FAMOUS HOUSE SOLD

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 801, 23 October 1929, Page 11

FAMOUS HOUSE SOLD

£IOO,OOO TREASURES GO FOR £3,950 GREAT PARK LANE MANSION The decorations and fixtures or Dorchester House, Park Lane, London, which cost nearly £IOO,OOO when the house was built in the 1850’s, were sold by auction recently for a total of only £3,950. Dorchester House is to be replaced by a luxurious hotel, and a big crowd attended the sale in expectation of sensational bidding for the last treasures of the famous Mayfair mansion. It was disappointed. The highest price paid for -any one of the 200 lots was £315, for which Sir Robert Me Alpine secured one of the Alfred Stevens gilded statuary marble chimney-pieces. Sir Robert is head of the contracting firm of Sir Robert McAlpine and Sons, Ltd., who were associated with Gordon Hotel, Ltd., in tho purchase of Dorchester House from Lord Morley. The great marble staircase, which cost £25,000, was sold in eight sections for just over £3OO, which would hardly have paid for some of the rare slabs. A set of 19 walnut bookcases with painted panels went for £167. Some small decorative objects fetched as little as 10s 6d. Many mural and ceiling paintings, two of them attributed to Sir Lindsay Coutts, drew an average of only £6 each. Some of the rich marbles, alabaster, and pictures have been acquired for American homes, but the bulk will be used for decoration in English hotels and country houses. The cost of dismantling the fixed decoration will in many cases greatly exceed the price paid for’ them.

Much skilled labour will be required to remove the different sections of the marble staircase, and the danger of breakage is great. Some of it is covered by insurance, but the conditions of sale are that each lot shall be detached and taken away at the buyer's risk. One of the most extensive buyers was Mrs. Rosa Lewis, of the Cavendish Hotel, Jermyn Street. Her purchases ranged from pictures and mirrors to tons of stone coping and cast-iron j balustrades.