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Published: December 5th 2007
Nice to talk to you again. It’s now May 12 and we leave for New York on Saturday, the same day as our hosts Doug and Maryvonne leave for a week in Nice and a weeks cycling tour of Corsica. (It’s a pity Michael you will not be there at the same time, you would enjoy their company) Thank you all for your emails but I would like to clarify one thing, it’s not really a holiday. Up at 7 to do 8 or 10 laps at the pool before a vigourous day of walking or touring. Phil described our travels as Art-itecture boot camp, but its really day after day of fun and adventure (and hard work)
Doug and Maryvonne have been lovely to be with, so hospitable and so knowledgeable. We took them and Phil to a magnificent new theater complex, the Strathmore, out at Grovenor near where we get the Metro from. Better than going into DC to the Kennedy Centre (worth visiting once but the Music Centre at Strathmore has great acoustics and not a bad seat in the house. We saw Barbara Cook in concert, a 78 year old star of the earlier musicals era.
She occasionally forgot her script but didn’t miss a note, including the d above high c.
Our big trip, over 1000 miles (courtesy of Doug who gave us his big cherry Nissan van for the whole of our stay) started at Harpers Ferry, the junction of the Potomac and the Shenandoah Rivers, and the place where John Brown took the first steps towards freeing the slaves (and was executed for treason) just before the war between the north and south and Lincoln’s subsequent emancipation declaration . It was an important port and rail town, not far from Antietam one of the 3 major battlefields of the civil war (after Manassas and 3 years before the final battles at Gettysburg).
The South took Harpers Ferry and was hoping to move north and win converts in Maryland. However the battle moved to Antietam (or Sharpsburg) where on 17 September 1862 the war ranged over a wide area. Both sides lost 23 000 men on that one day. The bloodiest battle of the war was in a cornfield where it swept back and forth for 3 hours (see pictures). The Union lost over 2 000 men in half an hour against
Harpers Ferry
looking down to the junction of two rivers and the divide between N & S- very important to hold during the Civil warStonewall Jackson The day finished at the bridge where union troops defeated the Confederates.
(Ross and Helen - we bought a national parks pass which we can use on the West coast for all of us)
We spent the first night at Deer Park Inn, one of the remaining cottages build around a magnificent hotel of the style of the Hydro Majestic. It is run by a French Chef (ex Washington executive chef from the ANA Hotel) and his wife as a guest house and restaurant but as they weren’t really open for summer yet we were the only guests. We dined alone in a magnificent dining room with our personal chef who dished up pate to begin, magnificent duck breast on garlic mash followed by chocolate crepes!! Deer Park produces natural spring water sold all over USA and it was coming out of our bathroom taps!
We travelled across West Virginia into Ohio and through to Columbus to see Chris Lin, a friend from Chengdu in China, who is doing a post graduate study in Statistics there (Molly - she’s still the same Chris).
Day 3 saw us retrace our steps to the National Road (40)
in Pennslyvania. We searched unsuccessfully for a covered bridge driving through beautiful country lanes. Late afternoon we made Kentuck Knob a 1954 Lloyd Wright Usonian house wedged into the brow of the hill and surrounded by a sculpture park. The current owners collect architecture not paintings! He is a British Lord ,Peter Palumbo, who once owned a Corbusier, a Mies and this Wright home which they lived in each summer for years before handing it over to the trust. They still live on a neighbouring property in summer and use the house for entertainment in the evenings. It was great to see the attention to detail and hear about his autocratic approach to clients. The owners wanted a normal width door into the master bedroom and Wright said NO that it needed to be 50 centimetres wide so that you would get the full effect of space when you entered the soaring roofed room with its wall of glass ! It was a great foretaste of Falling Waters, which he designed nearly twenty years earlier.
We stayed overnight at Ohiopyle on the Youghiogheny River - very popular for rafting and kayaking. Our Falling Waters day was magnificent. It started
with an all morning hike in Bull Run where our guides pointed out the natural features that influenced Wright’s design. After lunch we toured this wonderful house perched over a waterfall and once again were amazed at his attention to detail. Natural rocks jut into the grand lounge room and corner windows are designed to open right up so that you have no barriers and you get a panorama effect and can always hear the water fall below. Wright rarely visited his houses (Kentuck Knob was designed from topographical maps) and he used similar technique at FW where he even designed all the furniture and the guesthouse above. He even designed a perfect bedlamp like the one I’ve been searching for! Apparently when he visited they put away any furniture items the Kaufmanns had put in so that wouldn’t offend him. It rained while we were there but that added to the sense of water falling all around us. The urban myth that it is falling down was denied, and you should all have time to get there and see it for yourselves.
On the drive back to Washington we detoured and followed a bit of local advice to
Deer Park Inn
The historic cottage with the French Chef find our covered bridge.
We’ll finish up the last days in Washington when we do a blog to New York. You have a Lyn and Col brush with fame to look forward to!
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