Design Post Update

I was thrilled to have lunch recently with one of my favorite bloggers, The Blue Remembered Hills, while he was traveling through DC. As so often happens when bloggers meet for the first time we began chatting at once like old friends and eventually the topic naturally veered towards design.Both of us have 'pet peeves'...

My favorite square in Paris is without a doubt the Place Vendome.  I even have a painting of it in my bedroom by Moura Chabor!The storied square is actually 26 separate buildings with a unified front designed by Mansart.   Based on the success of the earlier Place des Vosges in the Marais (a similar concept of...

Today I bring you Oheka Castle through a music video by Taylor Swift.  Oheka Castle on Long Island was designed by Delano and Aldrich in 1914 for Otto Kahn. The structure happens to be the 2nd largest private house in the United States after the Biltmore estate. The house is gorgeous and the song is really fun;...

Under heavy renovation and possibly finished by 2016, The Neues Palais (or new palace) in Potsdam is one of the more impressive structures in the area. Parts of Potsdam are basically a suburb of immense palaces, now nearly all museums.  There are many excellent books available on the many palaces and the area itself.The...

I recently discovered that the Levi Morton house (1912) by John Russell Pope in my old neighborhood in Washington, DC, was for sale. For about a decade I lived a block away from this stunning mansion at 1500 Rhode Island Avenue, NW and always admired it.For the past 75 years the National Coatings Association has been the...

If someone had told me before my last trip to Paris that the Museum of hunting and nature would be among the most fascinating I had ever visited in this city of museums, let alone anywhere, I would have laughed in their face.  Boy was I wrong.I visited for the architecture of course but was floored by the collections....