Take the Mansion Tour
Take the Gardens & Distinctive Buildings Tour
Marjorie Merriweather Post
purchased this estate - originally known as Arbremont -
in 1955. The twenty-five acre site overlooking Washington's Rock
Creek Park was renamed Hillwood.
The Georgian-style mansion, designed by John Deibert
in 1926, was originally built for Mrs. Henry Parsons Erwin. In decorating Hillwood, Marjorie Merriweather Post
hired the New York architect Alexander McIlvaine to redesign and expand
the old mansion completely so that visitors could view her by-now extensive
collection with greater ease.
 In
renovating the mansion and gardens in the 1950s, Mrs. Post was reviving
a forty-year-old practice of estate building now known as the American
country house tradition. Architectural historian Richard Guy Wilson
has described this tradition as one created by wealthy Americans between
1880 and 1930, who, during that period, commissioned large houses for
escape and relaxation on relatively limited tracts of land near major
urban centers. Such homes were in the country, but remained close enough
to cities to afford an easy commute. Indeed, in the 1920s, the property
would have been a rural suburb of Washington.
While no one style of building dominated, these country homes had several
characteristics in common. The house at Hillwood, like many other
examples of this tradition, includes many spacious areas such as a
grand entrance, large libraries, and a pavilion in which guests could
dance or watch movies. The estate also had to offer many outlets for
outdoor pleasures and sport. So, such houses had to be surrounded
by formal and informal gardens. At Hillwood, guests could wander among
the azaleas or hone their golfing skills on the putting green. For
the owner and visitors, the estate was to be a site where they could
enjoy sophisticated urban pleasures within a peaceful and inviting
setting.
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