A. H. Davenport and Company
A. H. Davenport and Company was a late 19th-century, early 20th-century American furniture manufacturer, cabinetmaker, and interior decoration firm.
Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it sold luxury items at its showrooms in Boston and New York City, and produced furniture and interiors for many notable buildings, including The White House.
It produced high-end and custom-made furniture, which it retailed alongside fabrics, wallpaper, hardware, decorative items, and quality goods from a variety of makers.
One of Davenport's first big commissions was for 225 pieces of furniture and decorative items for the Iolani Palace in Honolulu, Hawaii.
The company produced furniture and interiors for architect Charles Brigham's 1895 annex to the Massachusetts State House in Boston.
[18] To execute his interior designs for the Frederick William Vanderbilt Mansion (1896–99), in Hyde Park, New York, architect Charles Follen McKim assembled the team of Herter Brothers (floors, walls and ceilings), Davenport & Co. (furniture), and Edward F. Caldwell & Co. (lighting fixtures).
[19] The company did work on the Henry Clay Frick House (1912–14) in New York City, Thomas Hastings, architect.
The Frick Papers include receipts for "furniture and interior woodwork, fabrics and wall coverings, decorative painting.
"[22] Herter Brothers executed plasterwork, paneling and cabinetwork for several of the public rooms, helping to turn a stylistic hodge-podge of interiors into a unified Neo-Classical whole.
[24] The company executed McKim's Federal-style furniture designs for the Family Dining Room, which consisted of an oval table, armchairs and side chairs, a sideboard, server, mirror, and china cabinet.
[29] President William Howard Taft moved the desk, sofas and chairs into the first Oval Office, which was completed in 1909.
President Herbert Hoover rebuilt the Taft Oval Office, but accepted the donation of a new desk from a Michigan trade association.
[32] The Theodore Roosevelt desk survived the 1929 fire, and was used in the modern Oval Office by Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
