Winterthur

I had planned on going to Philadelphia last weekend, but at the very last minute I chickened out, and decided instead to do something a bit more relaxing: drive around aimlessly. Over the past couple of months I have spent quite a lot of time driving around trying to find gardens, only to discover that I was hopelessly lost. While being lost and under time constraints is very stressful, driving around Pennsylvania is not. I was originally going to drive around listening to bad radio until I found some place interesting to explore, when I saw a sign for Winterthur, a duPont estate and garden which has been turned into a beautiful museum.


So that is what I did instead, as driving around aimlessly seems a bit more selfish than usual what with the oil spill and the imminent destruction of all things beautiful. I took many beautiful pictures, but accidentally deleted them, so you will have to use your imagination.


Winterthur is more akin to a Biltmore Estate than a garden. Your admission ticket purchases access to the gardens and the large estate-museum, with a complementary introductory tour of the estate, which includes six or seven iconic rooms. You are also given access to galleries displaying some of the duPont Americana collections, ranging from furniture to clothing to children's toys that were all created between 1640 and 1860. There is a lot to do and a lot to see.


A bit about Winterthur:
Ultimately this is a country estate turned museum. It was designed and maintained by Henry Francis duPont, who, of course, made all his money through his position as a wealthy duPont heir. He was an avid horticulturist and collector of Americana artifacts. A museum showcasing his impressive collection of Americana was already well established in his lifetime. During the tour I saw shelf after shelf of porcelain that had belonged to the Washingtons, or silver created by Paul Revere. Original paintings of famous revolutionary heroes litter the 175 refurnished rooms of the house. Many of the rooms have a theme, such as the thirteen colony rooms, each with architecture and furnishings from an estate located within the original thirteen colonies, or the china sitting room, with beautiful jade planters and hand-painted chinese wall paper.


Of course, I spent most of my time being deeply unsettled by the whole thing, even as I could not help but be interested in the variety of fascinating objects and architecture you run across in such a place. It was unsettling for a variety of reasons, I guess. The rooms were all very small and dark, for one, and filled with objects that I felt little connection to. The obvious deification of the founding fathers was a bit troublesome too, although I can't quite verbalize why. Also my tour group was dominated by individuals who kept repeating over and over how beautiful things used to be, with this strange nostalgia, forgetting that this was the house of one of the wealthiest individuals in the country. Its was a bit twilight-zoney.


The gardens were beautiful, and much more simplistic than the Longwood Gardens. I missed all the azaleas and peonies, but am starting to get past flower displays to enjoy the foliage and form of deciduous azaleas particularly, especially the soft blue-green foliage some exhibit. Most of Winterthur's gardens are somewhat naturalized, in that they are found within a maintained forest of large, old hardwoods. I wandered through the old trees, enjoying the shade and the green, and trying to avoid the white statues of people hidden throughout the woods. I wandered the gardens, spending most of my time in the large pinetum, staring out over the fields that surround the house. While exploring around, I found a dead crow. I found their statue garden, where engraved stones called out, "life is but a dream," just in case passersby had forgotten for a minute about the nature of our mortality.


That's when I realized that I am more superstitious than I thought. I highly recommend Winterthur, unless you are unsettled by graveyards and the like. It was heartening to see that the trees and gardens still grow, despite the house being a monument to the dead.


Adventure is out there.