Southampton Was Home To 'Downton Abbey' Style 100 Years Ago

Perhaps without meaning to be, “Downton Abbey” has been a polarizing television show since its debut almost three years ago on PBS.

Viewers either love it or absolutely hate it. And Tom Edmonds, executive director of the Southampton Historical Museum, is of the latter camp.

He doesn’t like the emotional drama. He’s not a fan of the storyline. But, even so, he can appreciate the history—enough to dedicate an entire exhibition—“Downton Abbey Style in Southampton: 1900 to 1920”—to it starting Saturday, November 16, inside the Rogers Mansion in Southampton.

The parallels between the early 20th century in Yorkshire, England—where the British period drama, which will enter its fourth season here in the U.S. in January, 2014, is set—and Southampton Village are undeniable, he said, from the estates to the fashion to the people themselves.

“We’re tying history to popular culture,” Mr. Edmonds said last week during a tour of the exhibit. “We’re tricking people into coming to learn something. It’s not just about precious things. It’s about us as human beings, how we live in the world. What gives us pleasure, what are things of value. It’s part of our collective past.”

It began in 1870, when the Long Island Railroad was extended to Southampton, bringing an influx of summer visitors to the agricultural East End. They were looking for an escape from the city hubbub, a place to let loose, said exhibit curator and registrar Emma Ballou, And that is exactly what they found.

In the decades that followed, Southampton Village bred a community of wealthy magnates, burgeoning socialites and débutantes who uprooted their lives for anywhere from a few weeks to a couple months to travel from Manhattan to their summer mansions. One of the most famous among them was Ville Mille Fiori, a castle built on a 12-acre plot in Coopers Neck once owned by attorney Albert Barnes Boardman. While it did not physically survive, the estate lives on through legend, Ms. Ballou explained. She is painting a mural of the lavish dwelling at the exhibition’s entrance.

“I heard you talking,” Laurie Collins, Southampton Historical Museum’s programs and education manager, said while approaching Ms. Ballou. “I know the woman whose father was the caretaker on that estate. She’s in a nursing home and I go visit her when I visit my mother-in-law. Their name was Carter. And the mother and father lived on the estate with their three children, and she talked about living there.”

Ms. Collins eyed the painting. “Is that what you’re drawing there?”

“It is, yeah!” Ms. Ballou replied.

“Oh my gosh, she’ll be so excited,” said Ms. Collins.

“You should bring her by to show her,” Ms. Ballou said.

In response, Ms. Collins added, “She used to live there in the winter, when the family moved out. They had the whole run of the place in the winter. Can you imagine?”

It was a different era, Ms. Ballou explained. The long golden days of summer were devoted to morning swims in the surf or Lake Agawam, followed by afternoon tennis at the Meadow Club and evening parties carefully orchestrated and managed by household servants. And on the weekends, the well-heeled part-timers threw extravagant parties before heading to the picturesque St. Andrew’s Dune Church on Sunday mornings to tend to their spiritual needs.

But, by the early 20th century, times were changing, Ms. Ballou said. World War I was in full swing, women were infiltrating the workplace and the fashion of the time followed suit.

“I fell in love with the clothing in ‘Downton Abbey’ and I’ve heard other people say that, as well,” Ms. Ballou said. “It was really great to find some pieces that, possibly, could have been on the show. Really stunning pieces.”

Among them are a pair of loose, circa-1915 day dresses, a tailored outfit that resembled a man’s suit, and an embroidered opera coat from 1918. Gone were the corsets, hoop skirts, petticoats and bustles that flaunted an 18-inch waist by creating an “S” curve, she said. “Débutante slouch” was in vogue, she said. The posture was characterized by a concaved chest, relaxed shoulders, forward-jutting hips and bent knees. The clothing of the time followed suit, Ms. Ballou added.

“This must have felt so liberating to them,” she said. “With the loosening of gender roles came the loosening of corsets. Women went with a more masculine, looser, more drapey look. Even the posture was changing. We’re trying to bring life to the people who lived here, by showing how they looked and by making them into characters. ‘Downton Abbey’ has characters. So did we.”

Three of the characters whose lives will be drawn upon in the exhibit were Ethel, Edith and Elsie Cryder—“tall, blue-eyed, and strikingly handsome” triplets who called Southampton’s “Sandrift” off Dune Road between Gin and Meadow Lanes their summer home. Yet despite the girls’ regular appearance in social columns, Ms. Ballou cannot locate one photo of them, she said.

One such report of the débutantes appeared in The Southampton Press on Saturday, December 22, 1900.

“They are so strikingly similar in appearance that only their family and most intimate friends can tell them apart. In society functions, they will wear different colored ribbons for identification,” the column read.

The exhibit will also feature Frances “Tanty” Breese, daughter of James Lawrence Breese, a great friend of the architect Stanford White (and whose home, “The Orchard,” now on the National Register of Historic Places, was designed by McKim, Mead & White), a wealthy stockbroker and amateur photographer. The former tomboy ran into a few scandals before she eventually abandoned her conventional married life for a creative career in the arts, the curator explained.

The exhibition will also feature Helen Parrish, Southampton’s golden girl of the Gilded Age. Ms. Parrish, who was frequently mentioned in society columns, was the daughter of James C. Parrish and favorite niece of her childless uncle, Samuel Parrish. He’s the man behind the Parrish Art Museum who occupied the Rogers Mansion from 1899 until his death in 1932, Ms. Ballou said as she wound the circa-1915 Victrola, an antique gramophone with the record “Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder” by the Ames Brothers.

“This is really fun because it actually works,” she said, cranking the handle. A few seconds later, as the record player sprung to life, she added, “I said it works. I didn’t say it sounded good.”

Mr. Edmonds laughed as the sound fizzled out. “I think it’s gonna be a big hit,” he said of the exhibit.

“‘Downton Abbey’ is so popular right now, but people forget that Southampton had a really cool history at that time, too,” Ms. Ballou said. “I love the show. It’s really so much fun. Just watching it, you learn so much.”

“I think Downton Abbey is thoroughly researched. They did a lot of work, and they already had that great castle, which was all ready to go,” Mr. Edmonds said of the primary filming location, Highclere Castle in Hampshire. “Just because I don’t like the emotional narrative doesn’t mean it’s not a great show.”

“But it’s so nice to look at,” Ms. Ballou added. “To study the interiors.”

Mr. Edmonds nodded thoughtfully, and then quipped, “I’ve got it: I can just turn the sound off!”

“There you go,” Ms. Ballou said, adjusting a nearby mannequin’s vintage opera coat, shaking her head.

The Southampton Historical Museum will open its exhibit “Downton Abbey Style in Southampton: 1900 to 1920” on Saturday, November 16, at the Rogers Mansion in Southampton. The show will remain on view through December 28. Museum hours are Tuesdays through Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is $4, or free for members and children 17 and under. For more information, call 283-2494 or visit southamptonhistoricalmuseum.org.