Quotes from Nancy Rubin Stuart

Like others who had once enjoyed an elite lifestyle, Lucy craved its return and whenever opportunity arrived, attempted to recreate it...By then no one questioned Lucy's role as the reigning hostess of celebrations, a role she continued to hold in public celebrations during the early Federal period.

We have made cities out of our suburbs, and now, with the corporate drift form urban centers, are beginning to make suburbs out of our cities.

The suburban dream began innocently enough one and a half centuries ago, with a weariness of city life and a craving for all things green bright and pure.

one of Marjorie's boats, they were inevitably

Her life was expected to be as anonymous as the era's needlework.

If Peggy's personal star was on the rise, Arnold's was in freefall as their respective ships headed into the high seas.

Those who abuse political power create a debt of hatred that almost certainly brings them to a bad end.

The Bouwerie as the Dutch once called it, was a country road surrounded by grain fields, gardens and wildflowers. A retreat for well-heeled New Yorkers in the summer, the Bowery was far less populated in the winters.

Rhythms. You can almost feel them on suburban streets, divine the hour of the day without consulting a clock from the sounds heard in the cool, leafy neighborhoods.

Women's impulse to change her own rhythms in the face of an environment constructed to retain her as guardian of the suburban hearth.

With the onset of World War I and the deaths of thousands of young men, a new generation of spiritualists appeared. One of the most prominent was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes detective series, whose pro-spiritualist book New Revelation was published in 1917.

As cities were melting pots in the nineteenth century, suburbs have become the twentieth-century equivalent...minorities, refugees and other population subgroups have ...entered the suburbs.

By dawn, June 18, 1778, an eerie silence surrounded the docks of Philadelphia, which were strewn with tables, chests and other household goods. Tossed overboard by the departing British to make room for military gear, those possessions were the remaining personal effects of the three thousand Tories who had streamed onto British ships and sailed for New York City the preceding day.

Is telepathy merely a coincidence after all -- a complex series of associations, as traditional schools of psychology would have it? If so, how can we explain those irrational yet memorable instances when we have sensed that a distant loved one is in danger or on the brink of death?

Yet our old expectation that the suburbs are homey, tranquil and predictable places continues to gnaw at the feminine collective subconscious. The suburban home still begs for a presiding divinity -- a keeper of the keys and human cares, the archetypal mother of earlier ages.

Fears about his fidelity were ridiculous, according to Henry 'There never was a purer...affection than what I profess for you,' he wrote. He was 'indifferent indeed to all the rest of your sex.

I find it amazing that suburban women work at all, but work they must. For a new factor has been added to the old suburban formula; the need for ever-increasing amounts of cash.

Inspired by its views of both the Atlantic and Lake Worth, Marjorie planned to call her home Mar-A-Lago from the Latin, meaning 'from sea to lake.

Unless a suburban woman is in the relatively rare position of commanding a high salary, and is able to find and afford top-quality child care, she may find herself in a no-win situation

The estate Marjorie envisioned was to be erected in the middle of the seventeen-acre lot, which, when cleared of jungle growth, would be surrounded by great stretches of rolling lawn with views of Lake Worth and the Atlantic.

While Mar-A-Lago was later categorized as an example of Hispano-Mooresque architecture because of its stucco exterior, antique tile embellishments, rambling outbuildings and red-tiled roof, the estate was actually a carefully crafted amalgam of architectural styles blended together to display the most admirable features of several European countries.

Remarkable as Mar-A-Lago was, the estate had created strains in Marjorie's marriage, which, coupled with her plea to buy the Birdseye company, were leading E.F. to disapprove of his wife's spending habits. When acquaintances expressed their their fascination with his new Palm Beach home, the stockbroker often shrugged cynically. 'You know Marjorie said she was going to built a little cottage by the sea. Look what we got! t h

When acquaintances expressed their fascination with his new Palm Beach home {Mar-A-Lago} , the stockbroker often shrugged cynically. 'You know Marjorie said she as going to build a little cottage by the sea. Look what we got!

Above all, wealth was no longer to be flaunted. While an ostentatious displays of money might have been de rigueur in the Golden Twenties, it was decidedly out of fashion in the desperate days of the Destitute Thirties. The splashy parties the socialite once gave and attended in the twenties in New York and Palm Beach now dwindled to a trickle and were replaced with charity teas, and fund raisers.