Garrett Jacobs Mansion
The Garrett Jacobs Mansion is a historic home located in the Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland.
The property was located in the then-new suburb of Mount Vernon, which was a haven for the newly rich of Baltimore as a place to escape the congestion of the city.
Robert Garrett attended to the neighborhood as well as the house, enhancing the setting of his home by engaging Fredrick Olmstead to design the four parks of the square.
[1] Inspired by the Champs del Elysees in Paris, Garrett wanted a similar park in front of his own home.
The renovations would continue for thirty-two years until the house included over forty rooms, sixteen fireplaces, and one hundred windows.
The portico plan provoked the consternation of neighbor Henry Janes who sued to prohibit its construction, asserting that it blocked his light and air and impaired his view of the monument.
Given her requirements, Stanford White initiated several extraordinarily beautiful details including the spiral staircase, the entrance fireplace with inglenooks, the hanging Venetian lamp.
He also designed the family dining room in Renaissance style, featuring tapestries on the walls, elaborately-carved cabinets, painted black to suggest ebony.
Other important artisans included Bartlett and Haywood of Baltimore providing decorative iron work, John Cabus designing built-in cabinets.
Robert Garrett began the collection of paintings that Mary Jacobs would later devote much attention to developing, ultimately leaving to the Baltimore Museum of Art.
[3] Another first piece acquired by Robert, the Rembrandt, “Titus, The Artist’s Son,” hangs in the Baltimore Museum of Art today.
While abroad on a trip planned to ease his nerves, his tenuous health was further hampered by the unexpected death of his beloved brother, Thomas Harrison, in a yachting accident.
This time John Russell Pope, another renowned Gilded Age architect, assisted them in realizing a site for the constant entertaining that was the obligation and the pleasure of Baltimore's leading socialite.
He also created a library paneled with built-in, carved book cases where Dr. Jacobs would house his collection of rare music and medical texts.
Pope also added the wide, marble Caen staircase leading to the sumptuous downstairs supper room with a space for musicians to entertain the guests.
With these additions by John Russell Pope, who designed changes for ten years, the Garrett- Jacobs Mansion earned the distinction of being the only structure in the United States representing the contrasting visions and styles of these two great architects of the Gilded Age.
Though the two expressed different styles, and each phase of the renovation reflected each architect's distinctive touch, the overall effect is as unified and as seamless as the brown-stone façade.
Though the collection is relatively small, it includes some especially fine pieces: a Sandro Botticelli, “Madonna Adoring the Child with Five Angels;” and according to Dr. Oliver Shell, Art Historian of the Baltimore Museum of Art, one of the best of Fanz Hals, “Dorothea Berck Wife of Joseph Coymans,” and one of the best paintings owned by the museum, Jean Baptiste Chardin, “The Player of Knucklebones.”[6] Mary Garrett Jacobs died in 1915 leaving the house to her husband.
At his death, in 1939, the mansion which had renovations amounting to more than $2 million was auctioned for $36,000 to William Cook who planned to use it as a funeral home.
In 1971 the Mansion was recognized by the Maryland Historic Trust; in 2007 that organization awarded grant funds for the restoration of the gold leaf in the dining room.
It is also the site of lectures, parties, and weddings, as well as home to the Engineering Society which has expanded its membership to include all professions.
Call number 708.0838 J 17 Shell, Oliver on Mary Frick Jacobs Collection at the Baltimore Museum of Art presented at Garrett-Jacobs Mansion, March 17, 2013.
