Mac Griswold's The Manor is the biography of a uniquely American place that has endured through wars great and small, through fortunes won and lost, through histories bright and sinister―and of the family that has lived there since its founding as a Colonial New England slave plantation three and a half centuries ago. In 1984, the landscape historian Mac Griswold was rowing along a Long Island creek when she came upon a stately yellow house and a garden guarded by looming boxwoods. She instantly knew that boxwoods that large―twelve feet tall, fifteen feet wide―had to be hundreds of years old. So, as it happened, was the house: Sylvester Manor had been held in the same family for eleven generations. Formerly encompassing all of Shelter Island, New York, a pearl of 8,000 acres caught between the North and South Forks of Long Island, the manor had dwindled to 243 acres. Still, its hidden vault proved to be full of revelations and treasures, including the 1666 charter for the land, and correspondence from Thomas Jefferson. Most notable was the short and steep flight of steps the family had called the "slave staircase," which would provide clues to the extensive but little-known story of Northern slavery. Alongside a team of archaeologists, Griswold began a dig that would uncover a landscape bursting with stories. Based on years of archival and field research, as well as voyages to Africa, the West Indies, and Europe, The Manor is at once an investigation into forgotten lives and a sweeping drama that captures our history in all its richness and suffering. It is a monumental achievement.

The Manor: Three Centuries at a Slave Plantation on Long Island

History

Griswold, Mac

Americas

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

About the Author\nMac Griswold is the author of The Manor: Three Centuries at a Slave Plantation on Long Island, Washington's Gardens at Mount Vernon, and The Golden Age of American Gardens. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Travel + Leisure. She lives in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.\n"I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise is like an exquisite string of pearls: the perfect balance of elegance, style, design, and beauty. This book is inspiring, spirited, and totally absorbing." ―Diane von Furstenberg\nThe story of Bunny Mellon, the great landscape and interior designer, becomes a revelatory exploration of extreme wealth in the American century.\nBunny Mellon, whose life was marked by astonishing good fortune as well as tragedy and scandal, remains a singular figure in the annals of American design. She had her finger on the pulse of American culture and possessed a rare, once-in-a-generation sense of style and grace. Her most celebrated work―the White House Rose Garden, designed during the presidency of John F. Kennedy―demonstrated how formal restraint and the sparing use of color could be deployed to maximal effect. Later, her understated landscape design for the Kennedy gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery changed the face of American public memorials.\nA famously private person, many of Mellon’s greatest achievements remained concealed from public view. Her rarely seen gardens and domestic interiors at eight different properties on three continents became legends and models. At Oak Spring Farm in Virginia, the bibliographic riches of her Garden Library were twinned with the expansive flowering gardens lying below the Edward Larrabee Barnes-designed building. At her home on Nantucket, she pruned back the landscape to reveal the elemental forms of nature. Mellon also ranked as one of the great art collectors of her era, encouraging her husband Paul to use his family’s vast wealth to acquire hundreds of nineteenth century French paintings, many of which were donated to the National Gallery of Art. Her own tastes ranged from Mark Rothko to Richard Diebenkorn―in quantity.\nIn I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise, Mac Griswold―who knew Mellon personally―delves into her subject’s closely-guarded personal archives to construct an unrivaled portrait of a woman as complex and multifaceted as the gardens and homes on which she left her mark. This book explores the tension between Mellon’s idea of herself as a “poor little rich girl” and her own enterprising spirit. Mellon tested the anodyne 1950s model of woman as-wife-as-mother by getting a divorce, admitting candidly to her first husband that she wanted a richer one. She imperiously traded old friends for new, and ultimately used her reputation, her connections, and above all her money to help fund John Edwards’s short-lived presidential campaign. She led an American version of a royal court that, over the years, included Jackie Kennedy, Hubert de Givenchy, and I.M. Pei.\nHow Mellon’s character, style, and taste developed together to produce her greatest accomplishments―private and public―is the real subject of this biography.

I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise: A Life of Bunny Mellon

Humor & Entertainment

Looks at paintings, drawings, and prints from around the world that portray the pleasures of gardens, and discusses garden plans, follies, and Oriental gardens

Pleasures of the Garden: Images from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Arts & Photography

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Harry N.Abrams, Inc.

A new edition of a popular classic offers a fully illustrated exploration of America's most spectacular private estate gardens and their famous owners and includes period photographs and hand-colored lantern slides among its hundreds of illustrations. Reprint.

The Golden Age of American Gardens: Proud Owners * Private Estates 1890-1940

Weller, Eleanor

Photography & Video

Harry N. Abrams

The Golden Age of American Gardens: Proud Owners * Private Estates * 1890-1940

In 1984, the landscape historian Mac Griswold was rowing along a Long Island creek when she came upon Sylvester Manor, a stately mansion guarded by hulking boxwoods. When Griswold went inside, she encountered a house full of revelations, including a letter from Thomas Jefferson and―most remarkable and disturbing―what the aged owner, Andrew Fiske, casually called the "slave staircase."
This staircase would reveal the extensive but little-known story of Northern slavery, and in 1997 Griswold returned with a team of archaeologists, uncovering a landscape filled with stories. Based on years of research―and voyages that took her as far as West Africa―Griswold has given us both the biography of a place that has witnessed war and reversals in fortune, and the riveting story of the family that has occupied it for three centuries. A fine-grained account and a sweeping drama, The Manor captures American history in all its richness and contradictions.

Picador

"I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise is like an exquisite string of pearls: the perfect balance of elegance, style, design, and beauty. This book is inspiring, spirited, and totally absorbing." --Diane von Furstenberg The story of Bunny Mellon, the great landscape and interior designer, becomes a revelatory exploration of extreme wealth in the American century. Bunny Mellon, whose life was marked by astonishing good fortune as well as tragedy and scandal, remains a singular figure in the annals of American design. She had her finger on the pulse of American culture and possessed a rare, once-in-a-generation sense of style and grace. Her most celebrated work--the White House Rose Garden, designed during the presidency of John F. Kennedy--demonstrated how formal restraint and the sparing use of color could be deployed to maximal effect. Later, her understated landscape design for the Kennedy grave site at Arlington National Cemetery changed the face of American public memorials. Mellon was a famously private person, and many of her greatest achievements remained concealed from public view. Her rarely seen gardens and domestic interiors at eight different properties on three continents became legends and models. At Oak Spring Farm in Virginia, the bibliographic riches of her Garden Library were twinned with the expansive flowering gardens lying below the Edward Larrabee Barnes-designed building. At her home on Nantucket, she pruned back the landscape to reveal the elemental forms of nature. Mellon also ranked as one of the great art collectors of her era, encouraging her husband Paul to use his family's vast wealth to acquire hundreds of nineteenth-century French paintings, many of which were donated to the National Gallery of Art. Her own tastes ranged from Mark Rothko to Richard Diebenkorn--in quantity. In I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise, Mac Griswold--who knew Mellon personally--delves into her subject's closely guarded personal archives to construct an unrivaled portrait of a woman as complex and multifaceted as the gardens and homes on which she left her mark. Mellon tested the anodyne 1950s model of woman-as-wife-as-mother by getting a divorce, admitting candidly to her first husband that she wanted a richer one. She imperiously traded old friends for new and ultimately used her reputation, her connections, and above all her money to help fund John Edwards's short-lived presidential campaign. She led an American version of a royal court that, over the years, included Jackie Kennedy, Hubert de Givenchy, and I. M. Pei. How Mellon's character, style, and taste developed together to produce her greatest accomplishments--private and public--is the real subject of this biography.

This issue of White House History looks at the evolution of White House gardens. First Lady Ellen Axson Wilson, in her short time in the White House, created the first rose garden, known as the West Garden, and directed many additional improvements to the grounds. President Franklin D. Roosevelt commissioned Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. to rethink the grounds with security in mind. The most recent period of critical change was 1961–63, when a major renovation was designed and supervised by Rachel Lambert Mellon. Sensitive to the past, Mrs. Mellon modernized the gardens along the old landscape lines and introduced to the White House more variety of colorful garden plants than it had ever known. When she was finished with the work, the White House was literally nestled in flowers.

White House History 38 President Kennedy's Rose Garden

Seale, William

Underwood, Tom

Penczer, Peter

McLaurin, Stewart

White House Historical Association

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Griswold, Mac. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Griswold, Mac

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Griswold, Mac. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Manor: Three Centuries at a Slave Plantation on Long Island

I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise: A Life of Bunny Mellon

Pleasures of the Garden: Images from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Golden Age of American Gardens: Proud Owners * Private Estates 1890-1940

The Golden Age of American Gardens: Proud Owners * Private Estates * 1890-1940

The Manor: Three Centuries at a Slave Plantation on Long Island

I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise: A Life of Bunny Mellon

White House History 38 President Kennedy's Rose Garden