Worsham-Rockefeller Dressing Room

In 1881, Arabella Worsham, then-mistress of railroad magnate Collis P. Huntington, hired George A. Schastey & Co. to decorate her townhouse at 4 West Fifty-Fourth Street in New York City. The resulting artistic interiors would have been considered the height of cosmopolitan style in the early 1880s and were emblematic of Worsham’s quest to fashion her identity as a wealthy, prominent woman of taste. When Worsham married Huntington in 1884, she sold the house, fully furnished, to John D. and Laura Spelman Rockefeller, who made few subsequent changes to the decorations. Following Mr. Rockefeller’s death, the house was demolished in 1938, yet some furnishings, large-scale architectural elements, and three interiors were preserved, and the rooms were donated to local museums by John D. Rockefeller Jr.