With the summer season officially upon us lets have a look
back at the lost summer cottage of one of history’s first interior
designers.
This most eclectic seaside mansion once stood in a line of
grand summer villas on the dunes of Monmouth Beach, New Jersey, long since
reclaimed by the sea. Built for Christian Herter of New York’s famed Herter Brothers design firm in 1881, while in the midst of completing his most
celebrated project, designing the lavish interiors of William H. Vanderbilt’s
triple palace on Fifth Avenue. The designer’s less opulent but no less intricate
summer residence is a study in Victorian eclecticism with the wall surfaces
alone including brick, cement, wood paneled, shingled, and clapboard treatments,
all wrapped up with a tall woodwork trimmed veranda lush with foliage.