The first stop in our road trip through New York State and Pennsylvania was East Aurora, New York which was once a mecca for the Arts and Crafts Movement, an international trend in design and fine arts that was popular from 1880-1920. A precursor to the Art Nouveau style, the Arts and Crafts style promoted traditional, high-quality, handmade work that emphasized the inherent beauty of natural materials, harmony with nature, utility and craftsmanship. It was a reaction against the rise of industrial, machine-made, cookie-cutter mass manufactured goods. Many of the motifs referenced medieval, romantic, and folk styles of decoration.
An influential advocate of the Arts and Crafts movement in East Aurora was
Elbert Hubbard, an American writer, publisher and entrepreneur who founded the
Roycroft community in 1895. This group of artisans and craftspeople who followed the principles of the movement included printmakers, book binders, metal-smiths, leather-smiths, furniture makers, and eventually creators of decorative arts including woodworking, copper-smithing, lighting, stained glass, pottery and jewelry. Hubbard established the
Roycroft Campus, consisting of a series of “guild” buildings and shops where the Roycrofters could ply their crafts. The first building was the Roycroft Print Shop which Hubbard use used to publish ornate, hand-crafted books, including his own writings. Hit by the Great Depression and changing fashion styles, Roycroft declared bankruptcy in 1938 but was revived in the 1970s when a new group called “
Roycrofters at Large Association” formed to revive the movement, restore the buildings and have the Roycroft Campus designated with National Historic Landmark status. Throughout the campus, you can see the original
Roycroft logo of a double cross-topped orb with a single “R” adorning original works created between 1895 to 1938. Today, new works by the Roycrofters at Large use a “double R” logo, representing “Roycroft Renaissance. A sculpture of Elbert Hubbard sits in front of the East Aurora Middle School on Main Street with a sculpture of Michelangelo (commissioned by Hubbard who greatly admired the artist) situated a few feet away. We would learn more about the fate of Elbert Hubbard when we took a guided tour of the campus and visited the museum on the campus.
To immerse ourselves in the Roycroft experience, we stayed at
Roycroft Inn, a hub of activity for Roycroft artisans and visitors when it first opened in 1905. Influenced by Hubbard’s interactions with Frank Lloyd Wright, the inn melds Wright’s Prairie School style architecture with Arts and Crafts ornamentations. Following a 9-year, $8 million dollar restoration, the inn reopened in 1995, now featuring 22 suites, a restaurant, lobby bar and covered outdoor patio. Carved into the heavy wood doors with ornate latches and handles are inspirational quotes such as “Produce great people – the rest follows”.
The
main salon is breathtaking with Arts and Crafts styled furnishings including original furniture that feature the signature “single R” logo. The walls of the salon are covered with 12 restored
murals by Roycroft artist
Alexis Jean Fournier depicting important cities and sites of the world. A new foyer boasts 4 more paintings depicting the times of day from morning to night. The door leading from the reception area to the suites displays one of the Roycroft’s main mottos—"Head, Heart, Hand”, which Hubbard carved into the door when the inn first opened. The motto reflects the Arts and Crafts principle of manually creating individual objects rather than using machinery for mass production.
When I made the booking at Roycroft Inn, I was merely looking for a room with a King sized bed and the accommodations that I chose did not seem that expensive, given that we were staying in a historic establishment. We did not realize until we walked through the door that we had secured an entire suite where the entry “hallway” was bigger than many hotel rooms that we had stayed at in the past. Walking through the hallway, we entered a large sitting area with two wicker chairs and ottoman, a desk and chair plus two side tables. Once again this room was enormous whereas by contrast, the bedroom was a relatively smaller (but by no means small) separate room, fitting just the King-sized bed and two nightstands. The bedroom connected to a large bathroom with double sinks in the vanity and a jacuzzi tub. Although we did not get any original furnishings, the rooms were beautifully decorated in the Arts and Crafts style with the wardrobe, dresser, bed frame, desk, and chair all made from solid wood. The throw on the bed reminded me of patterns by Frank Lloyd Wright.
When we went downstairs for dinner, we walked through another stunning
lounge and bar area with high beamed ceilings, stained glass windows, a fireplace, and lamps and chandeliers with patterns that again reminded me of Frank Lloyd Wright. The
dining room was equally beautiful as we were seated under a stained glass Gothic arched window that made me feel like we were dining in a church.
For dinner, we had a wonderful meal starting with a tomato/bell pepper salsa and homemade bread with churned butter and pesto, followed by appetizers of truffled chips with smoked gorgonzola and black truffle oil, and lobster tostadas in a tortilla cup with cucumber pico de gallo and avocado cream. The plate of chips was so large that we had to pack some of it to go so that we could save room for the main courses. But it looked so good when we spotted it at another table that we couldn’t resist ordering it. For our mains, I picked the blackened swordfish with chili seasoning over basmati rice, seasonal vegetables, and mango compote while Rich had the filet of beef tenderloin with whipped potatoes and seasoned vegetables. The next morning, we had a lovely complimentary breakfast with a window seat overlooking the garden. On the last day of our road trip, we passed through East Aurora once again and had lunch on the outdoor patio, thus experiencing all the different dining areas. There was a bit of a nip in the air, so I was given a blanket to keep warm with during the meal. At that lunch, we both had the shrimp and lobster bisque followed by a burger and fries for Rich and a grilled pesto chicken sandwich with prosciutto, heirloom tomato, mozzarella and arugula with fries for me. We really loved staying and dining at the Roycroft Inn and would do it again.
While in East Aurora, we explored the buildings that still exist in the
Roycroft Campus. Most of them we could visit on our own but some we could only access with a guided tour. We started by crossing the street from Roycroft Inn and traversing a pretty path known as “
Appian Way”, named after the ancient Roman highway. The pedestrian avenue made of paving bricks and granite blocks originally served as a thoroughfare to access seven buildings in the Roycroft Campus. The Roycrofters-At-Large Association has restored the 260-foot walkway and a paving stone at one end marks the “rededication” of the path in 1999, “in honour of those who have kept the spirit and ideals of Roycroft alive”. Both the original and new Roycroft logos are carved into the stone. For a tax deductible donation, you can purchase and have your name engraved on individual bricks as well as benches on the Appian Way. At one point, the sculptures of Elbert Hubbard and Michelangelo flanked either side of the path. Today, the walkway is lined with bronze and copper sculptures by artist Timothy Schmalz, each depicting a visual representation of a saying attributed to Hubbard. The Appian way leads directly to the old
Power House, built in 1910 to provide electricity and heat to the campus through an underground piping system. Today it is the
Visitors Centre where the guided tours start. Inside are murals of the original coal boilers, images of architecture, posters, and magazines, and examples of printing equipment.
Behind the Power House/Visitor Centre is the old
Furniture Shop where custom hand-made furniture was constructed to furnish the Inn, offices and shops, as well as briefly being sold to Sears and Roebuck. Leather bookbinding also took place on the property. Today, the building houses Blackbird Pottery, several antique shops, and art gallery and a framing store.
The
Roycroft
Copper Shop was constructed in 1902 of stone and timber, stuccoed in the
English cottage style. It was initially
a blacksmith shop before being converted into a shop that manufactured hammered
copper products. Following the
bankruptcy of Roycroft, the building was also used to bottle maple syrup and as
the Roycroft Bank. Today the “
Copper
Shop Gallery” is a gift shop where over 100 local and international
artisans sell their work as gifts, souvenirs and art pieces. We saw much pottery, metal work, jewelry,
carvings and more. We were taken with a
ceramic soup tureen and ladle by Martha Van Vlack as well as some art tile
carvings by Motawi Tileworks.
On the second floor of the shop, rotating artists are featured with temporary exhibitions. When we were there, the artist in question was
Jessica Gadra, a pen, ink and watercolour artist who interprets well-known stories, fairytales, folklore and mythology in her pieces. Rich admired a print depicting the wolf stalking Little Red Riding Hood and purchased it to be framed and hung in our bathroom.
During our guided tour of the Roycroft Campus, in addition to hearing about the other buildings that we previously visited on our own, we were brought into the building that used to be the
Roycroft Printing Shop where Elbert Hubbard ran his
Roycroft Press. Hubbard was influenced by the beautifully bound books produced by Kelmscott Press, the publishing company started by William Morris, who was known as the “Father of Arts & Crafts”. As Hubbard was unable to convince anyone to publish his writings, he decided to start his own printing press shop. Hubbard’s most known works included “
The Little Journeys to Homes of the Great”, a collection of 14 semi-biographical essays that he published monthly, spinning tales about historical personalities, authors, artists, famous women, reformers, businessmen, musicians and more. His most famous work is “
A Message to Garcia”, a fictionalized version of a daring escapade performed by First Lieutenant Andrew Rowan before the Spanish-American War, where he carried a missive from President McKinley to Cuban General Calixto Garcia. The essay expressed the value of individual initiative and conscientiousness in work, which paralleled ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement. By one account, over 225 million copies of the essay were published and for a while, the term “to carry a message to Garcia” became synonymous with carrying out a difficult assignment.
Today, a smaller version of the print shop is still active in the basement of the building and uses the old printing press technology to create flyers and advertisements that include the Roycroft logo. There are hopes that one day, they can reprint A Message to Garcia. Next we were brought upstairs to a small Roycroft museum that displays historical documents and photos, furniture, artwork and personal items belonging to Elbert Hubbard and his second wife Alice. Here we saw multiple versions of the Little Journey books (although “little” must be a euphemism since the books are huge) as well as a copy of A Message to Garcia. There were examples of furniture with the original Roycroft logo, copper goods, lamps, an ornate leather billfold (circa 1919), a baseball from the Roycroft baseball team, a cigar box with Hubbard’s image on the lid, as well as busts of Hubbard and Alice, letters written by or to him and more.
We saw the original versions of the Roycroft China set and tableware whose patterns are still used in the restaurants and bar of the Roycroft Inn. Most sobering were the displays that detailed Elbert and Alice’s unfortunate demise during the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915. At the other end of the Appian Way is another stone plaque dedicated to the Hubbards and “All Who Perished Aboard the Steamship”. Hubbard’s death was terrible blow and probably contributed to the eventual folding of the Roycroft community.
We passed by the medieval-inspired, Gothic-styled
Roycroft Chapel which was built with fieldstone boulders and included a crenelated turret. To get enough boulders, Hubbard advertised in the village newspaper that he would pay a silver dollar for each load of stones from a farmer’s field. Despite its name, the building did not seem to have ever been used as a chapel. Rather it was a centre for book illuminating (decorating text with illustrated flourishes), lectures, event space and eventually an art gallery and sales room. In recent years, the chapel was the used as East Aurora city government office space. A copper plaque on a stone in front of the Chapel indicates that it was erected in 1916 in memory of Elbert and Alice Hubbard who were “lost in the Irish Sea .. They lived and died fearlessly”.
Although Roycroft Chapel was not an actual church, there was one situated just a few blocks from the campus that was built in 1906 in the Roycroft style. The
Christ Science Church boasts Arts and Crafts features and details in the design and woodwork, as well as the distinctive Arts and Crafts font in the signage. Several members of the Church were famed Roycroft craftsmen. Several other pretty churches can be found nearby including the
Revive Wesleyan and the
East Aurora Christian Church.
As seen on the sign for the Christian Science Church, the
“Arts and Crafts” font often consists all capital letters that are slightly slanted and based on Roycroft artist William “Dard“ Hunter’s Viennese style lettering. This distinctive font is found throughout East Aurora, from the writing on railway overpasses to signs on buildings, churches, shops and the local Aurora movie theatre. Going all in with the Arts and Crafts theme, even the public garbage receptacles are decorated with pithy or philosophical sayings from famous people whose names are written in the signature font. Elbert Hubbard is represented with several sayings including “A good laugh is sunshine in a house”. Other quotes include ones from Plato, Bette Davis, and Winston Churchill.
Exploring East Aurora beyond the Roycroft campus, we saw some gorgeous Arts and Crafts styled houses on the residential streets including Oakwood Ave. The homes made from natural materials with hand-crafted details were decorative without being overly ostentatious. On Main Street, the architectural design and colour scheme of
Bruce’s Automotive matches the house next to it, possibly the home of the repair shop’s owner at one point? Whether this is currently the case or not, the two matching buildings are very striking.
There were many
fun shops and eateries to check out along East Aurora’s Main Street. Near Roycroft Campus was
Rosie’s
Handcrafted Ice Cream which offered flavours such as Bada Bing Bada Bourbon
(caramel ice cream with salted caramel swirl, chocolate and bourbon toffee
covered pretzels), Cold Brew (coffee grounds steeped overnight in a sweet cream
base and paired with chocolate), or Yabba Dabba Doo (fruity pebbles cereal
steeped in a cream base). There were
great murals in an alley named “
Ray’s Way” which featured Andy Warhol-like
depictions of artists including Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Charlie Chaplin,
Elvis and more. I posed next to the bronze
sculpture of a guitar-playing street artist on a bench in front of the
Aurora
Theatre beside two wooden “popcorn” containers which were possibly garbage bins? I watched steam rise out of the giant coffee
cup attached to
Taste Bistro and wondered about “
The Bank”,
thinking how quaint it was to only have one bank that did not need to be named,
before realizing that this was an old bank building that was now an event
space.
The most interesting store in East Aurora is
Vidlers 5&10 Store, touted as the world’s largest five and dime variety store. Open in 1930 by Robert S. Vidler as a single building of 900 square feet, Robert and later his sons Bob and Ed continued to expand the store so that by 1999, Vidlers spanned 4 connected buildings for a total of 20,000 square feet. In 2009, the large sculpture of a seated Ed Vidler (dubbed “Vidler on the Roof”) was installed. The store has been featured on TV commercials, as the backdrop for Christmas movies, and on magazines including Business Week and Martha Stewart Living. The gigantic store sells everything from items for the household, kitchen and barbeque, souvenirs, novelty, retro and nostalgia goods, candy, chips, beverages and other food items as well as an entire basement full of toys and games both new and classic. Their goofy array of specialty flavoured “soda pops” include mustard, pickle, buffalo wing and more. I didn’t want to find out whether the labels were just gimmicky, or the sodas actually tasted like the flavours that they advertised!
We had so much fun wandering around the various departments within Vidler’s, finding kitschy gems such as Mama Zuma’s Hot Habanero Chips, Arnold Palmer branded Iced Tea, scantily leather-clad Biker Babe Gnomes, boxer shorts labeled "Trophy Husband" that I tried to convince Rich to buy, giant rubber chickens that I could have added to my collection, and aerosol spray duck fat, just to name a few. Rich was tempted by the Duck Fat but the high cost plus saner heads (mine) prevailed and we left empty-handed. The wide range of eclectic items at bargain basement prices sadly reminded me of the now defunct Honest Ed’s Emporium that used to reign in downtown Toronto. That was an institution that is sadly missed.
We really enjoyed East Aurora and given that it is only 30 minutes from Buffalo, I’m sure we will return for another visit.
No comments:
Post a Comment