Ruby Ross Wood

Ruby Ross Wood's decoration of the Dining Room of Swan House, the Edward H. Inman residence, Atlanta, features magnificent antique Chinese hand-painted wallpaper and dramatic silk-taffeta curtains.  Although author Adam Lewis described them as horizontal striped, the word from the museum curator, via Helen Young at Whitehaven blog, is that they are indeed plaid.
Photo:  THE GREAT LADY DECORATORS by Adam Lewis.

One of the great decorating talents that helped to shape interior design as we know it is Ruby Ross Wood.  Born Ruby Ross Pope in 1880 in Monticello, Georgia, and growing up in Augusta as the daughter of a successful cotton broker, she moved to New York City in the early 1900s to continue her freelance writing career for newspapers and magazines.  In 1910, she was hired as a ghostwriter for a series of articles for The Delineator magazine to publish the collection of lectures on interior decorating that Elsie de Wolfe had given to members of The Colony Club, an elite women's organization whose Stanford White-designed clubhouse she decorated in 1905.  (Not to be confused with the current clubhouse designed by architects Delano & Aldrich, this was located at 120 Madison Avenue, and is now home to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts).  The next year, she rewrote the articles in cooperation with de Wolfe and sold them to Ladies Home Journal.  In 1913, the articles were again adapted to create the book The House in Good Taste, a compilation of practical and relatively inexpensive suggestions that proved to be very influential in re-shaping tastes in residential interiors for the twentieth century.

The legendary decorator Ruby Ross Wood.
Photo:  THE GREAT LADY DECORATORS by Adam Lewis.

After the financial failures of her own book The Honest House and a decorating firm, Modernist Studio, she accepted a job from Nancy McClelland at Au Quatrieme, the fourth floor antiques and decorating shop in Wanamaker's department store.  When McClelland left in 1918 to open her own decorating firm, she recommended that Mrs. Wallace F. Goodnow, as she was known then, would become the new manager, an experience that would prove to be invaluable in providing connections with important trade sources and wealthy clients.  Divorcing her husband in 1923, she married Chalmers Wood the next year.  With the financial backing of her socially-connected stock broker husband, she took advantage of the departure for France of New York's then-reining Queen of Decorating, Elsie de Wolfe, and opened her own business as Ruby Ross Wood.

The summer home of Chalmers and Ruby Ross Wood in Syosset, Long Island, New York, was designed by architect William Adams Delano of the noted architectural firm Delano & Aldrich with contributions by Mrs. Wood.  Built 1927-28 on 43 acres off South Woods Road (Syosset-Woodbury Road), it was demolished in 1995.
Photo:  THE ARCHITECTURE OF DELANO & ALDRICH by Peter Pennoyer and Anne Walker.

Decorating her own apartment as a showcase for her design skills, and moving every year, she soon built a profitable business from former customers of Au Quatrieme and old money connections of her husband.  Published photos of their country house on Long Island, Little Ipswich designed by architects Delano & Aldrich, also enhanced her reputation.

The Stair Hall at Swan House as decorated by Ruby Ross Wood.  The sitting room through the open doors is labeled "Morning Room" on the construction plans but would commonly known as a Living Room.
Photo:  THE GREAT LADY DECORATORS by Adam Lewis.

The best known design by Ruby Ross Wood, however, is the Swan House, Atlanta, now open as a museum.  The residence of Mr. and Mrs. Edward H. Inman, heir to a cotton brokerage and real estate fortune making him one of the richest men in Georgia, is a classical mansion on 28 acres in the fashionable neighborhood of Buckhead.  Commissioned of the Atlanta architectural firm of Hentz, Reid and Adler, associate Philip Trammell Shutze is generally credited as responsible for the architectural design.  But the whole house was done in close collaboration with both Mrs. Inman and Mrs. Wood.  Although the exterior shows Shutze's influence by the Italian Renaissance, Mrs. Inman's love of early English Georgian design, and William Kent in particular, is given preference inside.  The three worked together according to Adam Lewis, author of The Great Lady Decorators, on all the interior architectural details (with the exception of the library whose millwork was executed in England).  It is the Dining Room, in particular that showcases Mrs. Wood's talent.  Antique Chinese wallpaper, as advocated by Elsie de Wolfe, gives life to the room filled with English furniture.  And the Ruby Ross Wood signature of color is given by the bold plaid silk taffeta curtains.

The winter residence of Mr. and Mrs. Wolcott Blair in Palm Beach, Florida, was designed by architect Maurice Fatio.  Located at 1960 South Ocean Boulevard, it was demolished in the early 2000s.
Photo:  BILLY BALDWIN REMEMBERS by Billy Baldwin.

Ross met Billy Baldwin in 1929, but the effects of the country's financial difficulties prevented her from hiring him until 1935.  At that time, one of Ruby Ross Wood's finest commissions, the winter home of Ellen Yullie and Wolcott Blair, was nearing completion in Palm Beach, Florida.  Wolcott was a successful stockbroker whose family owned the Merchant's Bank of Chicago and Ellen's father had been the president of the American Tobacco Company;  their family fortunes were not effected by The Great Depression.

A view of the terrace outside the Living Room, believed to be on the west (Lake Worth) side, of the Wolcott Blair residence with the Atlantic Ocean beyond.
Photo:  BILLY BALDWIN REMEMBERS by Billy Baldwin.

No expense was spared for the new house designed by Palm Beach architect Maurice Fatio.  The center of the "H" plan house was the Living Room with five arched windows on each long side that could descend below the floor level using an ingenious water-pump system.  This allowed an unencumbered connection with the garden terraces on both sides of the room.  The view to the west included the pool and a lawn to Lake Worth, and the view to the east, across the lawn to the beach (via a tunnel under South Ocean Boulevard) and the Atlantic Ocean.

A view of the Living Room of the Wolcott Blair residence, Palm Beach, decorated by Ruby Ross Wood.
Photo:  BILLY BALDWIN REMEMBERS by Billy Baldwin.

Reinforcing the indoor-outdoor relationship of the room, white lacquered tubs filled with tall white lilies were placed between each of the windows.  A comfortable but sparse arrangement of furniture allowed the big room to be used for a variety of activities, including serving as a passage.  In Billy Baldwin Remembers the decorator notes that the walls were "buff, pale, almost not there at all.  The trim was purest white, and the floors ancient Cuban marble the color of parchment."  Because of a shortage in the delivery of the marble, a wide border of bleached cypress was employed as a flooring border around the room, a successful compensation that Baldwin credited to Wood's ingenuity.

Another view of the Living Room of the Wolcott Blair residence, Palm Beach, decorated by Ruby Ross Wood.
Photo:  BILLY BALDWIN REMEMBERS by Billy Baldwin.

The upholstery fabrics were either white or tan with cream welting, and several chairs were slipcovered in what Baldwin referred to as "Elsie de Wolfe's famous leopard chintz".  Sofa slipcovers and curtains were a heavy-textured beige cotton from Sweden.  A pair of stripped pine cabinets flank the pair of doors at one end of the room, contributing to the "quiet no-colors" as Baldwin described the scheme.  A pale fruitwood Louis XV writing table was in the center of the room, topped with a scalloped cap of honey-brown leather edged with white carpet binding tape. The lighting was supplied by white table lamps and four carved wood torcheres in the form of palm trees.  The whole effect was an enormous success and led to other decorating commissions in Palm Beach, including several for members of the Wanamaker family.


A party at the home of James Amster in New York City's famed Amster Yard complex.  From left, the butler (with back to camera), James Amster, Marian Hall, Ruby Ross Wood (seated), Billy Baldwin, William Pahlman, and Elizabeth Draper.  Although there are two chandeliers, note the narrow width of the room as evidenced by the placement.
Photo:  THE GREAT LADY DECORATORS by Adam Lewis.

 Adam Lewis states in The Great Lady Decorators that Ruby Ross Wood was the top decorator in New York City from 1935 to 1942, when Baldwin was drafted into the military.  After the war, Baldwin worked for a year for Mrs. John Jessup, the leading Palm Beach decorator.  In 1946, he returned to New York to work again with Mrs. Wood who had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.  She died in 1950 and Baldwin continued the business only long enough to complete the current projects.  Adam Lewis also contends that Wood and Baldwin were the most celebrated in American interior decorating, without equal until Mrs. Henry Parish, 2nd, and Albert Hadley formed their partnership, Parish-Hadley, Inc.  This Wood-Baldwin association and the Palm Beach Blair residence has significance in the next post of The Devoted Classicist, with this essay acting as a prelude of sorts.

Many thanks go to JANSEN author James Archer Abbott who is also a noted authority on Billy Baldwin for directing me to the Palm Beach home of the Wolcott Blairs.  And also thanks go to my very talented Atlanta blogging colleagues Barry of The Blue Remembered Hills, Jennifer of The Peak of Chic, and Helen of Whitehaven for consultation on Swan House.


Adam Lewis's book with forward by Bunny Williams The Great Lady Decorators, The Women Who Defined Interior Design, 1870-1955 published by Rizzoli, New York, 2009, is available for purchase at a discount of the regular retail price here.   Although Billy Baldwin Remembers is out of print, vintage copies may be purchased here.  Reproductions of the Elsie de Wolfe and Ruby Ross Wood collaboration The House in Good Taste can be purchased here.  Both The Architecture of Delano & Aldrich by Peter Pennoyer and Maurice Fatio:  Palm Beach Architect by Kim I. Mockler can be purchased here.