. This 19-story, white-brick apartment building at 530 Park Avenue on the southwest corner at 61st Street next to the Regency Hotel was erected in 1940 and designed by George F. Pelham Jr., who also designed 41, 50, 785, 1130 and 1150 Park Avenue and 1056 Fifth Avenue. It was bought in 2007 for about $211 million by Blackrock Realty Advisors which then sold it to Aby Rosen, the owner of the Seagrams Building and Lever House on Park Avenue who converted the rental building to a condominium with 116 apartments in 2013. Handel Architects LLP was architect and William T. Georgis was interior designer for the conversion.
- No. 564: The second clubhouse of the Colony Club, was commissioned in 1913 and constructed from 1914 to 1916. It was designed by Delano & Aldrich in the Neo-Georgian style, with interiors designed by Elsie de Wolfe. See Colony Club.
- No. 570: On April 24, 1947, Willa Cather died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 73 in her home at 570 Park Avenue in Manhattan.
- No. 695, 10065: Hunter College is an American public university and one of the constituent organizations of the City University of New York, located in the Lenox Hill neighborhood of Manhattan's Upper East Side. The college grants undergraduate and graduate degrees in over one-hundred fields of study across five schools. Hunter College also administers Hunter College High School and Hunter College Elementary School. Founded in 1870, originally as a women's college, Hunter is one of the oldest public colleges in the United States. The college assumed the location of its main campus on Park Avenue in 1873. Hunter began admitting men into its freshman class in 1964. In 1943 Eleanor Roosevelt dedicated the former home of herself and Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the college, which reopened in 2010 as the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College. Notable queer alumni and faculty: Audre Lorde (1934-1992); Pauli Murray (1910–1985).
- No. 882-884: Ogden Codman, Jr. collaborated with Edith Wharton on the redesign of her townhouse at 882-884 Park Avenue, now demolished.
- No. 993: From the 1940s to the mid 1970s Marlene Dietrich kept, and often resided in apartment 12E, a four room apartment in this building. She relocated to New York to be close to her daughter Maria Riva and her grandchildren. 993 Park Avenue went co-op in the late fifties and Dietrich bought an apartment in the building. The full service, thirteen storey Italianite block had been built in the teens by Bing & Bing. Dietrich decorated her modest apartment (a two bed / two bath unit of 1600 square feet), in a mixture of styles: Louis XIV furniture was offset against glizy mirrored walls befitting a movie star. When she wasn’t travelling the world with her spectacular one-woman show, Dietrich divided her time between her New York home and a Paris rental on the Avenue Montaigne. Visting Dietrich in Paris in the late 70s, her friend Leo Lerman noted "the podge of the [Parisian] flat, which I find touching and that Gray [Foy] says is so unlike her New York controlled elegance. I like both and find both very much the way she is." After a stage fall in Australia in 1975 Dietrich went into semi-retirement in Paris, becoming increasingly reclusive. Her grandson, J. Michael Riva lived at the Park Avenue apartment during the early 80s with his then-fiance, Jamie Lee Curtis, when the latter was filming "Trading Places" (1983.) Dietrich died in 1992. Her heirs sold the apartment in 1998 for $615.000. 993 Park Ave #12E reappeared on the market in 2010. The refurbished unit was listed by Sotheby’s Real Estate for $ 2.250.000.
Queer Places, Vol. 1 edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1532901904
ISBN-10: 1532901909
Release Date: July 24, 2016
CreateSpace Store: https://www.createspace.com/6228297
Amazon (print): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1532901909/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
Amazon (kindle): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IZ1BU9K/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
In 1959 the Wescotts moved to a 147-acre (0.59 km2) farm further south from Clinton in Hunterdon County, near the community of Rosemont in Delaware Township. The farm had been previously owned by big band leader Paul Whiteman. Glenway Wescott moved into a two-story stone house on the property, dubbed Haymeadows. In 1987, Wescott died of a stroke at his home in Rosemont.
Address: Wescott Preserve, Raven Rock Rosemont Rd, Stockton, NJ 08559, USA (40.4265, -75.01584)
Type: Guest Facility (open to public)
Place
Rosemont is an unincorporated community located within Delaware Township in Hunterdon County, New Jersey. Located at the top of a small hill, the center of the community is along Kingwood Stockton Road (County Route 519) near its intersections with Raven Rock Rosemont Road and Rosemont Ringoes Road (CR 604.) Farmland and residences make up the surrounding area while the center of the settlement includes residences, a post office, and an antique shop. Wescott Preserve is named after Lloyd Wescott (1907-1990), an agriculturalist and philanthropist who was the founder and first chairman of the Hunterdon Medical Center. Wescott and his wife Barbara purchased this farm in 1959, and raised dairy cows. In 1966, they donated 15 acres of land to the county for open space, which became Hunterdon’s first county park. The park even predates the Division, which was established in 1973. The Wescotts donated an additional 65 acres to the county four years later. In 2006, 102 acres of mature woodlands and meadows along the Lockatong Creek were added through the generous efforts of the Peters family, the Hunterdon Land Trust Alliance, and the county. Also on the property is a former one-room schoolhouse. Built out of stone in 1861, it was known as the John Reading School or District Schoolhouse #97. Wescott Farm is one-of-a-kind farmhouse apartment located on a working grass-fed cattle and sheep farm. Original XVIII century farmhouse on a 200+ acre working farm. The farmhouse has a porch that overlooks a sculpted kitchen garden and the Delaware river in the distance. The original floor boards of the farmhouse stretch throughout the apartment and other details like moldings and exposed beams make the spaces explode with charm. The historic farmhouse has been used over the centuries by famous writers (Glenway Wescott) and musicians (Paul Whiteman.) There is cooking school located downstairs from the farm stay apartment with classes and dinners available some days and evenings.
Life
Who: Glenway Wescott (April 11, 1901 – February 22, 1987) and Monroe Wheeler (1899-1988)
While Monroe Wheeler was on a long museum trip to Japan and France, Lloyd Wescott found a farm that was for sale by bandleader Paul Whiteman. Glenway Wescott wrote to his mother, who was making her last visit to Wisconsin, “Lloyd has come to an agreement with Mr. Whiteman. The lawyers are drawing up the papers.” He expressed regret to Bernardine Szold: “Now the last season of our beloved valley… For me it will take all that time to prepare to move – twenty years of these attics and archives… Monroe’s as well, very massive now that he has moved from 410 Park Avenue into a small flat.” But after seeing the new farm, he praised Lloyd to William Maxwell: “My brother has bought another farm between Rosemont and Stockton in Delaware township, and is letting me have the handsomest old stone house on it. So, beyond the ordeal of moving, my way of life will not be greatly changed. My good fortune puts me to shame.” Glenway gave the name Haymeadows to the stone house and grounds being refurbished for himself and Wheeler. John Connolly drove Glenway to the property and remembered, “When I first saw it, there was a farm worker named Leroy living there with a house full of kids.” When he died, Glenway Wescot was cremated and his ashes buried in the small farmer's graveyard hidden behind a rock wall and trees at the farm at Haymeadows. In the same graveyard was buried Monroe Wheeler one year later.
Queer Places, Vol. 1 edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1532901904
ISBN-10: 1532901909
Release Date: July 24, 2016
CreateSpace Store: https://www.createspace.com/6228297
Amazon (print): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1532901909/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
Amazon (kindle): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IZ1BU9K/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
This journal is friends only. This entry was originally posted at http://reviews-and-ramblings.dreamwidth.org/5021423.html. If you are not friends on this journal, Please comment there using OpenID.