Another one bit the dust. La Selva, the summer cottage of Pennsylvania coal tycoon Andrew Davis, designed in 1903 by Andrews, Jaques & Rantoul, a prominent Boston firm founded by former associates of HH Richardson. After Daviss death in 1910, the family used the house only intermittenly for a few years, and in the seasons of 1913 and 1914 the cottage was leased by Mrs. John Jacob Astor IV, whose parents summered at Bar Harbors Malvern hotel (where young Madeline Force first met John Jacob Astor IV). That first summer after the Titanic disaster, she was afforded little peace by the press, who followed and reported on her every move. In 1915, the cottage was used by the family, and Mrs. Astor leased one of the cottages on George Vanderbilts Pointe dAcadie estate in Bar Harbor. In 1916, Madeline Astor returned to La Selva, and once again the press stationed themselves outside the gate, compelled by rumors (true) that Mrs. Astor was about to renounce her widows trust to marry banker Richard Dick--as, after several false starts, she did later that summer. The following season the new Mrs. Dick was on Long Island, and La Selva was leased by banker Leonard Thomas and his wife Blanche Oelrichs (niece of Tessie & Hermann of Rosecliff in Newport). Oelrichs was better known as actress and playwright Michael Strange, and considered by many to be the most beautiful woman in America. She went through the social rituals that summer, and hosted a large suffragette rally on the grounds, even as she was thinking about the affair she was having with John Barrymore, who would soon become her next husband. After long occupancy by the Davis daughter, Mrs. Cummins Catherwood, then her daughter Mrs. Charles SC Chaplin, the cottage was sold after WW II and for a time used as a summer school for French studies. The last owners purchased La Selva in 1976, and allowed the house to deteriorate to Grey Gardens condition. Sold a year ago to a car dealer, it was demolished in January, replaced by the usual mcmansion.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 04:17:29 +0000
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