The Brick House, the Vermont country house of Electra Havemeyer Webb.

"Happy is the home that shelters friends." are the first words inscribed, sometime between 1913 and 1914, by Electra Havemeyer Webb (see Figs. 2, 9) in a green leather-bound guest book of the Brick House, her country house in Shelburne, Vermont. Over time, the pages of this album were filled with signatures, photographs, artistic sketches, and messages from family members and a host of friends who visited the house. Although Electra Webb lived in, and furnished, several houses on Long Island and an apartment in New York City, she came to love the Brick House the most. It provided an appropriate backdrop for her collections of American furniture, blown and pressed glass, pewter, quilts, dolls, and hooked rugs; and, more than any of her other residences it probably best reveals the progression and maturation of her collecting patterns. Recently restored, the Brick House is today part of the Shelburne Museum and survives as a rare example of the evolution of one collector's vision.

Following Electra Havermeyer's marriage to James Watson Webb in 1910, her in-laws, Dr. William Seward Webb (1851-1926) and Eliza (Lila) Vanderbilt Webb (1860-1936), gave the newlyweds what was then a modest brick farmhouse on seven hundred acres in Shelburne. (1) Electra Webb described the state of the property during a visit that same year (Fig. 1):

He [her husband] took me up to a little pink brick farmhouse, He said "Don't you think this is a lovely old house?" I must say I did not know what to answer. It looked in poor repair; the windows were boarded up and I don't believe until that minute I had ever thought of a house as anything but a place to live in. Then he went on to tell me to look at the lovely proportions, told me of the history attached to it and then lastly said, "I used my allowance to board up the windows so it would not go to pieces." (2)

Nearly two years elapsed before Webb wrote in his diary on July 6, 1912, that he and Electra "planned out all about our new place. The idea is fine and I do hope it goes through--we'll fix over the little brick house at once." (3) Just three days later, he consulted the architect Eliot Cross regarding plans for "remodeling" the house. (4) Cross was no stranger to Shelburne, for he had been a classmate of Watson Webb's at Groton School in Groton, Massachusetts, and attended many house parties at Webb's parents' Shelburne House between 1903 and 1907. (5) In the latter year, he and his brother John Walter Cross formed the prestigious architectural firm of Cross and Cross (1907-1942) in New York City. As they had grown up in New York society, their practice was a fashionable one.(6)

Many of the friends and acquaintances who stayed at the Brick House in the early years shared the Webbs' passion for the sporting and hunting life. Some, like Francis R Appleton Jr., James Jackson Higginson, and Bayard Hoppin, had been Groton classmates of Webb's. Others, such as J. Comelius Rathborne, Devereaux Milburn, F. Skiddy von Stade, and Frederick Henry Prince Jr., were accomplished fellow polo players. The architect Thomas Hastings (1860-1929) of the firm Carrere and Hastings (1886-1929) and his wife, Helen (nee Benedict, 1865-1936), an avid horsewoman, came to the Brick House a few times in the early years. (7) Franklin B. Voss (1880-1953), a noted artist who painted American hunting and racing scenes, signed the guest books regularly-often adding comical sketches capturing the day's foxhunt. (8) Although the Webbs' core group of friends often returned yearly for hunting, they also shared a similar lifestyle on Long Island, where the Webbs maintained a residence until the late 1940s.

The beginnings of the Brick House, or the "Shelburne cottage" as Electra Webb sometimes referred to it, were modest. By September 1913, initial renovations and enlargements had been completed, including the addition of a two-and-one-half-story brick wing on the south end of the house. Six years later, in 1919, following Watson Webb's return from service as a field artillery officer in World War I, the couple once again summoned Cross and Cross to enlarge the house. (9) The Webb family had grown rapidly: by 1920 daughter Electra was ten; Samuel Blatchely was eight; Lila was seven; and James Watson Webb Jr. was four years old. With the birth of Harry Webb in 1922, the family reached its final size (see Fig. 2).

The addition of a large two-story wing on the north end of the house during the second phase of construction dramatically transformed it from a linear ...