Period dramas, meet period rooms Welcome back to Period Dramas, a weekly column that alternates between rounding up historic homes on the market and answering questions we?ve always had about older structures.
A few months ago, while visiting David Adler?s Crane Estate on the north shore of Massachusetts, we were struck with a bit of curiosity. The beautiful wood paneling in the library wasn?t originally made for the house. It was made for?and originally installed in?a country house in England. When the country house was demolished, the carvings were saved and ultimately installed in this house.
Not too long afterwards, we became aware of a hotel in England?the White Swan?that features a dining room full of Edwardian woodwork originally installed in the first-class lounge on the RMS Olympic, the Titanic?s sister ship. We knew that houses can be moved?but rooms"
?The phenomenon for decorating with period rooms is parallel to the rise of furnishing with antiques,? says Jared Goss, a former curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Goss explains that during the Industrial Revolution, as new objects became cheaper and more attainable for the middle class, the upper classes started to value the uniqueness of antiques, launching a borderline obsession with the past.

Feeding this mania were a host of dealers, who specialized in architectural salvage. ?Whether their clients were interested in American rooms because they collected Americana or European rooms becau...