Mellon tested the anodyne 1950s model of woman-as-wife-as-mother by getting a divorce, admitting candidly to her first husband that she wanted a richer one. In I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise, Mac Griswold-who knew Mellon personally-delves into her subject’s closely guarded personal archives to construct an unrivaled portrait of a woman as complex and multifaceted as the gardens and homes on which she left her mark. Her own tastes ranged from Mark Rothko to Richard Diebenkorn-in quantity. Mellon also ranked as one of the great art collectors of her era, encouraging her husband Paul to use his family’s vast wealth to acquire hundreds of nineteenth-century French paintings, many of which were donated to the National Gallery of Art. At her home on Nantucket, she pruned back the landscape to reveal the elemental forms of nature. At Oak Spring Farm in Virginia, the bibliographic riches of her Garden Library were twinned with the expansive flowering gardens lying below the Edward Larrabee Barnes–designed building. Her rarely seen gardens and domestic interiors at eight different properties on three continents became legends and models. Mellon was a famously private person, and many of her greatest achievements remained concealed from public view. Later, her understated landscape design for the Kennedy grave site at Arlington National Cemetery changed the face of American public memorials. Kennedy-demonstrated how formal restraint and the sparing use of color could be deployed to maximal effect. Her most celebrated work-the White House Rose Garden, designed during the presidency of John F. She had her finger on the pulse of American culture and possessed a rare, once-in-a-generation sense of style and grace. The story of Bunny Mellon, the great landscape and interior designer, becomes a revelatory exploration of extreme wealth in the American century.īunny Mellon, whose life was marked by astonishing good fortune as well as tragedy and scandal, remains a singular figure in the annals of American design. This book is inspiring, spirited, and totally absorbing.” -Diane von Furstenberg “ I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise is like an exquisite string of pearls: the perfect balance of elegance, style, design, and beauty.

Franklin township library wifi log in