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The Griswold House: Inside the Boardinghouse

Miss Florence's Bedroom

Originally used as a sitting room or office for Miss Florence’s father, Captain Robert Griswold (1806-1882), this room became the private apartment for Miss Florence during the art colony years. Conveniently located between the public areas of the boardinghouse and the more private areas where staff worked on meals and routine chores, this room provided Miss Florence with easy access to the different areas of the house. It was also her only truly private space.

In it she surrounded herself with cherished family possessions --the telescope used by her father the sea captain, china plates decorated by her sister Louisa when the house was a home school for girls, and a winter landscape painting by her sister Adele. The corner cupboard was filled with precious mementos and photographs of Miss Florence’s new family of artists.


Miss Florence’s Bedroom showing fireplace, 2006
Photograph by Joseph Standart


Detail of door leading from back hallway to Miss Florence’s Bedroom
with painted panels

Matilda Browne (1869-1947)
Bucolic Landscape, 1905
Oil on wood door panels

 


Detail of reproduction carpet used in Miss Florence's bedroom
Miss Florence’s Bedroom, 2006
Photograph by Joseph Standart

 


Dressing table in Miss Florence’s Bedroom, 2006
Photograph by Joseph Standart

 

“The former fur-trader from the sub-arctic wilderness—but naturally quite a different character from the Hudson’s Bay man found in current fiction—gathered some flowers and placed them in the parlor and in Miss [Florence’s] bedroom, not only as a last finishing touch to the new decorations, but also as a silent tribute to the hostess of the [Holy House].”

~ Artist and Author Arthur Heming in his unpublished manuscript, The Lions in the Lady’s Den

As the self-identified “keeper” of the art colony, Miss Florence played well the shifting roles of mother, art dealer, confidant, and friend to her ever-changing roster of artists. She became a dear friend to Childe Hassam, perhaps the most celebrated of the artists to stay in Old Lyme, and she charmed the future President Woodrow Wilson, who came with his first wife, an aspiring painter.

Although she never married nor had any children, the painters filled her house and the last decades of her life with joy. Miss Florence revealed her pride in the impact her boardinghouse had upon the town when she said, “So you see, at first the artists adopted Lyme, then Lyme adopted the artists, and now, today, Lyme and art are synonymous.”