Rachel “Bunny” Mellon photographed at a window of
her Virginia home for “Vogue” 1965 by Horst P. Horst
UPDATE: Netscape billionaire Jim Clark and his Australian model wife Kristy Hinze have bought Bunny Mellon’s New York townhouse for $37 million – Curbed has the goss.
UPDATE: The folk at Curbed have photos from Bunny Mellon’s Virginia property, which is now for sale for $70 million, and Architectural Digest did a piece in June 2014 with even more pictures.
UPDATE: Bunny Mellon’s estate including her Oak Springs property and artwork are being auctioned by Sothebys. The art alone could bring more than $100 million – more here.
Art patron, philanthropist, self-taught landscape gardener, and recluse Rachel “Bunny” Mellon (August 9, 1910 – March 17, 2014) died this week, aged 103…
As well as being one of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis‘s best friends, she was an American horticulturalist, political patron and prolific art collector. Her friends included presidents, royalty, socialites and celebrities.
Bunny Mellon, right, with her husband Paul Mellon,
and Lady Bird Johnson at the National Gallery of Art
Born Rachel Lowe Lambert in 1910, she was nicknamed “Bunny” by her parents, Rachel Parkhill Lowe and Gerard Barnes Lambert, president of the Gillette Safety Razor Company and a founder of Warner–Lambert. She attended Miss Fine’s School in Princeton, New Jersey and the Foxcroft School in Middleburg, Virginia.
Although she had no formal training, she was a passionate student of horticulture – in particular of French gardeners André Le Nôtre and Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie – she went on to design gardens for friends including Hubert de Givenchy’s Manoir du Jonchet in France.
Most famously, she worked regularly with the Kennedys, including the White House Rose Garden and the East Garden (later named the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden), as well as the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum overlooking Boston Harbor. She also advised on fine arts and antiques during the Kennedy White House restoration.
On a private level, she worked on Jackie Kennedy’s summer house garden on Martha’s Vineyard.
Bunny Mellon standing behind Jackie Kennedy at
the funeral of Dr Martin Luther King in April 1968
In addition, she worked on the gardens of River Farm, the headquarters of the American Horticultural Society, and assisted with a restoration of the potager du Roi in Versailles, south of Paris.
According to one obituary, “she designed gardens for dozens of clients, many of them her friends, and donated the payments to horticultural or medical causes”. She was also a Conservation Service Award winner. Read more here.
Her friendship with the Kennedy family was so strong that she not only provided decorating assistance, but helped with the funerals of Jack, Jackie and John Jr, and Caroline’s 1986 wedding to Edwin Schlossberg in Hyannis Port.
From left, Interior Secretary Oscar L. Chapman, Bunny Mellon
and Paul Mellon, and Gov. John S. Fine of Pennsylvania in 1952
Famously private, she was a member of one of America’s richest families, through her second husband, billionaire Paul Mellon (1907–1999), a descendent of family patriarch and Mellon Bank founder, Thomas Mellon and his son, industrialist Andrew W. Mellon.
Paul Mellon appreciating the Edgar Degas work “The Little Dancer”
But she was also rich and famous in her right, as her grandfather Jordan W. Lambert invented the mouthwash, Listerine.
She wore Balenciaga until his retirement, and then Givenchy, who made everything for her (from lingerie to couture gowns) and her staff.
Rachel “Bunny” Mellon and her husband Paul Mellon
She died at home at her main property, Oak Spring Farms (see below) this week, and is survived by her son, Stacy Barcroft Lloyd III, from her first marriage to Stacy Barcroft Lloyd Jr. Their daughter, Eliza Winn Lloyd Moore, died in 2008, eight after years of fully paralysis after crossing a road and being run over by a truck.
She also had two stepchildren from her second husband’s previous marriage: Timothy Mellon and Catherine Conover Mellon. At the time of her death, she had two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Art patron and passionate collector, Paul Mellon (1907–1999)
Eileen Pei, Paul Mellon, Bunny Mellon and I.M. Pei attend the opening
event of the National Gallery of Art East Building on May 30, 1978
At home with the Mellons
Bunny Mellon was passionate about gardening, horses and art, all of which could be enjoyed at the Mellon family property, Oak Spring Farms, a 4000-acre estate, in Upperville, Virginia.
A self-sustaining estate, it includes a neo-Georgian mansion, farmhouse, greenhouse and garden library (comprising 10,000 volumes on horticulture and 3,500 historical documents), an orchard and apple house, extensive vegetable gardens, cattle and a dairy, carpentry and metal shops, a pool house designed by I. M. Pei, and a private fire brigade.
Visitors to the security-conscious Virginia estate included John and Jacqueline Kennedy, Queen Elizabeth, and Prince Charles, and approximately 100-120 people are employed to keep things running smoothly.
Vanity Fair has a great article, Bunny Mellon’s Secret Garden, by James Reginato, with photographs by Jonathan Becker, which includes classic lines such as:
“Monday I’m planning my funeral, and Tuesday I’ve got Bette Midler. Come Wednesday at 11:30.”
and
“Nothing should be noticed” (about everything needing to be sublimely low-key)
The Oak Spring Garden Library is located at 1746 Loughborough Lane, Upperville. Designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes in 1980, an additional wing was designed by Thomas M. Beach in 1993, both in consultation with Bunny Mellon. It is only open to the public via private appointment.
Scroll through the photo gallery here:
Read more about the Trinity Episcopal Church (a gift to Upperville from the Mellons) and surrounding area.
With a mile-long runway for her private plane, a Falcon 2000, she travelled between her homes in Antigua, Paris, Washington, Nantucket, and Osterville, a 26-acre water-front compound in Oyster Harbors, a gated Cape Cod community.
All houses were continuously staffed, in readiness for the arrival of the family.
See photos from the other Mellon homes in PART 2
Manhattan
They also had a stunning, double-wide, 5-storied, 11,100 square feet Manhattan townhouse, at 125 East 70th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues on the Upper East Side, custom built in a neo-French classic style, in 1965.
To create the house from scratch, they demolished two 1860 “roughhouses” which had stood on the site.
It was decorated by John Fowler (of Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler fame) and Imogen Taylor from London, with the stenciled wood floors created by artist-decorator Paul Leonard and his business partner, William Strom. Read more here.
Sold to Irish businessman Tony White and his wife Clare in 2006 for a cool $22.5 million, the 8-bed, 8-bath, 5 half-bath mansion with fireplaces, grotto, wine cellar, elevator, gardens and terrace, is now back on the market for $46 million.
Note: When it belonged to the Mellons, the entire second floor was devoted to staff quarters. It has since been renovated to include a kitchen and media room etc, for a more family-friendly layout.
Scroll through the photo gallery here:
The Carriage House
Three years later, in 2009, she sold another Manhattan townhouse, known as the Carriage House and also on East 70th Street, at 165 E 70th, one block down, for $13.5 million to former Morgan Stanley CEO John J. Mack. It includes a 12-car hideaway.
Read more about the history of this street via the New York Times.
Scroll through the photo gallery here:
See PART 2 of our look at the life and property of Bunny Mellon, which includes:
Follow Luscious on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, Google+ and Twitter here.
Cheers, Natasha
www.myLusciousLife.com
