Exploring Dumbarton Oaks Gardens

In the early 1920s, philanthropist Mildred Bliss and landscape designer Beatrix Farrand began to create an extensive garden at the Bliss’ Washington DC estate. Collaborating for almost thirty years, the two planned every garden detail, each terrace, bench, urn, and border. Now open to the pubic, the garden is perhaps the last remaining landscape in North America that hews closely to the original Farrand design. In 2014 it was singled out by National Geographic as one of the ten best gardens in the world. […]

Morgan Library Gets a Facelift … and a Garden

Commissioned in 1902 by financier John Pierpont Morgan as his private library, the Morgan Library building was completed in 1906 and is considered one of McKim, Mead & White’s finest works, perfectly embodying the Renaissance ideal of the unity of the arts through the integration of architecture, sculpture, and painting with exceptional craftsmanship and materials. […]