Roycroft Journal Continued
She took us into several rooms of the Second Print Shop, which is now a building owned by Cornell University. One had one of the most incredible fireplaces I have ever seen, yet the rest of the room was institutional. Kitty wanted to show us more, but we couldn't go upstairs because we were told that "everything was a mess up there."
We finally went back to Kitty's own house, which was the former home of painter Alex Fournier. There was a well worn path from behind the building where Janice works and the Fournier House, and I imagine that people have been walking it for over a century.
Carl and Fournier were good friends and he visited there often. The place was very much like the Hubbard museum inside except that someone actually lives in this house and sits on those $15,000 Morris chairs daily.
In the dining room of the house there were four murals by Fournier - small versions of the same theme he later did in the Inn. The murals represent the times of the day. Like Kitty, I liked the moonlight one best. She said that one of the former owners of the house had actually wallpapered over them. It took a great deal of time and energy to restore them but it was worth the effort and expense.
Finally we headed over to the Roycroft Inn. Martha wanted to head home before it got too dark, but before she went she wanted to see the lounge, which had been the original reception room for the Inn, and before that the first print shop. It is the room that Madonna passed through every day to get to work, so I was anxious for this as well. As soon as we stepped in the door we said a collective "Oh my God!" Being in the room was like stepping back in time 100 years. Each time I saw one of the wait staff walk through the room in present day clothing I did a double take. Many things in the room are restorations of how it once looked and it is like viewing history in living color. The resemblance to the old photographs was amazing.
When Kitty's family purchased the Inn, it had been in horrible shape and they spent a fortune returning it to its former glory. The beams are all original and the furniture is authentic, saved from rubbage heaps and fireplaces back when Roycroft furniture was worth next to nothing.
After Janice and Kitty arrived and Martha headed for home, we were seated in the Larkin Room, which connects to the original dining hall, where my great grandparents dined, by five sets of French doors. Our room was once for outdoor dining and has since been closed in, but it overlooks a courtyard. It was a pretty room, though I'd have preferred to sit in the main dining hall. I know Kitty will take me there
after dinner, so I am content.
Dinner at the Inn was on the pricey side, but the ambiance alone made up for that. Janice and Kitty work across the street, but both obviously enjoyed being there. Many famous people have stayed at the Inn since it opened in 1905 - authors, painters, musicians, politicians and actors. In Roycroft's heyday thhy would give lectures or presentations in the salon, which is the present day reception room. Susan B. Anthony came here, as did Clara Barton. B.J. Palmer, the founder of chiropractic medicine, was a close friend of
Hubbard's. I have a book with a chapter full of quotes from the guestbook and many said roughly the same thing; they had come to Roycroft and been both inspired and moved by the experience. Some even referred to their time there as a spiritual awakening, and they did not mean this in the religious sense. The "chapel" at Roycroft was not a church at all during Hubbard's time, but rather just a meeting place and a shop to display and sell Roycroft items. Hubbard was notorious for questioning the accepted religious beliefs at the time.
After dinner we started our tour of the Inn. The first room I saw was the former salon, now the reception room. The room was significant because Alex Fournier painted murals on every wall representing the eight wonders of the world. The 8th wonder, by the way, was Roycroft. Did I mention that Hubbard had a bit of an
ego? The wood floor of this room is connected on every third board, making the surface give slightly under your feet. This room was often used as a ballroom, and this gave the dancers a feeling of floating over the floor.
Another room, just off the reception room, has restorations of the murals representing the times of the day that Fournier had created for the Inn. The version there takes place in Venice, while the ones at his house took place in East Aurora.
From there we entered the original Roycroft dining hall, which is to this day a dining hall. The beams in the room are original, as are the placards with inspirational ideas that Hubbard liked to hang for all to see. They say things like "Good Cheer," "Fletcherize," "Fraternity", "Perseverance" etc. I am certain that Carl had great fun poking fun at Hubbard over these. I can picture him rolling his eyes every time he looked at them.
We eventually ended up back in the original reception room, the first room Martha and I walked into. Kitty explained the process for restoring the room. She said at one point the original staircase had been torn down and made into a very bad wall display. She had that taken down and incorporated as much of it back into the staircase that is there today. Apparently there were enough photographs of the original staircase to reproduce it exactly. I can't tell which of the spindles are original and which are recreations.
Next we headed up the staircase to the Morris Room, which is likely the room where Madonna worked. It is now an extra dining room for private parties, and guests were arriving shortly so we could not linger. The room itself did not appear to be special compared with the opulence below. The walls are richly paneled and some art work hangs there. The fireplace is simple brick. I have historical photos of the room showing where the desks were and I am fairly sure that Madonna worked at the window off to the left. All of the windows in the room are large and there were gas lamps to work by as well. One still hangs in the center of the room. Photographs would never duplicate the feeling of being in the Morris Room. My mind raced the second I walked in the door.
I was convinced that I would finish my book in six weeks if I could take over the room as my office. It is electric, for lack of a better word. Magnetic is the second impression that comes to mind.
About thirty years ago, when Kitty was the owner of the Inn, an ancient society called the Rosicrucians approached her. They were interested in Roycroft because their records list Elbert Hubbard as a member. The most prevalent symbol of Roycroft is the rose, so it is not much of a stretch to consider Hubbard may have been associated with the group, especially knowing his love/hate relationship with organized religion. Like many believers in mystical things, the Rosicrucians are convinced that there are ley lines (or areas of increased energy) on the earth and that important sites around the world are connected directly by those lines. They believe that Hubbard picked this location for Roycroft deliberately because it rests where two of these lines intersect. They contend that creative people are drawn to the area as they would be drawn to a magnet. Kitty was skeptical about this to begin with, of course, as she was raised with a conventional religious background. She eventually relented, however, and allowed them to perform a dowsing ceremony in the room. I know very little about what this entails, but apparently the result was so dramatic that she was amazed. She had other people perform the ceremony with the same result. I have no opinion one way or the other as to the truth of ley lines and such ideas, but I am not as quick to discount things immediately as I once was. All I can go by was what I felt personally in the room, and it was both powerful and useful for the writing of my book.
After leaving the room, I encountered another detail about the building that I had not thought of before, and need to make sure I keep this in mind while writing. I am certain that Carl rarely, if ever, went into the Morris Room or the Ruskin Room above that. The staircase is at such a steep angle to avoid the rafter in the room below that even I gripped the railing and prayed I didn't trip and fly headfirst into it. Going down that staircase (or up it for that matter) would have been bad enough for someone who simply had large feet. It would be suicide for someone with a cane.
September 10th, 2006
Janice and I headed back into the campus about 10:00 AM. Don Meade, my contact from the Hubbard museum, asked me to call him this morning because he was fairly certain he could get me inside the chapel, which is now the Aurora Town Hall. The town museum is in the room that was once called the Art Gallery. Many of Carl's paintings once hung there. I have a scene in my book that takes place in that room, and so I really wanted to see it.
I had a little time before Don could come to the campus, so I took advantage of the quiet and took camcorder footage to show the scale and location of the buildings. Unfortunately, I didn't think to snap photos as well!
I met Don and he took me into the main room of the chapel. I did get photos in there. Once again, the room was much more compact than I had imagined. I can't believe they used to cram 200 people in there for lectures and presentations.
I need to remember to rework my scene so it is clear how cramped the quarters are. For some reason I pictured a stairway nearby, and there is not. Unless, of course, one of the interior walls was not there originally - there IS a staircase on the other side.
I wished I could go onto the second floor of the tower, as I know that was once the studio of Samuel Warner, the director of the art department when Carl and Madonna were at Roycroft. Sammy the Artist, as he was called, was Madonna's drawing instructor and had been the one responsible for bringing her to Roycroft. He and Carl became friends as well. The room was locked.
Part of the Roycroft Chapel
The Roycroft Chapel
Sign for the Roycroft Inn
The reception room for the Inn was the original print
shop. Madonna passed through this room daily.
Martha, Kitty, myself and Janice in the Inn
The Roycroft Campus sign
This room in the Roycroft Chapel was the
former art gallery. Many of Carl's paintings
once hung in this room.
Carl in his Roycroft stuio in 1900
Martha Niles (a.k.a. Madonna
Ahrens) in 1904
Carl standing by a tree at Roycroft in
- Beside him is his 2nd cousin,
fellow painter, Eleanor Douglas
Carl with Samuel Warner, the Roycroft Art Director.
The photo was likely taken in 1900.
