Charles Allom

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Sir Charles Carrick Allom (1865 — 1947) was an eminent British architect and decorator, knighted for his work on Buckingham Palace. Among his American clients in the years preceding World War I was Henry Clay Frick, for whom Allom furnished houses in cooperation with Sir Joseph Duveen, the eminent paintings dealer. Allom furnished the house at 71st Street and Fifth Avenue[1] that today houses the Frick Collection, and the neo-Georgian house designed by Ogden Codman, Jr. bought for Frick's daughter-in-law, Clayton, Roslyn, Long Island.[2] For the grand rooms of parade in Frick's New York house,[3] Sir Charles, whose London workshops produced the plasterwork and boiseries, kept the furnishings muted, not to compete with Frick's collection of paintings. In 1925, when William Randolph Hearst purchased a real castle, St. Donat's in Wales, his choice to furnish it naturally fell upon Sir Charles.[4]

Shortly after World War I, Allom decided that he needed a more prominent position in New York. He purchased the house on Madison Avenue that had been built by Carrère and Hastings in 1893 for Dr. Christian Herter[5] which the firm occupied until 1933. Allom divided his time between London and New York[6] In 1931, White, Allom was among the stellar cast of furnishers and decorators creating a grand but homey atmosphere for the new Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on Park Avenue.

The style generated by Allom, White was distinctly old-fashioned. It appealed to Queen Mary, who was a connoisseur of eighteenth-century English porcelain and furniture. And when the Empress of Britain was launched the same year as the "new" Waldorf-Astoria, among its modern Art Deco decors, the "Mayfair Lounge" by White, Allom was the one space in Edwardian Renaissance manner.[7]

White Allom was acquired by Holloway as Holloway White Allom in 1960.[8] Sir Charles's portrait by Lawrence Alloway is in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Francis Morrone, "The house that Frick built", The New York Sun 8 December 2006
  2. ^ Martha Frick Symington Sanger and Wendell Garrett, The Frick Houses: Architecture, Interiors, Landscapes in the Golden Era 2001.
  3. ^ Elsie de Wolfe, who had pressed for the prestigious commission, was hired to decorate the family rooms upstairs.
  4. ^ St. Donat's: A Hisory of the Castle"
  5. ^ Dr. Herter's father was the Christian Herter of the fashionable decoratoring firm Herter Brothers (Christopher Gray, "Streetscapes", The New York Times 7 January 1990])
  6. ^ Returning to London from one of his trans-Atlantic trips in 1925, Sir Charkles remarked on the American work ethic and was quoted in Time Magazine ("Americana", Time Magazine 18 May 1925)
  7. ^ Time Magazine, 15 June 1931
  8. ^ Holloway White Allom: History

[edit] Further reading

  • Bailey, Colin B. Building the Frick Collection: An Introduction to the House and Its Collections