Americans love illusion. They gather the kids around the television
set to watch a live performance of David Copperfield. They go to the movies
or read books – just to be drawn into an imaginary world full of
adventure and excitement. Or they do what the Seiberlings did… create
a house that is overpowered with technology, yet appears – inside
and out – to be a relic from Tudor England. But no one questions
the feasibility of a Tudor Revival style house that is located, not in
England, but in Akron, Ohio. And why should they? They Sieberling’s
estate, Stan Hywet Hall, is the ultimate illusion.
In 1911, Franklin A. Seiberling, founder of Goodyear Rubber and Tire Company,
traveled to England with his wife, Gertrude; his oldest daughter, Irene;
and the Cleveland architect, Charles S. Schneider. The Seiberlings were
searching for an architectural style after which to model their own home.
They found that style in the English Tudor home of Compton Wynyates in
Warwickshire, England.
By 1915, after three years of work, Stan Hywet Hall was full constructed.
In all, the structure covered 65,400 square feet, contained twenty bedrooms,
twenty-three fireplaces, fourteen bathrooms, nine lavatories, 273 doors
– in addition to the twenty sets of French doors, a total of 469
windows, and 3000 fully-landscaped acres.
The house was designed after the English Tudor-style home, but the Seiberlings
insisted “on quality and appropriateness for family use,”
according to a brochure distributed by the Stan Hywet Hall Foundation
entitled “Welcome to Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens.”
The family’s insistence on convenience meant altering the architectural
design. In the sixteenth century, every feature of a building served a
purpose. According to a booklet by Frank A. Seiberling, Jr. entitled “What
Is the Tudor Period and Style?”, the architectural features that
seem scattered and unorganized in Tudor-period homes in England “conform
not to any balanced symmetry of appearance but to functional needs that
grew out of use over a period of many years” (2). Yet Stan Hywet’s
construction often goes out of its way to keep the needs of the family
hidden. Telephones, radiators, and coal elevators – all of which
filled very important needs – were melded into the surroundings,
virtually invisible to guests. By hiding these modern devices, the Seiberlings
created a home that only appeared to be a house from the past. In reality,
the house was merely a façade, behind which one of Akron’s
most technologically-advanced families lived.
Bob Gerster, a tour guide at Stan Hywet, explained the automatic dial
telephone system that connected the thirty-eight telephones to batteries
in the basement. They did not require an operator, “which for 1915
was quite advanced,” Gerster said. But as you look around the Chinese
Room, which is one of the first rooms in the house tour, no telephones
are visible. Gerster opened a tiny section of the wooden paneling to reveal
an old-fashioned dial telephone hidden in the wall. He explained, “Mrs.
Seiberling said that when they went to these homes in England, they didn’t
see any telephones, so she thought maybe they’d keep them out of
sight.”
The house was heated by boilers in the basement that could easily use
one ton of coal each day. Unlike visitors to an original Tudor home, guests
of the Seiberlings would have felt warmth on cold wintertime visits. Guests
might notice the warmth, but they would not see the radiators. These bulky
eyesores were hidden away in almost every room of the house. Only in the
kitchen areas did designers allow the radiators to show their hulking
forms. After all, only servants see the kitchen. In other rooms they were
tucked away behind ornate screens or elaborate latticework. Why didn’t
the Seiberlings want the radiators to be seen? Thalia Jones, a Stan Hywet
hostess, said matter-of-factly, “It would be very obtrusive.”
Not only would the radiators be too prominent, but they would also shatter
the illusion of a storied past that the Seiberlings built into the very
structure of Stan Hywet Hall.
The Seiberlings installed two elevators in their home, each fulfilling
a separate task. One was a rope elevator that transported coal and wood
from the basement for use in any of the twenty-three fireplaces. The other
elevator carried passengers from the sub-basement to the fourth floor.
Both of these timesaving devices were disguised in keeping with the image
of a Tudor theme.
The Seiberlings even altered natural items to conform to their decorating.
They hired Warren Manning, an American landscape architect, to sculpt
the perfect scenery. Manning reigned over the landscape as he molded nature
to suit the Seiberlings’ specifications. He altered the color of
the Breakfast Room Garden flowers to match the color scheme of the room
overlooking that section of the garden. It is as if the Seiberlings felt
that nature was as controllable as wallpaper or drapes.
The Dell, a wooded area to the left of the house, was grown to give the
“irregular appearance of natural woodlands.” There’s
an irony in trying to make nature look more natural. That does not mean
that the grounds were unattractive. In fact, they were beautiful and calming,
but there was also the strange sensation of an unnecessary and unnatural
manipulation.
The Seiberlings violated the natural order inside the house as well as
outside it. Jones said that “Mrs. Seiberling wanted this house to
look as if it had been lived in for 100 years, so Mrs. Seiberling’s
son hired someone to come in here and grind these little depressions [in
the stone floor].” Mrs. Seiberling’s request is typical of
late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American styles. Stan Hywet’s
stone floors typify the “desire for the past, and the appearance
of generations of living and use,” according to the brochure distributed
by the Foundation. The Seiberlings succeeded in capturing the image of
a stable country manor home; but sadly, that was all that Stan Hywet was:
an image. Only one generation of Seiberlings lived in the house, and after
Franklin A. Seiberling died in 1955, the house and all of its furnishings
were donated to the newly formed Stan Hywet Hall Foundation.
According to Jones, the Seiberling children “didn’t want the
house. They didn’t have the amount of money to keep it up, and it
wasn’t their lifestyle… they weren’t interested in it.”
Stan Hywet still stands as a reminder of its own illusion. Generations
of a family that never lived there, and millions of footsteps that did
not wear down the stone floor. Stan Hywet provides the fantasy world that
we all crave through a beauty that is timeless.
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