Venetian Room

Built at the dawn of the twentieth century, at 972 Fifth Avenue in New York, for one of the greatest fortunes in the United States, Payne Whitney Mansion is reported as a major work of the architect Stanford White since its construction. It was acquired in 1952 by the French Government to install the cultural Services of its embassy.

On the ground floor, the Venetian room, a waiting room for visitors, is a masterpiece of the Gilded Age of New York. The mirrors that fully line its walls are maintained by delicately sculpted parecloses. The ensemble is gilded and crowned with a vaulted in brass cutting in which a decoration of porcelain flowers is filed.

This decor, dismantled in 1949 and then reinstalled in 1997, called for a fundamental restoration: dust removal, cleaning, withdrawal of processes imitation gilding type bronzing, reconstruction of the reliefs gap of the parecloses, gilding in connection with the existing, Restoration of the decor by intarsia the doors.

In parallel with this restoration work, we have designed and built two glass doors with window-forming chassis to ensure climate control, replacing the indirect lighting equipment located on the cornice by installing LED light bulbs Covered with technical gelatin sheets in order to find the same degree Kelvin as the light of the beginning of the century, set up remotely decorated tablets that project the history of the room and its restoration.

Finally, we have also designed and implemented the modification of the entrance hall of the building to improve the climate control of the room.

The site was placed under the scientific control of a committee of Experts (MET, the Frick Collection...).