Caramoor Center For Music and The Arts - History

History

A native of Berlin, Walter Rosen emigrated to the United States with his parents in 1885, at the age of 10. He was well-educated, developing an early interest in music and art, and graduated from Harvard three years after entering it at a young age. Three years later, he became one of the founding partners of the law firm of Underwood, Van Vorst, Rosen and Hoyt. After another three years, in 1901, he left to join a client, the Ladenburg Thalmann bank.

He remained there for the rest of his life. In 1914 he married Lucie Bigelow Dodge, a woman who had grown up in an affluent New Jersey family and shared his passion for music and art. On vacations and business trips to Europe, they collected many of the artworks that are now at Caramoor.

They bought the property in 1928. John Hoyt, one of Walter Rosen's former law partners, knew they were looking for a country retreat and told them about his mother's estate, named Caramoor as a contraction of her name, Caroline Moore Hoyt. The Rosens visited and were greatly taken by the Sunken Garden and its cedars, meant to imitate the cypresses of Italy.

Originally, the Rosens intended to tear down all but the garden and build a Florentine-style palazzo. The Depression forced them to reconsider those plans, and instead they slowly remodeled the existing farm buildings on the site into the current estate, which at one point was 117 acres (47 ha). By 1939 that work was complete. Architect Christian Rosborg is credited with the design, closely supervised by the Rosens, whose townhouse on Manhattan's East Side had been redone in a French Renaissance style before they moved in.

In 1940 they began hosting musical performances for their friends in the Music Room. Four years later, when their only son Walter died in World War II while serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force, they decided to dedicate the remainder of their own lives to preserving Caramoor's musical legacy. They established the Center in 1946 and began hosting performances open to the public.

Seven years after Walter Rosen died in 1951, the performances had become so popular it became necessary to add the third venue, the Venetian Theater, near the Sunken Garden the Rosens had preserved from the prior estate. The house was opened to public tours in 1970, two years after Lucie Rosen died. Architect Mott B. Schmidt designed a new wing in 1974 to house rooms from the Rosens' New York City apartment and expand the art collection on display.

The tent roof and floor were added to the Venetian Theater later to allow its use in inclement weather. The restroom wing was added later. The Sense Circle was created after the dovecote was moved to its following pigeon problems in the late 1980s. There have been few significant changes to the buildings and gardens other than those.