Elm Court Dining Room
Sonya and Bob Berle lead Bob Vila through a tour of one of the Vanderbilt’s most elegant dining rooms. The Berles have restored the ornate plasterwork ceilings and cornices that were the inspiration for New York’s Grand Central Station’s ceiling. The plaster is almost completely original but needed to be re-toothed with epoxy to the ceiling lathe. The reproduction furnishings, gathered from the US and Western Europe reflect the style of the home’s last addition in 1910. Many of the windows have original sills, sashes and hardware but the glass has been replaced with thermal panes by routing out the existing frames. The room’s colors were chosen with an eye for detail, as a white ceiling would have made the plaster carvings invisible in the brightly lit room.
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