Control. Power. Control and power. If you do it up yourself, you're responsible for how it looks. If you do it according to Hoyle you are merely exercising the will of the architectural gods. Redo the walls in maroon silk damask because you like maroon silk damask? you monster. Redo it because some insane rich fucker liked it in 1919? You're a traditionalist. John Barendt touches on this in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil; Jim Williams repeatedly uses the hagiography of the antebellum south to tweak his friends and piss off his neighbors. Ever been to Hearst Castle? WR Hearst wandered all over Europe buying the trappings of power, crating it up and shipping it to Central California to make his architect figure out how to integrate the facade of a 14th century French church into his dining room. What you're doing is using totems of past power to touch wood and subsume it for your own purposes. Who's more impressive, the dipshit in an Aeron or the dipshit in an Edwardian chair that belonged to the ninth Earl of Spottiswoode? If you're impressed by stuff, it's gonna be the red velvet, yo. This is why they're on the lawn brandishing guns - their entire culture, their entire ecosystem is under threat. They're being told by their culture that they didn't earn all that shit. They're being told that their wealth is not virtuous. And the underclass is right outside reminding them of their comeuppance. They restored an organ they don't want to play for the same reason the jackass is wearing a pink Brooks Brothers button-down on a Sunday - because they're the impressive, powerful sort of people who restore organs they don't play so they can tell people how many rooms it renders useless. But the people they impress with that shit aren't walking past their house and the people will be impressed.Gotta wonder about why they decided to put in the work to bring this house back from the dead, and do it properly, like someone restoring an ancient clock.
Of note is the fact that virtually all of the art, furniture, and tapestries are authentic 14th to 17th-century antiques collected by the couple.
Ya know, this touches on another thing that bugged me about the original design of the building. A fleet of architects traveled all over Europe for two years, researching epic architecture all over the place... ... and then came back and COPIED IT. They didn't use all of that fantastic imagery to design something new, and whole, and contiguous, and beautiful... ... they just copied a collection of the coolest rooms they had seen! The article continually references the original buildings/rooms of Europe that were copied into this mansion. And every time I'm like.... SO WHAT DID THE ARCHITECT DO?!? That's a draftsman's job: copy what's there. An architect should use all the original design as inspiration and design something new. That's the goddamn point. Man. I really wanted to see this house, but now... yeah... notsomuch. Been to the original ones. Don't need to see a dilapidated American copy... "...If you do it up yourself, you're responsible for how it looks. If you do it according to Hoyle you are merely exercising the will of the architectural gods..."
Something all my architect friends are incensed about Neoclassicism is straight bullshit. Always has been. Always will be. "Leave an exquisite corpse" was popularized by the goddamn Nazis for goddamn Nazi reasons. And you're absolutely right: this monstrosity was under construction the exact same time as Taliesin: And after the Gamble House.
