Fulford Place is a historic mansion in

Brockville Brockville, formerly Elizabethtown, is a city in Eastern Ontario, Canada, in the Thousand Islands region. Although it is the seat of the United Counties of Leeds and Grenville, it is politically Independent city, independent of the county. It i ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

. It was completed in 1901 for Senator George Taylor Fulford, a Canadian businessman and politician. The home is now a

historic house museum A historic house museum is a house of historic significance that has been transformed into a museum. Historic furnishings may be displayed in a way that reflects their original placement and usage in a home. Historic house museums are held to a ...

reflecting

Edwardian era The Edwardian era or Edwardian period of British history spanned the reign of King Edward VII, 1901 to 1910 and is sometimes extended to the start of the First World War. The death of Queen Victoria in January 1901 marked the end of the Victori ...

decorations, and it is operated by the

Ontario Heritage Trust The Ontario Heritage Trust (french: link=no, Fiducie du patrimoine ontarien) is a non-profit agency of the Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Culture. It is responsible for protecting, preserving and promoting the built, natural and cultural herita ...

. It was designated a

National Historic Site of Canada National Historic Sites of Canada (french: Lieux historiques nationaux du Canada) are places that have been designated by the federal Minister of the Environment An environment minister (sometimes minister of the environment or secretary of t ...

in 1992.

History

After purchasing a patent for

Dr. Williams' Pink Pills for Pale People Dr. Williams' Pink Pills for Pale People was a late 19th to early 20th-century patent medicine containing ferrous sulfate and magnesium sulfate. It was produced by Dr. Williams Medicine Company, the trading arm of G. T. Fulford & Company. It wa ...

in 1890 and making a fortune selling the pills, the Fulfords had a mansion built for them in Brockville, on the shore of the

St. Lawrence River The St. Lawrence River (french: Fleuve Saint-Laurent, ) is a large river in the middle latitudes of North America. Its headwaters begin flowing from Lake Ontario in a (roughly) northeasterly direction, into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, connecting ...

where several other beautiful estates were located, many of which were owned by other successful business people. In 1898, the Fulfords commissioned their estate to be built on the King’s Highway, on the eastern edge of Brockville. Architect

Albert W. Fuller Albert W. Fuller (1854-1934) was an American architect practicing in Albany, New York. Life and career Fuller was born in the town of Clinton, Oneida County, New York, Clinton, New York. From 1873 to 1879 he trained as a draftsman ...

from

Albany, New York Albany ( ) is the capital of the U.S. state of New York, also the seat and largest city of Albany County. Albany is on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River, and about north of New York City ...

, designed Fulford Place, and it was elaborately decorated in the

Beaux-Arts style Beaux-Arts architecture ( , ) was the academic architectural style taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, particularly from the 1830s to the end of the 19th century. It drew upon the principles of French neoclassicism, but also incorporat ...

. It was built between 1899 and 1901, and had 35 rooms making up 20,000 square feet. Since Fulford was an important figure in both the political world and the business scene, entertaining was one of Fulford Place’s primary functions. The house thus contains a grand hall, a dining room to seat over thirty guests, a spacious

veranda A veranda or verandah is a roofed, open-air gallery or porch, attached to the outside of a building. A veranda is often partly enclosed by a railing and frequently extends across the front and sides of the structure. Although the form ''veran ...

, and a

rococo Rococo (, also ), less commonly Roccoco or Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and theatrical style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpted moulding, ...

-style drawing room for the ladies. A

Moorish The term Moor, derived from the ancient Mauri, is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages. Moors are not a distinct or se ...

-style smoking room was adjacent to a billiard room for the gentlemen. Notably, the grounds at Fulford Place were designed by the

Olmsted Brothers The Olmsted Brothers company was a landscape architectural firm in the United States, established in 1898 by brothers John Charles Olmsted (1852–1920) and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. (1870–1957), sons of the landscape architect Frederick Law ...

, and the recently restored formal

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian R ...

garden is a rare and important example of a privately owned Olmsted-designed garden. The property was reduced to three of its original when George Taylor Fulford II was forced to section off prime lots of real estate to sell in order to afford the maintenance of the house. He remained proprietor of Fulford Place until his death, when he bequeathed it to the Ontario Heritage Foundation (now

). All of its original contents were later donated by his widow and his son, George Taylor Fulford III.

Fulford family

George Taylor Fulford was born in Brockville in 1852 and attended school in Belleville for business, when he met his future wife, Mary Wilder Fulford ( White). Mary was a Wisconsin socialite and had a ten-year courtship with George through letters before they married in 1880. They had three children: Dorothy Marston Fulford (1881–1949), Martha Harris Fulford (1883-1910), and George Taylor Fulford II (1902-1987). In 1900 George Fulford was appointed to the Senate by Prime Minister Sir Wilfried Laurier, making George both Business man and Senator; however, in 1905 George Fulford died after an automobile accident while on a business trip in Newton, MA. He was the first Canadian to die in a car accident. His daughter Dorothy married

Arthur Charles Hardy Arthur Charles Hardy, (December 3, 1872 – March 13, 1962) was a Canadian lawyer and politician."Appointed in 1922, Was Dean of Senate". ''The Globe and Mail'', March 14, 1962. Life and career Born in Brantford, Ontario, Hardy ran for the ...

in 1904, while Martha was married twice before dying in childbirth in 1910. Mary Fulford lived at Fulford Place with her son George until her death in 1946. George Fulford II married Josephine Weller and the two resided at Fulford Place with their three children; Martha, Dwight and George III.

Museum

The Trust did extensive restoration on the house, and opened it to the public as a

in 1993. It has been interpreted to how it looked in the

Edwardian The Edwardian era or Edwardian period of British history spanned the reign of King Edward VII, 1901 to 1910 and is sometimes extended to the start of the First World War. The death of Queen Victoria in January 1901 marked the end of the Victori ...

era; this was done relatively accurately because of the existence of early photographs of rooms (taken for insurance purposes) and a collection of original artifacts (not reproductions). Among the original furnishings and artifacts are; a butterfly Steinway piano gifted to Mary Fulford by her husband, and a Tiffany Dragon Fly Lamp. The opulent and lavishly furnished mansion has been designated a

, and is a major tourist attraction in the Brockville area. The Museum is affiliated with: CMA, CHIN, and

Virtual Museum of Canada The Digital Museums Canada (DMC; , ''MNC'') is a funding program in Canada "dedicated to online projects by the museum and heritage community," helping organizations to build digital capacity. Administered by the Canadian Museum of History (CMH) ...

Fulford Place in film

'' Little Gloria... Happy at Last'' (1982): several of the mansion's rooms, including the drawing room and bedrooms, as well as the exterior, were used for filming this TV movie about the real-life story of Gloria Vanderbilt.

References

External links

* {{NHSC Historic house museums in Ontario National Historic Sites in Ontario Buildings and structures in Brockville Beaux-Arts architecture in Canada Museums in Leeds and Grenville United Counties History of Leeds and Grenville United Counties Ontario Heritage Trust