Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens

Last updated

Stan Hywet Hall-Frank A. Seiberling House
Stan Hywet Hall 2.jpg
USA Ohio location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Usa edcp location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens
Interactive map showing the location of Stan Hywet Hall-Frank A. Seiberling House
Location714 N. Portage Path,
Akron, Ohio
Coordinates 41°7′7″N81°33′5″W / 41.11861°N 81.55139°W / 41.11861; -81.55139
Area70 acres (28 ha)
Built1911
ArchitectCharles S. Schneider, Warren H. Manning
Architectural style Tudor Revival
NRHP reference No. 75002058 [1]
Significant dates
Added to NRHPJanuary 17, 1975
Designated NHLDecember 21, 1981

Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens (70 acres) is a historic house museum in Akron, Ohio. The estate includes gardens, a greenhouse, carriage house, and the main mansion, one of the largest houses in the United States. [2] A National Historic Landmark, it is nationally significant as the home of F. A. Seiberling, co-founder of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. [3]

Contents

History

Conception and creation

The estate was built between 1912 and 1915 for F. A. Seiberling, co-founder of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, and his wife, Gertrude Ferguson Penfield Seiberling. They named their "American Country Estate" Stan Hywet, loosely translated from Old English meaning "stone quarry" or "stone hewn," to reflect the site's earlier use and the abandoned stone quarries located on the grounds of the Aveill Dairy estate.

F.A. and Gertrude hired three professionals to shape the outcome of their home building project: Boston landscape architect Warren Manning, New York City interior designer Hugo Huber and Cleveland architect Charles Sumner Schneider. Schneider originally pitched his design as an employee of George Post & Sons, a New York City architectural firm. Schneider left the company in 1913, but retained creative control and oversight of the building project.

In April 1912, the Seiberlings, with oldest daughter Irene and architect Schneider, traveled to England to tour approximately 20 manor homes to gather inspiration for the home's design. Three English country homes served as the inspiration for Stan Hywet: Compton Wynyates, Ockwells Manor, and Haddon Hall. [4]

The long, sprawling Manor House encompasses 64,500 square feet (5,990 m2) and includes four floors and a lower level (basement). In conceiving their dream home, the Seiberlings asked each family member what he or she desired. Gertrude requested a large music room, the boys requested an indoor swimming pool, and a private office for F.A. The house included a formal dining room that would seat up to 40 people, five guest bedrooms with adjoining full bathrooms and walk-in closets, and eight live-in servants' bedrooms.

Interior design

Inglenook in the Blue Bedroom of the hall DETAIL SHOWING INGLENOOK OF BLUE BEDROOM - Stan Hywet Hall, 714 North Portage Path, Akron, Summit County, OH HABS OHIO,77-AKRO,5-95.tif
Inglenook in the Blue Bedroom of the hall

Interior designer Hugo Huber worked with Gertrude Seiberling to furnish the home's interior. The pair made frequent shopping trips to New York City and Huber traveled with F.A. and Gertrude to England in January 1915 to look at antique pieces for the home. Gertrude initially wanted to furnish the entire home in period appropriate Tudor antiques but F.A. argued that the large family would need comfortable furnishings. Huber compromised by integrating a selection of Tudor antiques with contemporary 1915 furnishings that were made to look antique and fit the overall décor of the home.

View of the Great Hall during the annual "Deck the Hall" holiday event. Stanhywetchristmas.jpg
View of the Great Hall during the annual "Deck the Hall" holiday event.

Landscape design

The estate grounds, originally about 1,500 acres (610 ha)[5] in extent, were designed between 1911 and 1915 by Boston landscape architect Warren H. Manning, and remain today one of the finest examples of his work. Manning sited the house at the edge of the quarry wall, overlooking the Cuyahoga Valley and rolling hills in the distance.

Around the home, he created a series of vistas which related the home to the environment around it, intertwining the two in a unified design. The entrance to the property (through an existing apple orchard), and the two allées on the north and south sides of the house, provide examples of vistas created by Manning using arranged plant materials. Along the back of the house, Manning manipulated existing forest plantings, and removed growth to create outlooks over miles of undisturbed countryside to capture the endless expanse of the Seiberlings' property.

Around the Manor House, Manning designed a sequence of contrasting garden spaces which situated formal garden rooms – such as the English Garden, Breakfast Room Garden, Perennial Garden, Japanese Garden and West Terrace – within the existing natural landscape. Manning used a technique of plant massing where he used predominately native plant materials, grouping deciduous trees with small ornamental trees and swaths of perennial plantings, to carve vistas and gardens giving definition and movement to his design. The garden spaces were tailored to the needs of the Seiberling family and envisioned as outdoor rooms for the family to use for relaxation and entertaining.

The Japanese Garden was built in 1916 by Chicago Japanese landscape artist T.R. Otsuka to the overall layout designed by Manning. [5]

Mrs. Seiberling in the Japanese Garden at Stan Hywet, c.1920 Stan-hywet-2-color.jpg
Mrs. Seiberling in the Japanese Garden at Stan Hywet, c.1920

The English garden was redesigned in 1929 by noted landscape architect Ellen Biddle Shipman. The landscape has undergone two significant restorations: the first in 1984, when a master plan was created to return the property to Warren Manning's original landscape plan, and the second between 2000 and 2010, to rebuild all of the gardens and landscaping around the Manor House. All historic gardens have been restored; the final garden space to be restored was the Lagoon area, a series of 5 manmade ponds, which was restored in 2020.

The estate also includes a conservatory and greenhouses constructed by King Construction Company of North Tonawanda, New York, and specified the construction of a rectangular Palm House with a 24 foot wide greenhouse on the back with a wing on each side, for a cost of $18,330. The greenhouse space behind the Palm House was initially divided into a "general plant house," an "orchid house" and a "vegetable house." The original 1915 building was damaged in a wind storm in 1947. In 2005, Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens constructed a new conservatory and greenhouses based on the original historic designs.

Recreational spaces

The estate grounds also included many recreation areas for the Seiberlings and their guests: two tennis courts (one for servants), a roque court, horse trails, a four-hole golf course, lagoons for swimming and boating, an indoor swimming pool and a gymnasium.

Preservation

The English Garden at Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens. Designed by Warren Manning, it was redesigned by Ellen Biddle Shipman in the late 1920s, and restored in the early 1990s. It is one of the few restored Shipman gardens open to the public. Stan Hywett Pool.JPG
The English Garden at Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens. Designed by Warren Manning, it was redesigned by Ellen Biddle Shipman in the late 1920s, and restored in the early 1990s. It is one of the few restored Shipman gardens open to the public.

In 1957, the six surviving adult Seiberling children donated Stan Hywet to the newly formed Stan Hywet Hall Foundation, a non-profit organization formed for the preservation of the estate. It is now a historic house museum and country estate, open seasonally to the public, in keeping with the stone inscription above the Manor House front door, "Non nobis solum," meaning "Not for us alone".

From 2015 to 2021, the Manor House underwent an extensive room-by-room restoration, funded by the successful "2nd Century Campaign."

Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens is open Tuesday through Sunday, from April 1 through December 30. It is closed to the public on Mondays. An admission fee is charged, and various tours are available. [6]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Waddesdon Manor</span> Historic house museum in Aylesbury Vale, United Kingdom

Waddesdon Manor is a country house in the village of Waddesdon, in Buckinghamshire, England. Owned by the National Trust and managed by the Rothschild Foundation, it is one of the National Trust's most visited properties, with over 463,000 visitors in 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wormleybury</span>

Wormleybury is an 18th-century house surrounded by a landscaped park of 57 ha near Wormley in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, England, a few miles north of Greater London. The house was rebuilt in the 1770s from an earlier house built in 1734. The house is a Grade I listed building. The garden is well known for its historic rare plant collection.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fair Lane</span> Historic house in Michigan, United States

Fair Lane was the estate of Ford Motor Company founder Henry Ford and his wife, Clara Ford, in Dearborn, Michigan, in the United States. It was named after an area in Cork in Ireland where Ford's adoptive grandfather, Patrick Ahern, was born. The 1,300-acre (530 ha) estate along the River Rouge included a large limestone house, an electrical power plant on the dammed river, a greenhouse, a boathouse, riding stables, a children's playhouse, a treehouse, and extensive landmark gardens designed by Chicago landscape architect Jens Jensen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Darwin D. Martin House</span> American historic house in New York (1905)

The Darwin D. Martin House Complex is a historic house museum in Buffalo, New York. The property's buildings were designed by renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright and built between 1903 and 1905. The house is considered to be one of the most important projects from Wright's Prairie School era.

William Andrews Nesfield (1793–1881) was an English soldier, landscape architect and artist. After a career in the military which saw him serve under the Duke of Wellington, he developed a second profession as a landscape architect, designing some of the foremost gardens of the mid-Victorian era. These included Witley Court in Worcestershire, Castle Howard in Yorkshire, Treberfydd in Powys and Kew Gardens. He also established a professional dynasty; with his sons Arthur Markham and William Eden Nesfield, he developed over 250 landscapes across the United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Skylands (estate)</span> Historic house in New Jersey, United States

Skylands is a 1,119-acre (4.53 km2) estate property located in Ringwood State Park in Ringwood, New Jersey, a borough in Passaic County in the state of New Jersey. The Skylands property consists of the historic Skylands Manor mansion, The Castle at Skylands Manor and the New Jersey Botanical Garden; the botanical garden is 96 acres (390,000 m2) and it is open to the public year-round. The Skylands property is within the Ramapo Mountains and it is maintained by the Skyland Association. The property is marketed with the garden as New Jersey State Botanical Garden at Skylands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Planting Fields Arboretum State Historic Park</span> United States historic place

Planting Fields Arboretum State Historic Park, which includes the Coe Hall Historic House Museum, is an arboretum and state park covering over 400 acres (160 ha) located in the village of Upper Brookville in the town of Oyster Bay, New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barrington Court</span> Tudor manor house in Barrington, Somerset, England

Barrington Court is a Tudor manor house begun around 1538 and completed in the late 1550s, with a vernacular stable court (1675), situated in Barrington, near Ilminster, Somerset, England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ellen Biddle Shipman</span>

Ellen Biddle Shipman was an American landscape architect known for her formal gardens and lush planting style. Along with Beatrix Farrand and Marian Cruger Coffin, she dictated the style of the time and strongly influenced landscape design as a member of the first generation to break into the largely male occupation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Warren H. Manning</span> American landscape architect

Warren Henry Manning was an American landscape designer and promoter of the informal and naturalistic "wild garden" approach to garden design. In his designs, Manning emphasized pre-existing flora through a process of selective pruning to create a "spatial structure and character." An advocate for the conservation of the American landscape, Manning was a key figure in the formation of the American Society of Landscape Architects and a proponent of the National Park System.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parkwood Estate</span> House in Oshawa, Ontario

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dyffryn Gardens</span> Collection of botanical gardens in the care of the National Trust

Dyffryn Gardens, also spelt Duffryn Gardens, is a collection of botanical gardens located near the villages of Dyffryn and St. Nicholas in the Vale of Glamorgan, Wales. The gardens were selected by the British Tourist Authority as one of the Top 100 gardens in the UK and are in the care of the National Trust. They are designated at Grade I, the highest grade, on the Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Seiberling</span>

Franklin Augustus “Frank” Seiberling, also known as F.A. Seiberling, was an American innovator and entrepreneur best known for co-founding the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in 1898 and the Seiberling Rubber Company in 1921. He also built Stan Hywet Hall, a Tudor Revival mansion, now a National Historic Landmark and historic house museum in Akron, Ohio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joslyn Castle</span> Historic house in Nebraska, United States

The George and Sarah Joslyn Home, is a mansion located at 3902 Davenport Street in the Gold Coast Historic District of Omaha, Nebraska, United States. Built in the Scottish Baronial style in 1903, the Castle was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. It was designated as an Omaha landmark in 1979.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oldfields</span> Historic estate in Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.

Oldfields, also known as Lilly House and Gardens, is a 26-acre (11 ha) historic estate and house museum at Newfields in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. The estate, an example of the American country house movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 2003.

Charles Freeman Gillette (1886–1969) was a prominent landscape architect in the upper South who specialized in the creation of grounds supporting Colonial Revival architecture, particularly in Richmond, Virginia. He is associated with the restoration and re-creation of historic gardens in the upper South and especially Virginia. He is known for having established a regional style—known as the "Virginia Garden."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albert Davis Taylor</span>

Albert Davis Taylor was an American landscape architect and author, notable for his many gardens and his promotion of garden shows. He designed parks and other public works, subdivisions and private estates, primarily in Ohio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virginia House</span> Historic house in Virginia, United States

Virginia House is a manor house on a hillside overlooking the James River in the Windsor Farms neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia, United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gibraltar (Wilmington, Delaware)</span> Historic house in Delaware, United States

Gibraltar, located at 2505 Pennsylvania Avenue in Wilmington, Delaware, is a country estate home dating from c. 1844 that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It takes its name from the Rock of Gibraltar, alluding to the high rocky outcrop on which the house was built. It is located just inside Wilmington's city limits and originally stood at the center of a much larger estate which has over time been reduced to the present area of about a city block in size. The house was originally built by John Rodney Brincklé and inherited by his brother's wife and children, before being bought in 1909 by Hugh Rodney Sharp, who was linked to the Du Pont family through marriage and work. Sharp expanded and remodeled the house, as well as commissioning the pioneering female landscape designer Marian Cruger Coffin to lay out the gardens.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">T. R. Otsuka</span> Japanese garden builder

T. R. Ōtsuka 大塚 太郎 was a Japanese garden builder. After emigrating from Japan to the United States in 1897 and moving to Chicago around 1905, he built dozens of Japanese-style gardens and rock gardens, mostly in the Midwest, between 1905 and the mid-1930s. His most notable projects were the Japanese-style garden of George and Nelle Fabyan in Geneva, Illinois ; the Japanese Garden at Stan Hywet in Akron, Ohio (1916); the garden of Milton Tootle, Jr. in Mackinac Island, Michigan ; and the official Japanese pavilion garden at the 1933–1934 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago, Illinois.

References

  1. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
  2. A&E, with Richard Guy Wilson, Ph.D., (2000). America's Castles: The Auto Baron Estates, A&E Television Network
  3. "NHL nomination for Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens". National Park Service. Retrieved March 24, 2018.
  4. General Facts About Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens: Inspirations. Retrieved June 18, 2010.
  5. Memo written by Warren H. Manning to Mr. Seibeling, May 8–9, 1916, mentions "Mr. Otsuka" several times. Memo held by Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens archives.
  6. James H. Shiere (May 27, 1981). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory/Nomination: Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens (Frank A. Seiberling House)". National Park Service. and accompanying 10 photos from 1973