The Hunt Room at Idle Hour

Performance in the Hunt Room at Dowling College. From the 1967 student yearbook, page 110.

I recently wrote a post about the Hunt Room at Idle Hour for Born in the Sixties (another blog I contribute to) and I thought I would cross post it here.  Do you have memories of this room before the 1974 fire?   If so, we would love to hear from you!

Stained Glass in Idle Hour

Here is a question about relatively recent history. Who designed and provided the stained glass windows in the main staircase of the Idle Hour mansion? They were installed during the Mansion’s restoration from a fire that occurred in 1974. Here is a picture of what the windows look like today:

Landscape Architect for Idle Hour?

Did William K. Vanderbilt or his architect, Richard Howland Hunt employ a landscape architect when the second and currently standing Idle Hour Mansion was built in 1900-1904? This was common practice at the time, but I have never heard a name associated with the Idle Hour Estate. Could it be that the landscaping was mostly kept in tact from the first Idle Hour Mansion? If so, who was that landscape architect in 1878-1880? (Richard Morris Hunt was the architect of that mansion.)