9/23 - Longwood Gardens, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania

Staying here an extra day to see Longwood Gardens was well worth it.  The place is extremely beautiful, of course, but also has an interesting history.  It originally belonged to the two Peirce brothers, twins who were both avid botanists.  While they were running a farm on the land beginning around 1700 they started an arboretum which became known as Peirce’s Park.  They turned their park into a venue for entertaining their friends.  When their last heir died around 1900 the place stayed vacant until it was sold in 1905 with the buyer’s intention being to cut the arboretum’s trees for lumber.  Enter Pierre DuPont, fabulously wealthy second cousin of Henry Francis DuPont of Winterthur.  He, too, had inherited the DuPont family’s love of plants and when he heard the trees were going to be cut down he immediately made arrangements to buy the property and timber rights.  He was in time to save all but the first trees which were cut before he stepped in.  He renamed the park Longwood Gardens.

The Peirce brothers (it’s spelled Peirce, not the usual Pierce) built a house there in 1700 which was still serviceable in 1906. Pierre kept the original house but added another wing with a conservatory joining the two sections.  

The original house built by in 1700 by the Peirce brothers.  The original front is now one side.

Peirce-DuPont House.  Original 1700’s Peirce House on the right, DuPont’s addition at the left end with a conservatory and hallway joining the two buildings.  Longwood became Pierre’s country home where he would go on weekends, holidays and whenever he could find the time.  His full-time residence was a suite of rooms in the DuPont Hotel in Wilmington.  He never owned another home.

Pierre wanted to build gardens and a conservatory on his property. He traveled all over to see other grand gardens and gather ideas, twelve times to Europe over his lifetime.  In 1915 he married Alice Belin who joined him in his love for plants and bringing his creation to life.  Not long after they were married he started building the grand conservatory which is the centerpiece of Longwood.

Conservatory from one end.  It’s a gigantic building.

Topiary garden with the conservatory in the background.  The fountain garden is being renovated which is why there’s a piece of yellow equipment sticking up on the left.

Massive old copper beech next to the walkway to the conservatory.

The Italian water garden. Pierre had a lifelong fascination with running water, thus the water garden and the immense fountains next to the conservatory which are being renovated at present.

Conservatory interior.  The hanging ball has plants growing in it but it’s main function is being lit up at night during “Nightscape,” the special evening event which is going on for the next few weeks.

One wall in the orchid room.

One of many stunning orchids.

One of several water lily ponds.

A new leaf unfurling.  It will grow into one of the huge leaves shown above.  

Water lily with striped pads.  

Water lily pad flipped over so people can see its structure underneath.

Huge water lily pads with lotuses in the back.  They are corralled in the center of the pond.  After our experience at our last house where our one lotus rapidly took over the whole pond and would have taken over Weaverville if it could have got out, we’re not surprised these are strongly disciplined.

Pierre loved music and wanted a place where he and his friends could enjoy it so he had a music room built in the conservatory.  He had a pipe organ installed which has been upgraded at least twice.  The one that’s in it now has 10,010 pipes and is the largest Aeolian organ ever constructed in a residential setting. (The conservatory isn’t a residence but it’s not a commercial setting.)

The Longwood Organ.  With four keyboards, foot pedals and stops, there are over 800 individual things the organist has to deal with.  We listened to a demonstration of the organ being played automatically and its sound is phenomenal.  It comes through the fabric walls behind the organ.  The 10,010 pipes are in the room behind the organ in three tiers.  The organ transmits its “instructions” to the pipes electronically so it doesn’t have to sit where it is.  It floats on air like a hovercraft and can be moved anywhere in the room.  The blue screen to the right is called a “visualizer.”  It shows which keys and foot pedals are being played as well as which stops are out.  The stops are set before a piece is played and usually are not changed during the piece.  (They’re the white buttons on the two wings next to the keyboards and the black knobs next to the foot pedals.)  Volume cannot be controlled through the keys like a piano. It is controlled by the “expressors” which are the six large flat pedals at the bottom. This undoubtedly has to be the most complicated and difficult instrument in the world.

This is just one of the banks of pipes behind the fabric walls.  There’s glass in front which interferes with taking a good picture.  Only about 5000 of the 10,010 pipes are visible.  The rest are on the upper tiers.  Opening and closing the wooden slats at the back are how the “expressors” control the volume.

One of the banks of bass pipes.

World-renowned organists give concerts at Longwood.  They also hold international organ competitions.

Pierre and Alice were in their mid-40’s when they married so they didn’t have children.  He was a fantastic philanthropist, eventually giving away over $120 million.  Using 1950 as an example, the equivalent in today’s dollars would be $1.2 billion.  In addition to Longwood which he arranged to be maintained and made available to the public forever, he built hospitals and schools in Delaware and southeastern Pennsylvania.  One of the guides today said he didn’t want to charge admission to Longwood…..he said he didn’t need the money…..but he was told he had to for reasons of legal liability.  Another guide said she didn’t know what would have happened to the Delaware school system without the DuPonts and their generosity.  Pierre inherited a lot of his wealth but he also earned a lot more as an entrepreneur and businessman.  He had many business interests, including leading General Motors for 14 years (1915-1929).  He joined with two of his cousins to buy back a controlling interest in the failing DuPont Company to keep it in the family and then the three of them turned it into a tremendously successful corporation by diversifying into chemicals.  He is called the father of the modern corporation.

When Alice died in 1944 Pierre became very concerned about what to do about Longwood and his other philanthropic projects.  He turned Longwood into a non-profit corporation and endowed it with enough money to keep it going.  In addition to the endowment it has income from admission fees, memberships, and profit from the shop and restaurants.  He also set up the Longwood Foundation to manage his other philanthropy.  He was busy giving things away up until his unexpected death from a ruptured aorta. 

This is the end of our sight-seeing.  Tomorrow for sure we start out for home with the intention of spending the night in Natural Bridge, Virginia.  We’ll make it the rest of the way on Friday.

9/22 - Winterthur Museum, Wilmington, Delaware

Today we went to the Winterthur Museum in Delaware.  It’s a few miles across the Delaware/Pennsylvania line so we were able to check off our final eastern state.  Winterthur, pronounced “winter-tour,” was named after the ancestral Swiss home of Jacques Antoine Bidermann who, along with his wife Evelina DuPont, built the first house there in 1816 on 450 acres of land they bought from her father.  Evelina was the daughter of E. I. DuPont who emigrated from France in 1800 with his parents.  He founded E. I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., manufacturer of gunpowder, which started the family fortune.  Jacques and Evelina’s son sold the estate to Evelina’s brother General Henry DuPont.  The general’s son Henry Algernon inherited the estate which then went to Henry Francis in 1926.  

Early spring picture from Winterthur’s website.  There’s no way to capture the entire house in one picture…..it’s just too big.  This is just one end of it.

The only picture I could get of the house as we passed by on the garden tram tour.

Winterthur is an incredible place.  It was the lifelong home of Henry Francis DuPont (called Harry) (1880-1969), horticulturist/collector/philanthropist, and one of the incredibly wealthy heirs of the DuPont fortune. When he was a young man he started planning for the day when he would give his estate and collections to the public in the form of a non-profit organization with endowment to keep it going.  With this in mind he added over 100 rooms to an already huge house for the sole purpose of turning it into a museum.  The rooms were filled with his collections of antiques, everything pertaining to American art and life from about 1640 to 1860……furniture, china, silverware, metal works, paintings, carpets, etc. 

The house now contains 175 rooms.  Not every one of them is a regular room……as long as it has a single piece of furniture it’s considered a room so it might actually be no bigger than a hallway or alcove.  Some of the ones we saw were very large though.  He collected pieces from all the original 13 states, not just the furnishings but paneling and other fixtures as well.  One of the staircases is from an early 19^th century house in North Carolina. 

Harry and his family lived in the museum until he was ready to turn it over to the public.  They had certain rooms they actually lived in and the rest were devoted to his collections.  In other words, no one sat in the chairs in the display rooms.  The three rooms we saw that they lived in looked just like the display rooms.  When they were ready to open the house to the public in 1951 they moved to a smaller house they built near the big house which now contains the Museum Shop and Café.  “The Cottage,” which was their way of downsizing, had only 30 rooms (with 13 bathrooms). 

The DuPonts had been farmers and botanists for several generations and Harry inherited this love for the land.  He was an accomplished horticulturist and farmer who did all sorts of experimental farming and gardening.  His goal was to improve production and quality in whatever he was working on whether it was plants or animals.  On his honeymoon he and his wife traveled around the country looking at and buying the very best Holstein-Friesian cows he could find.  His dairy operation with his “collected cows” was extremely successful, producing far more milk and cream per cow than any other dairy.  Most of the milk and cream produced in the U.S. today comes from Holstein-Friesians who are descendants of the DuPont herd. 

Magnificent old Japanese cutleaf maple.  Nothing is planted on the estate that wasn’t there when Harry was alive.  They rejuvenate things by planting cuttings and seeds taken from the existing plants.

Entrance to the museum galleries on the right and house tour on the left.

I didn’t get any pictures while we were touring the house.  There are several different house tours but we had time to take only the introductory tour.  This would be a wonderful place to visit regularly if we lived close enough.  There’s a big difference between the non-profit Winterthur and the very-much-for-profit Biltmore. Winterthur’s yearly membership is only $65 while Biltmore’s is about $160.  Biltmore is much bigger and has a very different atmosphere.  It’s also way more crowded, although Winterthur apparently can get that way as they had thousands of visitors when they had the Downton Abbey costume collection on display.

Like most museums they have traveling exhibits.  We were very lucky to be here now to see the Tiffany glass exhibit organized by the Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass in New York.  We’ve seen the Tiffany collection in Winter Park, Florida, but these were different pieces.  Besides, there’s no such thing as seeing too much Tiffany glass.  

Wisteria library lamp - the only piece in a glass case.

Lotus Pagoda library lamp, a design I’ve never seen before.

Begonia reading lamp.

Tropical Landscape window.

They also had several forgeries on display with explanations of how to tell them apart from the real thing.  I don’t expect to ever stumble over a genuine Tiffany out in the real world but it was very interesting to see the differences pointed out…..just in case…..

There was no way to squeeze in another place either yesterday or today so we’re going to stay here one more day and go to Longwood Gardens tomorrow.  We got lucky once again in being able to stay in our site for another night. This place will start filling up Thursday with “Pope Peepers” (the KOA host’s name for the hordes of people who are here to try to catch a glimpse of Pope Francis).  Philly is going nuts over his visit, closing 25 miles of roads in the city.  Good thing we hadn’t planned to see anything downtown.

If all goes well we should get home on Friday. 

9/21 - Valley Forge, Pennsylvania

We spent all day at Valley Forge National Park, 20 miles northwest of Philadelphia.  It’s a beautiful place which was developed years ago as a commemorative park rather than as an attempt to make it look like it did in 1777/1778.  It’s a good thing because the land was ruined by the time the troops left.  It was so bad the farmers couldn’t plant the fields again until the following year.  Every tree and bush for miles around was cut and either used for building the huts or for firewood.  All the original huts which housed soldiers and officers were broken down and used for firewood by the local residents within a year of the troops moving out of the camp. 

The park service has been rebuilding huts as money is raised so visitors can get a feel for how they looked.  The camp was laid out by engineers in orderly rows and the men were instructed in the building of their huts.  Each squad of 12 enlisted men had to build its own shelter.  The huts were the same size (12’ x 16’) whether they housed 12 enlisted men, 6 junior officers, 3 field officers or one general.  With 1500 to 1700 huts and up to 20,000 people, the camp became the 4^th or 5^th largest city in the country. 

Interior of a hut housing 12 enlisted men.  Cramped quarters but much better than a tent in freezing winter weather.  There were four racks with three beds each.  Not enough room between the beds to sit down so they must have sat on whatever they could find.

A reconstructed bake oven.  Bakers worked 24 hours a day to produce enough bread to feed the thousands of troops.  They went through 168 barrels of flour a day.  Bake ovens are constructed of flat pieces of steel fitted together like a box and buried in a mound for insulation.  Once they’re heated the coals are removed and vents are closed.  Several batches of bread can be baked before the oven has to be heated again.

 

The statue of George Washington which his family said was the most realistic depiction ever made of him.  The artist, a French sculptor, stayed with George and Martha Washington for two weeks at Mount Vernon, taking measurements and making a plaster “life mask” which he used in doing the statue.  No wonder it’s the most realistic representation.

Valley Forge was the winter camp for the Continental Army during the third winter of the war, chosen because of its terrain and proximity to Philadelphia which was the capital until it was captured by the British with the Continental Congress forced to flee to York, PA.  Valley Forge was on a high plateau with a great view towards where the British troops were housed.  Fortifications were built and manned but no attack ever came.   It wasn’t the coldest or the most difficult of all the winter camps the troops had to endure but it was extremely challenging.  The states were supposed to supply their own men with food, clothing and weapons but many failed to do so adequately.  Most of the men were ill-fed and pitifully clothed.  Washington berated the Continental Congress over the situation and eventually things turned around.  Once Nathanael Greene was appointed as Quartermaster General he reorganized everything and supplies started coming in.  (The previous Quartermaster took a cut of everything and didn’t want the job anyway so the results were disastrous.)

No battles were fought at Valley Forge but about 2000 men died there, all as a result of diseases like typhus, typhoid, dysentery, influenza and pneumonia.  Washington was adamant about keeping the camp clean, moving really sick men to hospitals outside the camp, and having everyone vaccinated for smallpox.  He did everything he could to prevent disease from spreading, instituting rules about personal cleanliness, burning old straw bedding and kitchen waste, and having the men drink spruce beer and vinegar-water to keep from getting scurvy.

Valley Forge became a turning point in the Revolution when the disorganized and poorly trained troops who went into camp in December 1777 moved out as a well-trained, organized and confident professional army in June 1778.  This was thanks to Baron Friedrich von Steuben, a former Prussian army officer who volunteered with the Continental Army.  Washington was an astute judge of people and he made very good use of Steuben’s talents.  Steuben accomplished the massive task of training the army by first training a model company made up of Washington’s personal guard, then having those soldiers train the rest.  It was a pyramid style of training.  

Baron von Steuben.

Washington’s headquarters.  He rented the house from its owner Isaac Potts, a wealthy local businessman.  It has been restored to the way it looked when Washington was there.  A great deal of historical research has gone into the effort.  The house was likely to have always been a rental property which helped it remain much as it was in 1778.  Renters don’t make changes the way owners do.  The park service did have to remove a second story addition over the kitchen (on the left) and re-open the dogtrot which had been enclosed. (That’s the open walkway between the kitchen and the main house.)

The parlor which was used as an office by the General and his aides.

A bedroom shared by several aides.  It looks as if they were there just a few minutes ago.

National Memorial Arch, erected by the Freemasons of Pennsylvania to honor George Washington who was a prominent Freemason.  It’s very impressive, an appropriate monument to a larger-than-life statesman.

9/13 to 9/20 - Cape Cod to New Jersey

We had a wonderful six days with Pat and John at their place on Cape Cod.  It was a very busy week with trips every day all over the Cape.  They are fantastic tour guides.  If I tried to cover everything we did this post would be so long no one would have time to read it so I’ll just try to hit some of the highlights.  Even with just highlights there are so many pictures I’m keeping my fingers crossed this will upload with the poor wifi we have here.

This is the Cape Cod Canal Railroad Bridge at Buzzards Bay.  It’s a lift-bridge……the center stays up except when a train needs to cross the canal.  The “trash train” crosses twice every day, west carrying Cape Cod’s trash off the Cape for disposal elsewhere and east coming back empty.  

Opening to ship traffic in 1914, the Cape Cod Canal is an engineering marvel cut across the Cape from Cape Cod Bay to Buzzards Bay.  It greatly shortens the distance ships must travel between ports north and south of the Cape.  There are only two vehicle bridges to connect the outer cape to the rest of Massachusetts.  During the summer season traffic backs up for miles going east on Fridays and west on Sundays.   This is the bridge at Bourne.

Cape Cod Bay at Sandwich near the canal.

Salt marshes near Sandwich.

Nauset Light at Eastham.

Pat, Jim and John at Cape Cod National Seashore Visitors Center.

Provincetown at the far tip of the Cape.  It’s the northern version of Key West.

One of the things we were most interested in seeing was cranberry farming.  Ocean Spray has a vast cranberry operation on the Cape.  John took us by some of the fields hoping we’d see harvesting which is due to start any day.  We got lucky and found an area which was being harvested so we got to see how it’s done.  We also got to see fields of plants that hadn’t been flooded yet.  The plants don’t grow in water but the fields are flooded so the berries can be knocked off the plants.  They float on top of the ponds where they’re gathered for shipment.

After the cranberries are knocked off the plants by machine the surface of each pond is covered with them.  They’re encircled with a belt-type net which is pulled tight to gather them into as small a space as possible so they can be loaded into trucks.  One man was using a blower, three had pushers and one or two were pulling.  It’s hard work.

Cranberry field prior to being flooded for harvest.

A conveyor belt is picking up cranberries from the pond and loading them into trucks.  The man at left is pulling on the net to bring the berries to the conveyor.

Plymouth Rock in its enclosure.  Over the years people have chipped so much off the rock it’s nowhere near its original size.  It’s been enclosed now so no one can touch it.

The Mayflower II, an exact replica of the original Mayflower.

Nobska Light at Woods Hole, across from Martha’s Vineyard.  

View of Woods Hole from Nobska Light.  Martha’s Vineyard is in the distance at upper left.

New Bedford’s harbor wall.  Hurricanes Carol and Diane hit New Bedford in 1954 doing tremendous damage to the harbor and houses.  The federal government built a wall across the harbor to protect it in the event of another hurricane.  The boat in the center has just come through the opening in the wall.  This opening and another one at the far end have huge steel doors which are closed when a serious storm threatens the harbor.

New Bedford Harbor inside the wall.

Battleship Cove at Fall River, MA.  Four ships are open to the public including the battleship USS Massachusetts.  

Jim on the USS Massachusetts. 

John drove us around Newport so we could see the mansions on the oceanfront as well as the quaint town.  We didn’t stop on Millionaire Row so I didn’t get any pictures of the mansions.  They appear to have been built in a competition to see who could outdo whom.  Some were really beautiful, some weren’t attractive at all, and very few looked like something one would want to live in.  

A downtown Newport street on our way to lunch.

A residential side street with very interesting houses.  The little one with the truck in front was the “Doll House.”  A lot of the houses are identified by plaques giving their dates and names.  Many date back to the early 1700’s.

This one had the most elaborate shingles of all the houses we passed.

Rhode Island State Capitol Building in Providence.  We couldn’t get into a good position to take a picture while driving because of all the construction.  

On our way out of Massachusetts yesterday we passed the Dynergy power plant in Somerset.  It looks like a nuclear plant because of the cooling towers but it’s actually coal-fired.  We’re glad Duke Power’s plant at Lake Julian isn’t this big.

The pictures I got on the road yesterday from the Cape to northwestern NJ were of traffic and construction.  These are the only ones worth posting.

Traffic lined up for miles waiting to cross the Tappan Zee Bridge.

Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson River.

This is the Hudson’s second widest point.   The cranes are in place for building the replacement bridge which is supposed to be ready in 2017.  The Tappan Zee was built in 1952-1955 and was only supposed to last 50 years.  It is in seriously deteriorated condition now.  When it was built it carried around 40,000 vehicles a day.  Now it carries 138,000 a day.  I’m glad we didn’t know about its condition before going over it.

Crane placing decking on I-beams.

This was my only picture for today.  We camped near the Delaware Water Gap which is a well-known geological feature in the north east.  We couldn’t register in our next campground until 2:00 pm so we drove over to the gap to see it.  It’s a beautiful area.   

Delaware River going through the Delaware Water Gap on the PA/NJ line near Stroudsburg PA. 

I didn’t take any more pictures after the gap because I accidentally left the camera in the RV.  It didn’t matter because, once again, all we saw was traffic.  We’re a few miles west of Philadelphia which is in panic mode getting ready for the visit of Pope Francis next weekend.  We’re very lucky our visit didn’t coincide with his.  People on the designated route had to move their vehicles elsewhere by today or they’d be towed.  The ones we saw interviewed on TV had moved them out to the suburbs with relatives but now they’re stuck having to find alternate transportation for over a week. 

We’ll be here for two days to see as much as we can (Valley Forge and Longwood Gardens in particular) before starting off on the 600+ miles home on Wednesday.