Five vintage photographs of the preparations for an outdoor party on the grounds of the Richard B. Mellon estate.
Pittsburgh: June 6, 1925.
Price: $500.00
About the item
Date and negative number in negative. Mounted on loose linen album leaves. Provenance: estate of Richard Mellon Scaife.
Item #317441
From a contemporary press account of the party in the Pittsburgh Index: "Tuesday night Mr. and Mrs. Richard Beatty Mellon, Miss Sarah Cordelia Mellon and Mr. Richard King Mellon entertained more than six hundred guests at an out door dance at their home in Fifth Avenue. An enormous marquee, constructed in the terraced flower gardens, formed the setting for the dancing floor and the supper-room. The marquee ceiling was draped with sheer white fabric, painted in an Oriental design, with old gold and blue as the predominating color scheme. Below the ceiling was draped a gold border and the drop back of the recess in which the orchestra was placed represented a woodland scene. In the supper-room a specially constructed fountain played over rocks and forming a background were bay trees, pandanus, bamboo and palms.…The whole idea was suggested to Mrs. Mellon by a garden in the Champs Elysses and the work was carried out under her direction"
