Phipps Family History: A Dining Room’s Journey from 5th Avenue to Old Westbury

Thinking about the Dining Room chandelier as we await its return from Aurora Lampworks, where it has been cleaned, polished, and repaired.

Visitors to the Dining Room in Westbury House are seeing a version of a room originally designed for Henry Phipps' Fifth Avenue mansion by the New York firm Trowbridge and Livingston. The design was created at the same time Westbury House was being built by his eldest son, Jay. In recently discovered 1905 correspondence between George Crawley, the English designer of Westbury House, and his client, Jay, Crawley was overseeing a massive amount of work for both father and son. He detailed his frustrations with late shipments and unresponsive art dealers, which eventually came together on Fifth Avenue and at Old Westbury Gardens by 1907.

The painstaking details that consumed hours of Crawley’s and Jay’s time—Jay was also providing direction to the designer about his father’s house—are mind-boggling. They ranged from altering the arc of an entrance to deciding on window details, the height of a perimeter wall, and whether carvings should be in wood or marble. And yet, knowing the eventual fate of 1065 Fifth Avenue—that it was razed to make way for the wave of apartment buildings moving uptown—it all comes down to real estate. The Fifth Avenue mansion was demolished roughly twenty years after its completion, with certain interiors saved and retrofitted into Henry’s children's homes. Every time I enter the Dining Room at Westbury House, it serves as a reminder of how fleeting and disposable architectural gems were at the time—and how they remain so today.

Comparing the cube-shaped Dining Room from Henry’s mansion with its appearance today, it’s remarkable to see how the decorating team of White and Allom, in 1927, expanded the dimensions of the oak paneling to replace a large playroom. The circular ceiling, once adorned with the prized chandelier, was transformed into a cloud-filled rectangular mural that mimics the shape of the Boxwood Garden reflecting pool. Other trophies from Henry’s Dining Room include the carpet and Derwent Wood’s majestic mantelpiece.

As we await the return of the Dining Room chandelier in another month, I can only marvel at the care and ingenuity it took to move the room from East 87th Street and Fifth Avenue to the north shore of Long Island. There is no mention of the mansion's destruction in the correspondence between father and son. George Crawley, who died in 1926, must have known the loss was imminent. If only we knew his thoughts.

~Lorraine Gilligan, Director of Preservation