BLYTHEWOOD/ FAIRCOURT

B lythewood /
Faircourt
L
ike so man\ successful American merchants at
the turn of the twentieth century, Henry Rudolph
Kunhardt (1860–1923) was the son and namesake of a
German immigrant. Kunhardt’s father, who was born in
Hamburg, came to California in 1848 from South America and formed a mercantile and banking business in San
Francisco. In 1850 he moved to New York City where he
established the steamship agent and import/export firm
Kunhardt & Company. Kunhardt, the son, was born at the
family’s home on Staten Island. After attending private
schools in America and Europe, he was employed by Atlas
Steamship Company of New York. In 1882 he joined the
family company where he worked until his death. Kunhardt & Company was general agent of the HamburgAmerican Line for thirty-eight years, importing coΩee,
cocoa, hides, and logwoods from South America while
exporting United States products to that continent.
In 1888 Kunhardt married Mabel Alethea Farnham,
whose father managed a wool mill in New York. The couple
lived in Staten Island until the mid-1890s when, following
in the footsteps of many a√uent New Yorkers, they bought
a 175-acre tract of land and built a residence on the Bernardsville mountain. The property, which came to include
a farmhouse, barns, stables, coachman’s house, and coach
barns, was purchased from Samuel S. Borrowe, a vice president and director of the Equitable Life Assurance Society.
In 1897 the Kunhardts hired New York architect
Henry Rutgers Marshall to draw the plans for their
new home, while the noted landscape architecture firm
of Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot was employed to design a
preliminary plan for the layout of the estate. John Charles
Olmsted, a partner in the firm and nephew of Frederick
Law Olmsted, was assisted by a local civil engineer from
Morristown, John Rowlett Brinley, who later designed
landscape elements on the estate, including the extensive
stone walls bordering the property.
Marshall, who was not only an architect, but also
an author and lecturer, served for many years as an
influential member of the New York Art Commission and directed the Municipal Art Society. Among his
notable designs were Rudyard Kipling’s Brattleboro, Vermont, residence; the Storm King clubhouse at Cornwall,
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The main staircase and stained-glass window were part of the alterations designed
by Hoppin & Koen for Anthony R. Kuser
circa 1916.
Opposite: The cross hall looking
toward the paneled Pheasant
Room, the ceiling of which was
made up of polychrome squares
with a diΩerent species of pheasant
painted in each square.
New York; buildings at Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore
and the Brearly School in New York; and the Voorhees
Library at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
There were two long and winding private roads leading up to Blythewood, laid out by the Olmsted firm. Each
entrance was flanked by wrought-iron gates and a stucco
gatehouse. The longer of the roads, from the south, was two
miles long and wound through grounds abounding in roses,
arbors and hedges, through rocky ridges, and over brooks.
Locals recall that on Sunday afternoons, townspeople
enjoyed driving their buggies up the driveways to admire
the flora, especially the cascades of rambling roses. Kunhardt and his neighbor, architect George B. Post, had a new
road constructed between their properties—now known as
Post-Kunhardt Road—to define their boundaries so that
service entrances could be advantageously sited.
The Kunhardts acquired additional tracts of land,
eventually amassing an estate of about 350 acres. In
August 1914 the stables, cow barn, and wagon sheds, along
with many of Blythewood’s valuable trees, were destroyed by a
fire that came within 150 feet of the main house.
As their three sons grew older, the Kunhardts spent
more time at their New York City home. Eventually they
stopped visiting Blythewood altogether. In 1916 a Bernardsville neighbor, Col. Anthony R. Kuser, bought the estate
in what was reported to be the largest real estate deal in
the area for many years. The transaction, which included
about 250 acres, was thought to be worth at least $250,000.
The Kusers hired the architectural firm of Hoppin
88  bernardsville
& Koen to undertake substantial interior and exterior
alterations to the house, which they renamed Faircourt after
their previous home nearby. A wing and a courtyard were
added and the utilities were modernized. The relatively
simple Blythewood was transformed into an ornate Faircourt
with a grand marble staircase, rooms and halls of marble
flooring, a ballroom, stained-glass windows, and deeply
carved moldings with gold leaf. Local Italian artisans created intricately detailed Rococo ceilings. The Kusers also
hired the New York landscape architecture firm of Brinley
& Holbrook—which the Kusers had worked with on their
first home and which had worked for the Kunhardts—to
carry out changes in the landscape design.
In 1918 the Kusers’ son, Dryden, married Brooke
Russell, later Astor, and initially the young couple lived
at Faircourt with his parents. One night while asleep,
Brooke, Dryden, and others in the house were chloroformed and Brooke’s jewelry was stolen, including her
engagement ring, which was slipped oΩ her finger. The
culprits were never found.
Although Brooke was awed by the grandiosity of her
in-laws’ lifestyle—a butler and three footmen in the dining room, four chauΩeurs, and a servants’ wing to accommodate sixteen in-house staΩ—an account of the interior
of the house, written by Brooke in her 1980 memoir,
Footprints, is disapproving:
The décor of the house was frightful, what Mother called
Early Pullman. StiΩ brocade armchairs with fringes
around the bottom were scattered through the main rooms
appletrees
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at such a distance that it was almost impossible for conversation. The bedrooms were all “suites”—in other words
identically matched wood furniture with TiΩany glass
lamps by the bedside. Even I, young as I was, thought it
very odd.
Col. Kuser, a keen naturalist and bird collector, was
especially knowledgeable about pheasants, having underwritten a seminal research expedition to Asia to acquire
more primary material on the bird. One of the rooms in
Faircourt, known as the Pheasant Room, Brooke described
thus:
The ceiling was made up of polychrome squares with a
diΩerent species of pheasant in each square; and along the
entire length of one side of the room was a glass case filled
with stuΩed pheasants. These birds were assembled as
though in their natural habitat, grazing and nesting among
the snows and crags of Mount Kanchenjunga.
90  bernardsville
Col. Kuser died in 1929 at his Palm Beach estate, Los
Incas. His body was returned to Bernardsville for his
funeral, which was attended by two former governors, the
ambassador to Spain, and numerous captains of business
and industry. His wife, Susie, continued to live at Faircourt
until her death in 1932. The Kusers’ daughter, Cynthia
Dryden Kuser (1910–1985), resided in the home for many
years with her husbands, Theodore Wilhelm Herbst and,
later, Arthur Hinkley Earle. After World War II, Cynthia
served as a translator in refugee work in Europe, managed
the Dryden Press in New York, and was active in cancer
work in the United States and Europe. After Cynthia and
Arthur Earle separated, she moved to Arizona where she
owned and operated the Two Shoe Cattle Ranch near
Phoenix. The Bernardsville estate was left in the care of
the superintendent until 1961 when it was sold and subdivided, with the house retaining ten acres. Cynthia Kuser
Earle died in Arizona in 1985.
Blythewood was designed by Henry Rutgers
Marshall and built for Henry and Mabel
Kunhardt in 1897. After the property was
sold to Anthony and Susie Kuser in 1916,
the architectural firm of Hoppin & Koen
designed extensive alterations and additions,
including the dining room and adjacent porch
with French doors. The Kusers renamed the
estate Faircourt, after their previous home
nearby.
bl\thewood / faircourt
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