BGuthrie Photos: PA -- Milford -- Grey Towers National Historic Site

PA -- Milford -- Grey Towers National Historic Site:

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[1] GREYTO_080531_01.JPG	[2] GREYTO_080531_23.JPG	[3] GREYTO_080531_34.JPG
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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. GREYTO_080531_34.JPG: Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946): Noted forester, conservationist, and progressive leader. Chief, 1898-1910, U.S. Forest Service (as renamed in 1905). Governor of Pennsylvania, two terms 1923-1927 & 1931-1935. His first term brought major government reorganization. His second term was famed for the paving of rural roads throughout the estate -- including this road -- to provide unemployment relief & "get the farmer out of the mud." Grey Towers was his family home.
2. GREYTO_080601_001.JPG: The Place: "By George I'd like to come back a hundred years from now and see my trees." -- Gifford Pinchot, at Grey Towers The Man: "...among other things, many public officials who under my administration rendered literally invaluable service to the people of the United States, Gifford Pinchot, on the whole, stood first." -- President Theodore Roosevelt "He was more than a forester, he was the father of American conservation." -- President John F. Kennedy, Grey Towers Dedication, 1963 - First Chief -- USDA Forest Service: 1905-1910 - Inherited Grey Towers 1914 - Governor of Pennsylvania: 1923 to 1927 and 1931 to 1935 The Legacy: Today the Forest Service and its partners carry on the Pinchot conservation legacy at Grey Towers. It is an active center for education, leadership and natural resource conservation programs.
3. GREYTO_080601_006.JPG: Bathrooms and gazebo, erected for the park
4. GREYTO_080601_054.JPG: Note the Roman numerals are screwed up. They go VI -- VII -- VIII -- XI (instead of IX) -- X -- XI -- XII -- I -- II -- III -- IIII (an acceptable variant of IV) -- V -- VI .
5. GREYTO_080601_104.JPG: Forest Service History: President Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot were instrumental in establishing the U.S. Forest Service in 1905. Smokey Bear's well-known message, "Only you can prevent forest fires," was introduced in 1948. ... The Forest Service, an agency under the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was created 100 years ago, thanks to the foresight of foresters, conservationists, and legislators. Until the late 19th century, there was little public concern for the future of our natural resources. But in 1891, the U.S. Congress authorized the President to set aside reserves of forested public lands to be managed by the General Land Office in the Department of the Interior. In February 1905, these reserves were transferred to the Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Forestry, and on July 1, 1905, that Bureau of Forestry was renamed the Forest Service.
6. GREYTO_080601_197.JPG: The Finger Bowl: This outdoor dining pool was the inspired idea of Cornelia Bryce Pinchot, wife of Governor Pinchot. Cornelia worked closely with New York architect William Lawrence Bottomley in the early 1930s to design an intimate social setting for discussing the topics of the time. Politicians, authors and conservationists joined the family around the rim of the pool. Its Italian influence, the canopy of wisteria and grape vines, and the movement of floating foot contributed to stimulating conversation. Naomi Never, a guest of the Pinchot's, described a luncheon served here July 4, 1942. "The food was brought out by the butlers and placed on trays on thick balsa wood rafts. All the food floated. There were several floating rafts on the water going from person to person with the food. One was filled with delicious slices of beef, beautifully garnished. Another raft had a tray filled with vegetables -- peas, carrots, potatoes, asparagus, lima beans, tomatoes -- exquisitely arranged in groups. Another was filled with cut-up fruit -- orange sections, grapefruit, grapes, kumquats, pears, apples, cherries, with a center mound of whipped cream."
7. GREYTO_080601_203.JPG: The Finger Bowl
8. GREYTO_080601_234.JPG: Lots of old grist mill wheels were used in the place
9. GREYTO_080601_247.JPG: This used to be an outdoor pool
10. GREYTO_080601_265.JPG: The Letter Box
11. GREYTO_080601_284.JPG: The Bait Box
12. GREYTO_080601_408.JPG: Path to the cemetery
13. GREYTO_080601_433.JPG: The guide said this was one of the trees planted by Pinchot
14. GREYTO_080601_455.JPG: Bait Box / Letter Box: The Bait Box was built in 1925 as a playhouse for Gifford and Cornelia's son, Gifford Bryce Pinchot. Today it is used as a unique meeting place. The Letter Box was built in 1926 as an office for Gov. Pinchot's staff and archival space for his papers until they were donated to the Library of Congress. It is used by the Forest Service and the Pinchot Institute for Conservation as a research and education center.
15. GREYTO_080601_457.JPG: Different view of the Bait Box
Wikipedia Description: Grey Towers National Historic Site
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Grey Towers National Historic Site is located just off US 6 west of Milford, Pennsylvania, United States, in Dingman Township. It is the ancestral home of Gifford Pinchot, first director of the United States Forest Service (USFS) and twice elected governor of the state.

The house, built in the style of a French ch�teau to reflect the Pinchot family's French origins, was designed by Richard Morris Hunt with some later work by Henry Edwards-Ficken. Situated on the hills above Milford, it overlooks the Delaware River. Pinchot grew up there and returned during the summers when his later life took him to Washington and Harrisburg. His wife Cornelia made substantial changes to the interior of the home and gardens, in collaboration with several different architects, during that time.

In 1963 his family donated it and the surrounding 102 acres (41 ha) to the Forest Service; it is the only U.S. National Historic Site managed by that agency. Three years later the Department of the Interior designated it a National Historic Landmark. Today it is open to the public for tours and hiking on its trails; it is also home to the Pinchot Institute, which carries on his work in conservation.

Building and grounds:

The mansion itself is a three-story L-shaped fieldstone chateau. Conical roofed towers at three of the corners give the property its name. A service wing juts out from the fourth corner. As originally built it contained 43 rooms, with the first floor featuring a large entrance hall, billiard room, dining room, library and sitting room. Bedrooms were located on the second floor, with more on the third floor plus storage spaces and children's playrooms.

The house boasts a number of outbuildings. On the 303 acres (123 ha) of the combined parcels that made up the original estate, there are 48 total buildings, structures and sites, all but eight of which are considered contributing to its historic value. These include nearby cottages known as the Letter and Bait Boxes, a unique outdoor dining facility called the Finger Bowl, a Forester's Cottage used as a residence by the Pinchot descendants, an open-air theatre, the former Yale School of Forestry's summer school, and a white pine plantation established by Gifford Pinchot.

History:

There are four distinct periods in the history of Grey Towers: its initial construction under James Pinchot and his ownership, Gifford and Cornelia Pinchot's years, the early years with the Forest Service, and a more recent period of historic preservation efforts.

James Pinchot:

In 1875, Gifford's father James retired after a successful career in the wallpaper business and moved his family from New York City back to Milford, where he had grown up. He bought 3,000 acres (1,200 ha) of land overlooking the Delaware in Dingman Township, just outside the borough. Particularly attractive to him and his family was a small waterfall on Sawkill Creek.

There, his primary endeavor was planning and designing Grey Towers and the land around it. At first, he developed the land along lines of the ornamental farm advocated by Andrew Jackson Downing. The original drive up the hill was meant to show off his orchards. In 1884 he retained Hunt, a family friend, to put these ideas for a French-style chateau modeled after the Marquis de Lafayette's LaGrange and reflecting the Pinchot family's national origin, on paper for eventual construction. Two years later it was complete, but not after Pinchot altered the plans slightly to save money. While Hunt was away in Europe, he also had Edwards-Ficken, alter Hunt's design slightly when bedrock on the site made it difficult to build the raised foundation Hunt had originally planned. Edwards-Ficken added some of his own decorative touches to the house, such as the front door, interior paneling and wrought iron porches on the south and east facades.

Almost all the materials came from local sources. Hemlock timbers were floated down the Delaware on rafts from Lackawaxen, and another river town, Shohola, provided the bluestone and windows. Roofing slate came from across the river, in Lafayette, New Jersey. All the workers and contractors hired were Milford residents. The total cost was $19,000 for the house itself and $24,000 for furnishings.

In 1906 a design by Frederick Law Olmstead, who had died three years before, was implemented for an old cemetery on the property. It is not clear what his contribution was since all of it had existed from the early 19th century, from prior to the Pinchot family's ownership of the land. Today it is in poor condition.

James Pinchot had come to regret the environmental damage forest-product industries such as his had done, and he endowed the Yale School of Forestry, the first graduate forestry program in the country. From 1901 to 1926 the Grey Towers estate grounds served as the school's primary summer preparatory fieldwork location. Only ruins of the educational buildings exist today.

Gifford and Cornelia:

James Pinchot died in 1908, and his wife, Mary, passed on three days after Gifford married Cornelia Bryce in August 1914. He and his brother Amos split the estate, with Amos taking the half on which a small forester's cabin was the main dwelling and Gifford taking the house. The couple began spending their summers at Grey Towers. She realized that his developing political career, and hers (she ran for Congress three times), required a residence more suited to entertaining guests than it had originally been intended to be, and set about modernizing the house. At her behest, many alterations were made to the original first-floor plan. The most significant involved merging the dining and breakfast rooms to create a large sitting room, and similarly enlarging the library by adding the living room to it. "The first thing my wife did", Pinchot told the Saturday Evening Post in 1922, "was to break down the partition walls and let in light and air ... [O]f course, it's a vast improvement."

An avid gardener, she turned her attention to the grounds. Chester Holmes Aldrich first designed a swimming pool for the property, a raised structure enclosed on three sides by a pergola of stone piers and wooden trellises. After that came the Bait Box, a playhouse for the couple's son, Gifford Bryce Pinchot. Elliptical openings in the stone walls around the courtyard provide views over the surrounding landscape. Next, in the late 1920s, when her husband was serving his first term as governor, came the Letter Box, a small cottage intended both as an archive for his papers and an office for his political staff when he was in residence. In their last collaboration, Aldrich and Cornelia Pinchot added a moat, which finally gave the house the raised effect Hunt had originally intended. In building it became necessary to lengthen the east lawn and build a new stone wall to support the moat.

In the early 1930s, she hired William Lawrence Bottomley to create a unique addition known as the Finger Bowl, an outdoor dining area consisting of a raised pool surrounded by a flat ledge. Chairs were pulled up to the ledge and food was served from bowls floating on the water. It was sheltered by a wisteria-covered arbor supported by 12 stone piers. In the late 1930s, Gifford Pinchot started the White Pine Plantation to reforest some old farmland near the mansion. He was particularly interested in that species since it was the dominant tree in the forests of Pike County and had been heavily harvested during the previous century.

Forest Service:

After his mother died in 1960, Gifford Bryce Pinchot donated the building to the Forest Service, as the family had planned. The agency intended to use the house as a conference center, and had to replace some interior walls that had suffered insect and water damage. Various other rooms in the wing and second floor were converted to storage or office use, and the swimming pool was filled in in 1979 when it became a safety and maintenance problem. A parking lot was built to the northwest.

The Pinchot Institute, which also has a role in administering the site, was dedicated by President John F. Kennedy on September 24, 1963. That same year Grey Towers was one of the first sites declared a National Historic Landmark by the Secretary of the Interior.

In 1980, the USFS realized how much its renovations had damaged an architecturally significant structure and began trying to undo some of the changes it had made. It developed a plan to restore the house and estate to a condition similar to the way it had been in Pinchot's era, in consultation with the Park Service's Harper's Ferry Center,, and hired staff with expertise in landscape and architecture. After a brief closing for this renovation, it reopened on August 11, 2001, Gifford Pinchot's birthday. The state of Pennsylvania's Department of Natural Resources also made a $2 million grant available for renovations to the entrance, entry road and parking facilities. In 2007 the USFS restored the swimming pool.

Today:

The grounds are open daily from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. from Memorial Day weekend through early November. Guided tours home and gardens start every hour on the hour from 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; there is a fee except for July 4 (Independence Day) and September 22 (U.S. Public Lands Day).. Self-guided interpretive trails devoted to the history of the Pinchot family, forestry and the bluebirds nesting in the woods are available on the grounds. There is also a gift shop.

The Pinchot Institute also hosts conferences related to conservation matters. They are held either in the upper floors of the mansion or in the Letter Box.
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