To continue your tour, return to the Entrance Hall and pass through the large opening into the Main Hall.
You should now be in the Main Hall, a space for gathering and entertaining, which you may have guessed based on the furnishings.
Upon entering the home, the Plants’ pool table was hard to miss. The nine-foot mahogany table with carved legs sat in this very spot. That pool table, unfortunately, is no longer in our collection, but the one you see here today still has a connection to Tom Plant. He purchased this Oliver Briggs & Son Electric Cushion in 1920 for the Bald Peak Colony Club – the delivery instructions are marked on the underside of the table.
This room also features an electric pipe organ manufactured by the Aeolian Organ Company, whose headquarters were in New York. Notice the decorative pipes, behind which is a large, semi-subterranean room in which the functioning ranks of pipes were housed. The Plants’ pipe organ featured several manuals and divisions. A 1913 order form lists the instrument’s many pipe ranks, including strings, flutes, trumpet, clarinet, vox humana, tubas, and more. The organ also featured other accessories including chimes, a Chinese gong, and a harp component. These pipes – numbering around 1800 – were all removed in the 1950s, though the harp was donated back to the Castle in 2017 and has since been conserved and reinstalled.
This electric organ – the console for which is on the opposite side of the room from the pipe chamber – was a player organ. Assuming the stops were set correctly, a roll of music inserted into the console would allow the organ to perform complex pieces, providing rich, orchestral-quality music without the need for a skilled organist. The Plants’ collection of music rolls included everything from classical composers like Wagner, Schubert, and Handel to contemporary favorites like Carrie Jacobs-Bond. Of course, the household did include a skilled organist. A 1917 Country Life article about the Lucknow Estate mentioned that Mrs. Plant would make the organ “sing in tune with the mysterious melodies of the mountain.” Mrs. Plant, of course, being Olive Dewey Plant.
Tom Plant met Olive Dewey aboard a ship while making the Atlantic crossing to Europe in 1912. At that time, Tom was in the midst of a divorce – his first wife, Caroline Griggs Plant, had initiated proceedings in 1910 on the grounds that her husband had been unfaithful.
Despite a 24 year age gap, Tom and Olive had many things in common. They bonded over a love of opera, theater, museums, and travel. Tom was enamored of Olive’s intelligence and progressive views. After disembarking in France, the pair went their separate ways, but kept in touch. After his divorce from Caroline was finalized in the spring of 1913, Tom married Olive Dewey in a small, private ceremony in New Jersey.
