Guide to Winterthur Museum & Country Estate

by Pauline Eversmann

Winterthur offers a rare combination of beauty, history, art, and learning. Nestled in the scenic Brandywine Valley of Delaware, the estate is the former home of three generations of du Ponts, including Henry Francis du Pont, a scion of the family whose industrial achievements played a significant role in American history. Entering the estate, visitors encounter tangible reminders of its past. Rolling meadows, freshwater ponds, stone bridges, greenhouses, dairy barns, a vast garden, workers' housing, and an imposing mansion all remind us of the days when Winterthur figured prominently in the American country estate movement. In the 1920s, the property encompassed more than 2,600 acres and housed some 250 resident workers. It consisted of numerous farms; the finest dairy herd of Holstein-Friesian cattle in America; an expansive, wooded landscape with a naturalistic garden; and a family manor house that provided the perfect setting for country-house weekend entertaining.

While developing the family home as a country estate and collecting the finest American decorative arts, H. F. du Pont was also beginning to envision a wider role for his Winterthur--one that would eventually include opening the mansion and grounds to the public, offering all a glimpse of life in the past: "My idea of Winterthur is that it is a country estate museum, to show Americans of the future what a country place and farm were like." Since 1951, its guests have enjoyed just that experience.

Today Winterthur's thousand-acre estate offers much for visitors to explore: a world-class museum of decorative arts that celebrates the best in style and craftsmanship; a romantic landscape of incomparable beauty that imparts the peace and great calm of a country place; a naturalistic garden that combines the art of horticulture and landscape design; and a superlative research library that supports Winterthur's graduate programs in early American culture and art conservation.

104 pages, Paperback

First published December 13, 2005

Reviews

[SusanwithaGoodBook · Rating 3 out of 5]

This guide book actually had a family tree for the DuPont family, which was helpful. It also has a little more detail about the history of the house and a few of the rooms. The photos are lovely. There's not a lot of text or detail, but I suppose there's enough for me to remember some of the highlights of our visit there.

I have to say that, although I enjoyed our tour of this museum, it has an odd feeling to it. The fact that it really has been turned from a home to a museum is very evident, and I found it off-putting somehow. It's all very artificial. They even moved doors and put up fake windows in some cases. I guess, although I like architecture, when I look at a family home I want to know how they lived and what they did there. Seeing the opulent collections of random objects in fake rooms just left me feeling hollow. That was DuPont's intention, though. He wanted to show off the stuff he collected, not tell the story of his life. That's fine. I'm just not as interested in that personally.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great presentation and lovely photos in this book.

[Kristi · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book contains beautiful images, but not much verbal content. The book focuses on the domestic spaces of Winterthur, and the transformation by Henry Francis du Pont of manor estate to collection museum. Readers can see the connection between Gilded Age industrialism, the network of wealthy socialites, and collecting. In the course of this brief book readers can follow the transformation of a high society home into somewhat stultifying period rooms, as du Pont collected architecture artifacts and antiques to refashion his home in a museum. A large percentage of the book is dedicated to images of the estate gardens, as the collection and display of horticultural specimens. In the final section - a photographic "walking tour" of the grounds, attention is drawn to how the architectural facades of the estate mask the inner-working of the museum, and how dramatically these domestic spaces were actually transformed during the museum-ification process. Whereas the introductory chapter focuses on the familial history of the estate, as a museum the attention shifts from familial heritage (only superficially represented to visitors) to Henry du Pont's collections. Yet, the bulk of du Pont's collection are strikingly absent from this book. More attention to the contents of the museum collections would have enhanced the book and rendered it more useful. Still, for someone who has never had the pleasure of visiting Winterthur in person, this was a beautiful visual introduction.