For Women’s History Month, we honor one of our own. Curator Emerita Mary Means Huber was Bartow-Pell’s Co-Curator for more than thirty years and was one of the first fellows in the University of Delaware’s Henry F. Dupont Winterthur Museum program, earning her M.A. in 1958.
One late spring day in 2012, Mary Huber turned her car through Bartow-Pell’s stone gates, just as she had done hundreds of times since the 1970s. She made her way up the long driveway and through the woods and pulled into a parking place in front of the mansion. Then she got out, opened the trunk, and took out a shopping bag.
We never knew what new gem Mary might bring to the mansion. From the earliest days of her childhood in Woodbridge, Connecticut, she was surrounded by antiques and collectibles. Her father, Carroll Alton Means, was an antiques dealer, appraiser, collector, and owner of a shop that specialized in vintage stamps and coins. As an only child, Mary later inherited the family home full of American antique furniture, art, ephemera, textiles, ceramics, and more. Mary’s daughter Betsy followed the family métier when she joined the staff of Sotheby’s in New York.
When Mary unpacked her bag on that spring day, she gently pulled back layers of acid-free tissue paper to reveal a girl’s dress made between about 1837 and 1841. The pattern-on-pattern striped and floral frock would have been worn by a preteen or a young adolescent paired with pantalettes (long drawers) This marvelous addition to our costume collection is just the type of garment that Robert and Maria Bartow’s eldest daughter, Catharine, would have worn when the mansion was under construction.
Over the years, Mary has donated dozens of objects to the museum, ranging from a commode stool to lusterware tea sets to mourning bonnets. These items, many of which were purchased in the mid-twentieth century by Mary’s father in rural Connecticut, have long helped to interpret Bartow-Pell’s period rooms and have added depth to our study collection of material culture from the Bartow era. Toys remind us that the house was full of lively children, and an oversized Bible adds authenticity to objects placed on the center table in the family parlor. A whitework trapunto coverlet from about 1800 is sometimes used in Clarina Bartow’s bedchamber. A blue-and-white Staffordshire transferware toothbrush holder complements a basin and pitcher. A hayfork helps tell the story of the carriage house, and a foot warmer is a wonderful object to talk about during tours. Sewing and writing implements enliven our worktables, secretaries, and desks. And a gift of Victorian ephemera was put to good use in our Valentine’s Day card workshops.
Our Curator Emerita has shared a number of stories over the years about history, decorative arts, Bartow-Pell lore, and her own interesting life. For example, many years ago, Mary—or perhaps her predecessor and co-curator, Jean Bartlett—discovered a valuable ceramic item in the mansion’s kitchen amidst a group of containers that the International Garden Club (which then operated the mansion) was using for floral arrangements. This pretty piece—painted with daffodils, bluebells, and morning glories—was actually a monteith, a bowl with a notched rim once used for chilling and rinsing wine glasses. Our nineteenth-century example was made in Italy at the Le Nove porcelain factory.
During Mary’s long tenure, a number of objects were either donated to the museum or purchased, including the most important piece in Bartow-Pell’s collection, a superb New York bedstead made between 1812 and 1819 by Charles-Honoré Lannuier. After having been on long-term loan for many years, this significant gift was donated to the museum in 1985 by Henry S. Peltz and Mary Nevius, descendants of the original owners, Isaac Bell and his wife, Mary Ellis Bell. In 1997, new reproduction bed hangings were fabricated by Nancy Britton of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in preparation for the bedstead’s inclusion in the Met’s 1998 exhibition Honoré Lannuier: Cabinetmaker from Paris.
Among Mary’s many accomplishments at Bartow-Pell, a couple are worth a special mention here. She, along with her co-curators, created the museum’s first collection catalogue, a critical step in implementing professional standards at the mansion as it slowly but steadily transitioned from a clubhouse to a historic house museum. This mammoth task involved researching and documenting each object, assigning accession numbers, labeling, and creating catalogue entries with descriptions, provenance, measurements, location, condition reports, and other information. Procedures were then put in place for subsequent inventories to be performed every few years as part of regular collection maintenance.
A generous donation from the family of Elizabeth Ames Cleveland in 1975 allowed Bartow-Pell to convert the upstairs board room into a period room. Curators Mary Huber and Jean Bartlett put in many hours of research and planning in order to select the correct furnishings, draperies, and carpet, and their hard work paid off when the upstairs sitting room was finally completed the following year. Thanks to advancing scholarship and a better understanding of historic interiors, their interpretation was more authentic than that of the downstairs period rooms, which had been installed in the late 1940s. Mary recalls the project in Bartow-Pell’s Summer 2013 newsletter: “Most of the furniture in these main rooms was on loan from New York City museums. When I joined the International Garden Club to assist my friend Jean Bartlett of the Museum Committee, we set out to refurbish the Upstairs Sitting Room together with the then President, Virginia Brooks. . . . At the time, the room had applied rectangular wall moldings, antique French furniture, and Chinese porcelain vases. It was used for board meetings. That was the beginning of the long process of acquiring our own furnishings for all the main rooms to reflect more accurately the way the Bartow family lived while they were in residence.”
In that same interview, Mary remembers her first visit to Bartow-Pell: “In the late 1970s, friends brought me to the Bartow-Pell Mansion for the first time. My initial impressions of the entrance hall with its spiral staircase and woodwork and the fireplaces and draperies of the double parlors are unforgettable. I felt that I was back in the Empire rooms at the Winterthur Museum! However, for protection, the Aubusson carpets were covered with heavy nautical plastic laid wall to wall, which gave the impression of an indoor skating rink! Then I learned that these first-floor period rooms had been professionally furnished by Joseph Downs, who had been the curator of the Winterthur Museum, where I had studied after college.” The Aubusson carpets were later sold at auction and were replaced in 1992 by wall-to-wall pile carpets more in keeping with the period of the house.
Mary Means Huber received a B.A. in art history from Wheaton College in Massachusetts. After graduate studies at Winterthur, she worked for Joseph T. Butler, curator of Sleepy Hollow Restorations (later Historic Hudson Valley). She married Charles Huber, and the couple settled in Bronxville, where they raised three children and where Mary served as Bronxville Village Historian from 1987 to 1999.
Jean Smith Bartlett, a fine arts appraiser, and Nancy Coe Wixom, a former curator at the Cleveland Museum of Art, were Mary’s colleagues over the years. In the early 2000s, I was honored to follow in the footsteps of these inspiring women and join Mary—who taught me so much—as co-curator in a partnership that I shall always treasure.
Margaret Adams Highland, Bartow-Pell Historian
mansion musings 
I just read this to my mother! She loves it! Thanks again for sharing my mother’s passion for history! Bartow-Pell was a home away from home for her over the years!
Thank you for writing this lovely article about my mother.
History and antiques have been a part of her life forever, and Bartow Pell gave her
such joy.
Ann Huber Zoghlin
Wonderful article Margaret. Years ago, Linda Jones past President of the Board stopped by for a tour. She was a lovely woman and told me that the Aubusson carpets sold at auction by Sotheby’s were purchased by Charles Aznavour who subsequently had them cut up and made into pillows!