Pure fantasy.
How often can one indulge in that?
Your chance starts on Monday, May 1, 2017. Mansion in May invites you to explore 42 fantastic rooms and hallways, each decorated by a local designer who has let his or her imagination run wild.
Alnwick Hall never looked like this when the Meanys of AT&T fame made it a crown jewel of Millionaire’s Row during America’s Gilded Age, back in Teddy Roosevelt’s bully bully! heyday.
It never looked like this when a Lutheran congregation moved into The Abbey, as the Morris Township estate is called today.
And the place certainly never looked like this when it devolved into a warren of nondescript bank teller windows and medical offices in more recent times.
The transformation is nothing short of miraculous.
Slideshow photos by Kevin Coughlin; hover over image for captions.
Over the last few months, water-stained drop ceilings have come down to reveal intricate domes from a bygone era. Stately walls serving long forgotten purposes have vanished, to make way for 33,000 visitors anticipated over the next 31 days.
Tired rooms have become fancy pied-à-terres. A clammy basement has morphed into a man-cave second to none, with a $6,500 foosball table built like a battleship, a flat-screen TV that could double as an airport runway, and a cozy walk-in tavern that transports you from the Abbey to Abbey Road.
When you take this $50 tour ($40 if you reserve this weekend) for the benefit of Morristown Medical Center, you will discover:
- One design team’s fantasy about the original lady of the house, imagined as a violinist.
- Pop-art fantasies of iconic rock and roll divas, presented by a guy who traded a Morristown burger joint for his fantasy of slinging art.
- A playroom inspired by the fantasy that kids will pick up their toys, if you make fun shelves.
- Two artists — one lefty, one righty — who have taken up residence in a subterranean studio for the whole month, fueling the fantasy that art can liberate humanity.
- A room that thinks it’s a Mediterranean seaside café.
- A fantasy grandma’s idea of a fantasy guest room for a fantasy granddaughter that is so gaudy, sunglasses should be required.
- A parking area which, during the last gasp of winter, was transformed into 17 gardens with 20,000 shrubs, a fish pond and a leafy waterfall, by landscapers whose fantasies were undeterred by a freak snowstorm.
- Volunteers from the Women’s Association for Morristown Medical Center who fantasized that they could obtain 10 construction permits and get a massive fire sprinkler system installed in a matter of weeks.
- Hospital volunteers who fantasized that all of this might raise enough money to fund a new Center for Nursing Innovation and Research.
Oh, wait… these aren’t fantasies. They are dreams come true!
The Abbey is the 18th mansion commandeered by the Women’s Association since 1974.
“We rely on the generosity of our friends,” said Sue Bruen of the association’s operations committee–one of 18 committees overseeing more than 1,300 volunteers and a few dozen designers and landscapers selected from 270 who submitted proposals.
Mansion in May has grown since Bruen started volunteering in 1988. “Now it’s an event and venue that everyone looks forward to,” she said. “The whole is larger than the sum of its parts.”
Tom Maoli, a developer and owner of Celebrity Motor Car LLC in Whippany, bought The Abbey in 2008 because he believes a man’s home should be his castle — complete with terra cotta ornamentation and crenellated parapets.
Actually, it’s Maoli’s office, and the nice ladies from the hospital talked him into forking over the keys for six months.
Mansion in May committees have chosen decorators who have spared no expense to recreate every room in their own images.
“Each room has a distinct personality,” said Jill Guzman of Olcott Square Interiors in Long Valley (decorators of Abbey room number 28, if you’re keeping score at home).
When June arrives, the decorators will put everything back the way they found it.
Unless, of course, someone with deep pockets and wildly eclectic tastes makes the owner an offer he can’t refuse — and buys the Renaissance Revival palace with all the new handiwork, too.
Now there’s a fantasy worthy of the decorators’ fertile imaginations.
MAY 1-31, 2017
10 am to 3 pm
Tickets: $40 in advance through April, $50 in May
Offsite parking only, Free shuttle bus:
170 Park Ave., Florham Park (near Jets training facility; follow signs)
No children under 12; Mansion is not handicapped-accessible
Allow at least 2 hours for tour & shuttle
973-971-8800
