The virtual tour and descriptions below provide highlights of this historic estate. The architecture of Coe Hall, the decorative arts and the landscape are emblematic of long-gone English traditions, yet the Collections reveal how the Coes simultaneously celebrated the past while having their finger on the pulse of contemporary culture. Artists and decorators like Everett Shinn, Robert Winthrop Chanler, Samuel Yellin and Elsie de Wolfe were all engaged to create site-specific work for Planting Fields. These creatives added something distinctly American to a predominantly English-inspired estate.
Mai Coe’s Bedroom and Dressing Room
In 1921, Robert Winthrop Chanler was also invited to create the wall and ceiling murals of Mai Coe’s bedroom, which was designed by Elsie de Wolfe. After Mai’s death in 1924, William Coe’s third wife, Caroline Slaughter, covered most of the walls with paneling and later the entire room was stripped of the murals. The murals were recreated in 2010 by scenic artist Polly Wood-Holland, who used two archival hand-colored photographs of the original murals as her sources. The murals are another example of Chanler’s idiosyncratic work; an original example of this can be seen in the Buffalo Room.
Elsie de Wolfe, the interior designer whose work is represented in the 1915 Teahouse in the Italian Garden, also worked on this 1921 dressing room. Preserved in the Foundation Archives is a bill from de Wolfe for the central light fixture (now lost). Everett Shinn painted the room’s decorative panels, which were removed years ago, but repurchased by the Foundation and now hang here again.
The Buffalo Mural in the Breakfast Room
In 1918 W.R and Mai Coe engaged Robert Winthrop Chanler, a New York City-based artist, to create an homage to Wyoming, a place that they, their children and grandchildren would spend many happy summers. The Buffalo Mural in the Breakfast Room at Coe Hall is a representation of W.R. Coe’s love of the west. In the mural, the buffalo and deer are painted on thickly layered plaster to stand out in slight relief. Many are made with metallic powders for an additional decorative effect. At night, with candles flickering on the table, the effect of shimmering light on the gilded scenes is magical.
In 1921, Chanler was also invited to create the wall and ceiling murals of Mai Coe’s bedroom, which was designed by Elsie de Wolfe. Chanler decorated rooms of some of the finest interiors at the time, including studios of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, the Park Avenue Colony Club and several private estates throughout the country. Only a handful of Chanler’s works survive today and most are owned by private collectors. Planting Fields’ Buffalo Mural is one of only two murals that are accessible to the public.
The Reception Room
As a young woman, Mai Coe studied in Paris where she grew to appreciate French art and architecture. This Parisian-made room was furnished and decorated in a neoclassical style for Coe Hall in 1920. The furniture came from Paris, some of it from prominent antiques dealer Jacques Seligmann & Co., who worked with Elsie de Wolfe, one of the first female interior decorators in the United States. No bills or letters confirm that de Wolfe was involved in the Reception Room, though she likely was. Mrs. Coe bought furnishings from de Wolfe for her dressing-room/bathroom upstairs, and de Wolfe also designed the 1915 Teahouse in the Italian Garden at Planting Fields.
The Reception Room, near the front door, was where Mrs. Coe would have met callers from around the neighborhood who were her social peers. She might also have met here with her butler and housekeeper to give instructions for the daily running of the household.
The Dining Room
The Dining Room today is furnished much as it was in the 1920s, with its original table designed by the architects of the house, Walker and Gillette. The three large windows were designed to evoke the style of magnificent English Elizabethan rooms from the 1590s, such as those in Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire or Longleat in Wiltshire. There were originally more tapestries here, which would have enhanced the effect of a fine English “great chamber” where meals would have been served in a wealthy sixteenth century household. Some of the stained glass in the west windows above the garden door originated from Hever Castle, the birthplace of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife. In old English houses, stained-glass coats-of-arms of illustrious relatives and neighbors were sometimes displayed in windows.
The Gallery
The flagstone floor, the Gothic beams of the high ceiling and the “minstrels” gallery were designed to make this 1921 room look as though it might once have been a medieval great hall in an English manor house. Charles of London furnished the interior accordingly with a medley of English furniture in styles spanning 200 years, as though the room had been lived in by generations of owners. Most of the original furniture was dispersed after Mr. Coe’s death in 1955, except for the large portrait of William Lenthall, Speaker of the House of Commons and his family. The seventeenth-century life size painting by artist Van Weesop hangs in the original location where it was enjoyed by the Coe family while they occupied their home. The gallery was completely refurnished in 2013 with the purchase of more than 50 artifacts from the estate of Huguette Clark, whose 5th Avenue apartment in New York City had been furnished in 1926 by Charles of London. The furnishings here now are nearly identical to the originals.
The Den
This room was initially paneled in 1920 to emulate an eighteenth-century English interior, but within a few years it was replaced by the present paneling in the style of about 1600, more in keeping with the rest of the house. The den follows the tradition of austerely paneled interiors long associated with gentlemen’s studies or libraries. Behind the paneling are shelves for Mr. Coe’s collection of fine books and rare manuscripts concerning America’s West, which he later donated to Yale University. A few Old Master paintings once hung in this room, mostly seventeeth-century Dutch works. Only one remains today, “The Backgammon Players” c. 1630-1685, by Adriaen van Ostade, who lived and worked in Haarlem, the Netherlands. The painting features a dimly lit interior where four men are seated at a table playing backgammon, while a woman looks on. W.R. Coe purchased the painting in 1913.
To the left of the fireplace is a door, disguised as part of the paneled wall. It can be opened with a hidden latch to reveal a small room equipped as a bar, complete with a sink and ice containers. The house was under construction in 1920 just as the Prohibition Amendment became law (it was repealed in 1933). The Coes were playing it safe: it was not illegal to drink liquor, just illegal to make and transport it. Long Island became notorious for illegal transportation of alcohol from port towns, including Oyster Bay to supply New York City.