On February 19, 2011, the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, the most comprehensive collection of Louis Comfort Tiffany materials in the world, will open a new 12,000-square-foot wing designed by RLF, a leading Winter Park-based architecture, engineering and interior design firm.
Retired RLF President Jack Rogers, FAIA, said “My father, James Gamble Rogers, II, and Hugh McKean, were contemporaries and shared a common passion for art and architecture. The two men went to Laurelton Hall after the fire in 1957 to help oversee the removal of treasurers from the ruins, for shipment to Winter Park. My father and I both worked with Hugh on numerous buildings at Rollins College during his presidency from 1951 to 1969. It seems particularly appropriate that the successor firm of RLF would work with the Museum to provide a new home for the Daffodil Terrace, together with associated art works and furnishings from Laurelton Hall.”
The $5 million project has increased public exhibition space by 6,000-square-feet, about 50 percent. Additionally, the size of the courtyard garden at the museum’s rear entrance has tripled to 4,450 square feet.
“We designed the new wing to be a seamless extension of the museum’s current architectural style,” said Robert Bendixen, RLF Project Manager. “It was exciting to be a part of this project which enhances the cultural fabric of our community.
Expansion Highlights
The Laurelton Hall galleries now occupy the ground floor of the Museum’s new 12,000-square-foot wing. The second level includes an expanded library, a conference room, and additional offices for the collection and curatorial staff.
While the Morse has long maintained exhibits of works from Laurelton Hall, it has had no room to display the Daffodil Terrace or to present other major elements from the estate together in one installation that provides context for understanding this pivotal accomplishment in Tiffany’s career. In addition to the Daffodil Terrace, permanent exhibits in the Morse Museum’s new galleries will include surviving components of Laurelton Hall’s dining room, living room, reception hall—also known as the Fountain Court—and other rooms and buildings.
Highlights from the dining room installation are a 13 ½-foot-high marble mantelpiece, 25-foot-long Oriental rug; a domed leaded-glass chandelier 6 ½ feet in diameter; and a suite of six leaded-glass Wisteria transoms. The living room installation will showcase five Turtleback-glass hanging lamps as well as the four leaded-glass panels depicting the four seasons that earlier were part of a single large window that garnered Tiffany a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. From the art gallery Tiffany built on the estate, the Morse will show the pair of intricately carved Indian doors and half-moon-shaped peacock-feather window and glass mosaic that graced the entryway.
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