“More Fun than a Yacht”: Model Farms and Country Estates in the Early Twentieth Century

Leading industrialists of a century ago escaped to grand estates in the country, made more accessible by rail lines and the automobile. Their palatial properties harked back to a tradition of Anglo-Irish country houses and American colonial plantations, with extensive pleasure grounds, landscaped parks, and farming operations seen as necessary but secondary — the less seen, or smelled, the better. But in some notable cases, like Reynolda, the farming complexes were aesthetic showplaces and scientifically-advanced agricultural experiment stations.

Katharine Smith Reynolds in North Carolina, author Jack London in California, and collector and horticulturist Henry Francis du Pont in Delaware were among the builders of elaborate, status-confirming farms that were entwined with larger progressive causes of updating agricultural practices and elevating rural life above the benighted drudgery of traditional farming.

Taught by Phil Archer, deputy director for Reynolda, this course will explore commonalities between the estates, the interrelations of their owners, and the fates of properties once planned and developed as idealized farms, fitted with palaces for pigs and condominiums for cows.

Class meets weekly on Wednesday afternoons. Registration covers all six sessions.

Header image: Z. Smith Reynolds with Reynolda’s Champion Jersey Bull, 1925

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