The House the Rockefellers Built: A Tale of Money, Taste, and Power in Twentieth-Century America

Dalzell, Robert F.; Dalzell, Lee Baldwin

ISBN 10: 0805075445 / ISBN 13: 9780805075441

Published by Henry Holt and Co., 2007

About this Item

Seller Inventory # BSM.11ORO

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The House the Rockefellers Built: A Tale of Money, Taste, and Power in Twentieth-Century America
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
• Publication Date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805075445
• ISBN 13: 9780805075441
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: very_good

About this title

Synopsis

What it was like to be as rich as Rockefeller: How a house gave shape and meaning to three generations of an iconic American family

 

One hundred years ago America's richest man established a dynastic seat, the granite-clad Kykuit, high above the Hudson River. Though George Vanderbilt's 255-room Biltmore had recently put the American country house on the money map, John D. Rockefeller, who detested ostentation, had something simple in mind--at least until his son John Jr. and his charming wife, Abby, injected a spirit of noblesse oblige into the equation. Built to honor the senior Rockefeller, the house would also become the place above all others that anchored the family's memories. There could never be a better picture of the Rockefellers and their ambitions for the enormous fortune Senior had settled upon them.

The authors take us inside the house and the family to observe a century of building and rebuilding--the ebb and flow of events and family feelings, the architecture and furnishings, the art and the gardens. A complex saga, The House the Rockefellers Built is alive with surprising twists and turns that reveal the tastes of a large family often sharply at odds with one  another about the fortune the house symbolized.

About the Author

Robert F. Dalzell is Ephraim Williams Professor of American History at Williams College, and is the author of Enterprising Elite: The Boston Associates and the World They Made and Daniel Webster and the Trial of American Nationalism. Lee Baldwin Dalzell was for many years the head of the Reference Department at the Williams College Library. The two collaborated on George Washington's Mount Vernon: At Home in Revolutionary America.