Despite the difficult budget times, Modesto City Council members want to continue funding for the city’s two cultural assets: the McHenry Mansion and McHenry Museum.

Council members said Thursday they wanted the $102,000 for an exhibit coordinator and administrative assistance to remain in the city budget for a year. The two city employees and a cultural services manager are key to running the programs at the historic buildings in downtown Modesto.

City staff will work wit… (View original article)

Designer Eileen Devine of Devine Designs in Wayne designed the upper balcony. Photo by Rick Prier.

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Main Line designers are filling the lion’s share of the 24 rooms on display at Stonebridge Mansion in Chadds Ford May 11-30. The historic home is getting a massive up-do for the event, the Oxford Arts Alliance Decorator Showhouse and Gardens. Tours will be held daily, 10 a.m.-4 p.m., with extended hours on Wednesdays an… (View original article)

Pabst Mansion offers discounted Grand Tour

May 13, 2011 |

The Captain Frederick Pabst Mansion , 2000 W. Wisconsin Ave., will offer a discount for its Grand Tour of the entire historic site on May 19

Visitors will get to see the mansion from the dark basement to the attic (and get to also listen closely to those Capt. Pabst ghost stories). Docents will help visitors with the self-guided tours.

The Grand Tour is nor… (View original article)

Von Ahole SLASHES PRICE On Bev Hills Mansion

Von Ahole SLASHES PRICE On Bev Hills Mansion

Zsa Zsa Gabor“s Beverly Hills mansion is not selling the way Prince von Ahole expected — so he”s chopping the price by a whopping 12 MILLION BUCKS in the hopes of closing a deal ASAP.

spoke with Prince who tells us he met with his real estate agent yesterday — and they decided the best way to move the property quickly is by reducing the… (View original article)

The British gardener making an impression on Monet’s lily pads…

By
Jane Fryer

Last updated at 2:18 AM on 14th May 2011

Even before James Priest unlocks the green-painted side gate in the ancient stone wall and ushers us through, the rich smell of honeysuckle, sweet jasmine, dusky pink roses and rhododendrons is wafting our way.

And as we slip between vast blowsy azaleas and bright pink tree peonies, beneath huge sag… (View original article)

A drawing by the French architect and theorist Eugène Viollet-le-Duc depicts “The First Building”. It is the archetypal romantic image of a house in a primitive paradise. Slender saplings still growing from the ground are seen tied together to create a framework, while Rousseau-esque noble savages begin to clad the structure in what looks like wattle and daub. This is a picture of the house as an organic extension of the landscape, literally growing from the ground, and it… (View original article)