WILLIAM AND GEOFFREY PLATT

Architects

William Platt, FAIA (1897-1984), graduated from Harvard in 1919 and received his architectural degree from Columbia University in 1923.  He went to work in his father’s office in 1924. Geoffrey Platt, FAIA (1909-1985), graduated from Harvard in 1927, and received his architecture degree from Columbia in 1930.  In 1933, after their father’s death, their firm, William and Geoffrey Platt, became the successor firm to Charles A. Platt.  Their work as design professionals continued their father’s tradition of comprehensive design, marrying building to site, and melding interior spaces with those outside.  Like their father, they executed numerous drawings and models to perfect design details.

The commission for Longue Vue in 1939 was a momentous one for such a young firm, especially after the Depression and just prior to American involvement in the Second World War when work was extremely scarce.  The Platts’ work in various capacities on the estate would continue until Mrs. Stern’s death in 1980.  Always dapper with Geoffrey in a bow tie and William in his impeccably tailored suits, the Platt brothers worked very closely together throughout their career.  Longue Vue was doubtless their most important commission.

ELLEN BIDDLE SHIPMAN

Landscape Architect

The Sterns and Ellen Biddle Shipman (1869-1950) first began their working relationship and friendship when Mrs. Stern employed “Lady Ellen” to design gardens for her home on Garden Lane.  By this point in her career, Ellen Biddle Shipman had achieved a national reputation as a landscape architect.  House and Gardens magazine described her as “the dean of American women in landscape architecture.” Her clients included Fords, Astors, duPonts, and Seiberlings.  Locally, her work was well-regarded too, with projects for the Williams, the Lemann’s, and in Audubon Park.  Yet, among these many commissions, Longue Vue was the project where Mrs. Shipman had the most influence from the beginning and for a long period of time, fifteen years (1935-1950).  She was not brought in to do a planting plan or revise a planting as she did on other projects.  Nor did she do interior work on other properties to the extent that she did at Longue Vue, purchasing furniture and decorative objects and designing, purchasing and installing floor, window and wall treatments.  Her control on the Longue Vue estate reached from landscaping the entire site, to influencing the architecture and having complete charge of the interior design and furnishing.  Edith Stern, in her “Autobiography of a House,” described Ellen Biddle Shipman as the Godmother of the Longue Vue estate, an indication of her leading role in creating the design at Longue Vue.

CAROLINE DORMON

Artist and Naturalist

Caroline Dormon’s life was interwoven with the lives of the Sterns beginning in the early 1930s, when Mrs. Stern underwrote the publication of her seminal book on native plants, Wild Flowers of Louisiana (1934), until her death in 1971.  Miss Dormon (b.1888) met Mrs. Stern through their common interest in planting native wildflowers along highways in the state.  Miss Dormon’s knowledge of Louisiana’s native plants and where to find them was invaluable in supplying the Wild Garden with its extensive list of plants.  Today, Longue Vue has a collection of more than fifty Caroline Dormon watercolors of native plants that are displayed in the Casino, or Playhouse.

In her career, Miss Dormon achieved a national reputation for her conservation work and for educating the public about the importance of saving and maintaining native plants.  She explained her success as a naturalist without formal training:  “I could no more have stopped studying birds, flowers and trees and drawing them than I could have stopped breathing!”