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July 22, 2004
• The Folly at Field Farm The Folly at Field Farm The Folly at Field Farm? A property in Williamstown? What the ...? I looked it up in my American Heritage Dictionary. "A lack of good sense, understanding, foresight; an act of foolishness; a costly undertaking having an absurd or ruinous outcome." No help there -- this Folly is a sort of building. All my other dictionaries, and I have a ton of them, were of little help, adding archaic definitions that amounted to much the same thing. Words in Roget's Thesaurus brought me some curious alternatives, words such as "extravagance," “eccentricity,” “rashness,” and “giddiness.” I turned to a friend, an architect, and asked the question. He had no answer for me other than to suggest that some people built structures that had little or no purpose and usually cost a great deal more money than they were worth. That made me laugh, at least, before I got in the car and drove up to see this place. I had no idea if my architect pal was on the right or wrong track. I'd find out. The Folly at Field Farm is one of two buildings that overlook a pond, Mount Greylock and the neighboring hills of southern Vermont -- the main house is now called the Guest House at Field Farm, and the Folly. Owned and operated by The Trustees of Reservations, it is one of their most unusual properties, certainly worth a trip to see. The main house is operated as a small bed and breakfast inn. The oblong block of land, 316 acres of it with many hiking trails and caves, lies just across the road from Taconic Trail State Forest, and belonged, for the most part, to Lawrence Bloedel and his wife, Eleanore Palmedo Bloedel. He had been the Williams College librarian before going off to war in the 1940s. After his war experiences as a machinist in North Africa and Sicily, he returned to Williamstown in 1945, and decided to build a home on the property that had formerly been the Nathan Field farm, collect modern art and create a lifestyle that would be both comfortable and rewarding. The main house
Mr. Bloedel liked to work with wood and to design and create furniture and, according to Robert Chok who manages the property as its innkeeper, caused some initial difficulties in building the home. "The Bloedels had asked Frank Lloyd Wright to design their new house," Chok said, "but Wright wanted the whole pie. He wanted to design the structure, the rooms and the furniture and that was where he and Mr. Bloedel could not agree. They wrangled for a while and then the family just went a different way, hiring Edwin Goodell, who had already designed a house for them about 20 years earlier, to design the Bauhaus-era house. A lot of the furniture devised and built by Mr. Bloedel is still here, in the house.” The house was built and completed in 1948. With its many modifications, including the workroom and studio for Bloedel's furniture building behind the garage, it’s a hybrid Art Moderne and International style, with its flat roof, open decks, meandering rooms, bottle-glass framed entry and greenhouses. This building now has five guest rooms and suites which are available for as little as $150 a night -- the master suite is $250. The Folly The Folly was built in 1966. Unlike the house, with its long cut redwood siding, the folly is shingled and designed in a macabre, disconnected manner that helps the structure live up to its name. On the edge of the pond, it was designed by Ulrich Franzen who used a variety of existing forms as a basis for the building: Victorian shingle-style, grain silos, theatrical proscenium arches, airplane propellors. When it was completed, Mr. Bloedel considered it to be as much a part of his art collections as the paintings, sculptures and drawings he had acquired. In a 1990 interview with Franzen, conducted by members of The Trustees of Reservations, he provided some basic insights into the building and its name. "The story is out," Franzen told his interviewers," that Larry referred to this as his Folly because it cost more money [than it should]. That really isn't the case. It was called The Folly because it’s intended to be a sort of ... place to go from the main house and in the 18th century people used to have garden structures that were called follies in England and so forth. This structure is really in that spirit.” In the winter, according to Franzen, the Bloedel's often had skating parties and the main house was too far a trek from the main house, so having something closer to the pond was important. The living room in the Folly is cut into two separate, distinct sections. A special work of art was commissioned from a local artist to help define the space, but it is not viewable in that context today. "One half is oriented to the outside, the small front garden, the pond and then beyond it the mountains," Franzen noted in his interview. "Now looking at views and contemplating nature is one level of experience you might have when you're relaxing and sitting in a house in the living room. But then there are other kinds of experiences ... particularly if one lives in climates that are cold and threatening sometimes due to the weather. We all love fireplaces. Usually what can happen in a house is a terrible conflict between where the fireplace is, where should I put the windows, how should the furniture be oriented. So the idea here was again to enhance the overall enjoyment and add to this whole feeling of being part of nature but also to be sheltered from it, to create a kind of interior fireplace setting, an inglenook, a special place where you could sit under natural light but no windows straight on out and light a fire and the symbolic center of this setting in front of the fireplace was a piece of sculpture suspended form the ceiling and indeed that was made specially for that space by George Rickey ... The whole notion in this house was to have different aspects, different experiences and views all related in some way to the setting.” The Rickey artwork was donated to Williams College Art Museum.
Mr. Bloedel, who had been born in Bellingham, Wash., in 1902, died in 1976. His widow, born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1901, continued to live at Field Farm until her death in 1984 at which time the property was given to The Trustees. Most of the art was donated separately to the Williams College Museum of Art and to the Whitney. Since taking over the management of the property, much of the art has been borrowed back for permanent display in the house and about the grounds. Most of the important art is now in the guest house, but the Folly's dining room contains original cartoon art published in The New Yorker, including pieces by Peter Arno. Sculpture and landscape The outdoor sculpture exhibit, which can be seen at any time, includes Richard McDermott Miller's 1971 "Diane: Sitting," Minoru Niizuma’s 1966 "Hollow Sea," Philip Pavia’s 1966 “High Seas,” which shares a private plot with the graves of both Bloedels and their dog Tyl, Elbert Weinberg’s 1960 “Temptation of Eve,” Bernard Reder’s 1960 “La Gargouillade” and Jack Zajac’s 1962 “Ram Head with Broken Horn.” The Guest House contains an additional sculpture, Joep Brody's 1965 "Man and Woman on Esplande," a double nude in bronze. There are paintings by Wolf Kahn, Robert Goodnough, Richard Lytle and Gabor F. Petredi, among others, and mid-century (20th) furniture by Bloedel and many other designers including Arne Jacobsen, Vladimir Kagan, Niels Vooder & Finn Juhi, Carl Hansen & Hans Wegner. The two buildings provide a strange and wonderful insight into the design and art world of the period from 1940 through 1970. Bloedel's chairs and couches are unexpectedly comfortable. His tables both functional and clean in design. A step backward in time to an era so close is an unusual experience and the combination of natural space to constructed space is unique. In the Folly, for example, there is a hallway that surrounds the double living room and leads to the bedrooms. On first appearance it seems to be much longer than the house itself. This is due to a designed false perspective in which the height of the hallway is reduced gradually from the entryway to the last room. The first bedroom has a partial glass wall which allows square and circular lights to appear in rooms that do not physically possess both. It is a small miracle of Franzen's design. "This is one of the most unusual, and certainly a unique, property," said Trustees of Reservations historic resource regional manager, Will Garrison. "People are finding it and coming here, not just to stay, but for tours, so we're training some young docents to give tours of the house, the Folly and the natural history room." That last item is located in the old garage and contains bones, skulls and other natural artifacts that had been found on the property. It is a curious collection, guaranteed to occupy at least a half hour of your visit, or stay, at Field Farm.
"We're becoming an ideal location for honeymooners," Chok added at the end of our tour of the property. "We have the views, we have the history and the art, we have a good pool, privacy and the rates are right. It’s a good deal all the way round.” There is no smoking allowed anywhere on the property. The property is open daily for nature walks and viewing the outdoor sculpture. The Folly is open for tours on Saturdays, noon to 5, from June through October and there is a small fee for non-members of the Trustees of Reservations. Tours of the Guest House are by appointment only. The number to call for tour information is 298-3239; for reservations to stay at Field Farm call 458-3135. The farm is on Sloane Road in Williamstown. For more information and directions, visit www.thetrustees.org. |
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