Millay
A visitor to the house arrives at an enclosed courtyard
of brick painted white. Since she believed that rooms
should be distinctive yet flow into one another naturally,
the visitor enters first into a room decorated as a grotto—
the outdoors brought inside— and ascends to the piano
nobile by a discrete side stairway. Even having reached
the main hall, with its rich display of statuary, the visitor
is turned away from the staircase to the bedroom floor,
reinforcing the sense of privacy. It was upstairs, after all,
that Wharton assiduously wrote all morning in bed. Not
until she decided to descend and join her company was
the house brought to life.
HYLAND
