GLR January-February 2025

BOOKS

Designing Men

W ITH A WINK to Oscar Wilde, R. Tripp Evans’ The Importance of Being Fur nished celebrates four in fluential Americans—Charles Leonard Pendleton (1846–1904), Ogden Codman Jr. (1863–1951), Charles Hammond Gib son Jr. (1874–1954), and Henry Davis Sleeper (1878–1934)—whose imaginative houses, now public museums, marked a pivotal shift toward personal expression in home design.

described as “a shrine to beauty, not to hos pitality,” was crowded with a “staggering” collection of tea services and other fine ex amples of American and European furnish ings. He was particularly obsessed with Chippendale furniture. Evans’ drooling de scription of the style—“muscular carving ... widespread legs ... the phallic form of its sturdy cabriole supports”—makes clear how objects could be sexualized. An avid gambler, Pendleton regarded his furnish

M ICHAEL Q UINN

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING FURNISHED Four Bachelors at Home by R. Tripp Evans Rowman&Li tt lefield 202 pages, $45.

ings as assets, selling them as needed to fuel his habit. He died in debt, bequeathing his collection to the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. The circa 1799 house that bears his name is a reproduction of a house he didn’t even own. In 1897, Codman collaborated with Edith Wharton on the seminal design tome The Decoration of Houses , which has never been out of print. His love for “the vanished world of his childhood” impelled him to take possession of his circa 1740 childhood home in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Even during a long European exile, he vastly expanded the house, endowing its in teriors with a French-inspired elegance that allowed “any de

Urban expansion and the rejection of Victorian ideals gave rise to the social phenomenon of “the bachelor.” Oscar Wilde, in keeping with the Æsthetic Movement’s ethos of “art for art’s sake,” championed interior design as a pursuit uniquely suited to “the single man of means.” While a handsome home con ferred social status, it also offered opportunities for veiled sig nals of identity. The desire for sexual conquest was sometimes transferred to the acquisition of exquisite objects. The reclusive Pendleton’s commitment to collecting overrode any concern for practicality. His rented Georgian-style home,

gree of illusion as long as it pleased the eye.” In letters, Codman was open about his at traction to men, explaining to his mother that he’d skipped a beach trip because “the Boys are not very attractive.” Once effectively banned from his family’s 1859 Boston rowhouse, Gibson, upon inher iting it, reimagined it as a shrine, first to his beloved mother (who had enlisted Cod man’s decorating help and with whom Gibson had a “disor dered” relationship), and later to his own youth. (Architect Arthur Little called him “the juiciest looking boy I ever saw.”) Destitute in old age, Gibson recast the house’s tat tered furniture and moth-eaten carpets not as things worn down by time but as a stage like set for its eccentric poet in-residence (himself), almost as an act of performance art. He secured the home’s preser vation in part by creating a de tailed and elaborate registry of its many furnishings, some

Left: Charles Pendleton House, 1906. RISD Museum, Providence. Right: Charles Hammond Gibson Jr., 1915. Olympia Studio. Gibson House Museum, Boston.

January–February 2025

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