The Howland’s beautiful Matire d’
At this very moment I’m working (actually I’m procrastinating and posting here) on an article for the Beacon Dispatch about Florence Northcutt who is the president of the Howland Cultural Center. I also took some photos of her today and, although she was quite shy about the idea of photographs and how she looks in them, I thought that the overall result was stunning. Florence is a beautiful woman and this photograph, I think, tells the tale well.
The Howland Cultural Center, which Florence has been involved with since the mid-80s, was once the City of Beacon’s library—long before it was even a city—and was designed by Richard Morris Hunt and then built by Civil War General, Joseph Howland in 1872. (Howland lived in Beacon on a fabulous estate called Tioranda, which still stands today.) The library included spacious 2nd floor living quarters for the librarian, which I saw for the first time today. Stunning doesn’t begin to describe the quarters or how gorgeous the views of Mount Beacon and Main Street are from the apartment. And the Library itself? Well, it almost defies description.
Today the building plays host to a variety of cultural events, from live theater and art shows to poetry readings and chamber orchestras. And the architecture is an integral part of each of these events.
I sewed three of these photos together in a reasonably decent fashion, although it’s slightly askew at the bottom. But it does give you some idea of just how breathtaking this building is.
The most amazing thing is that all of these photos were taken in natural light, including the photo of Florence. The giant windows at the top of the room face east, south, and west to catch as much natural light as possible and in order to inexpensively capture light at a time when gas and electric lighting would have been difficult to come by.
Gorgeous isn’t it?
