A WILLIAM AND MARY FIGURED WALNUT AND BUREAU-ON-STAND

CIRCA 1700, LATER LEGS AND STRETCHERS

Details

A WILLIAM AND MARY FIGURED WALNUT AND BUREAU-ON-STAND
CIRCA 1700, LATER LEGS AND STRETCHERS
The slant lid with fitted interior over three frieze drawers, on later gate-legs
35 ¾ in. (90.8 cm.) high, 36 in. (91.4 cm.) wide, 18 in. (45.7 cm.) deep

Provenance

The Collection of the late Mr. and Mrs. Charles E.F. McCann, removed from 'Sunken Orchard', Oyster Bay, L. I. and 4 East 80th Street, New York; Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 17-21 November 1942, lot 1089.
Gift of Irwin Untermyer, 1964.

Literature

Y. Hackenbroch, English Furniture with some furniture from other countries in the Irwin Untermyer Collection, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1958, pl. 226-227, figs. 265- 266, pp. ii, 54-55.

Lot Essay

The bureau once formed part of the collections of lawyer Charles E.F. McCann, who in 1904 married Helena Woolworth. Helena was the eldest daughter of Franklin Winfield Woolworth, founder of the F.W. Woolworth Company, who amassed a $30 million fortune by the time of his death in 1919. In 1901, Woolworth commissioned the architect C.P.H. Gilbert to build his 36-room French chateau-style mansion at 990 Fifth Avenue, across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A few years later, he asked Gilbert to design and build three adjacent French renaissance-style townhouses around the corner on 80th Street for his three married daughters: the Charles McCanns, the James P. Donahues and the Franklin Huttons (whose only daughter was the heiress Barbara Hutton). The McCanns lived at 4 East 80th Street as well as at their impressive country estate 'Sunken Orchard' in Oyster Bay with its 150 acres and formal gardens.

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