Roadtrip
Destination Aiken, SC
Sweeping brick walls are built along Aiken Abounds In a Cottage Named Joye, the home will one the winding roads, beyond which Opposite page clockwise: Taking inventory / The gallery at Aiken Center day be bequeathed to the Juilliard School in for the Arts / Shopping at Nandina / Laurens Street / This page: Mixing up stand the regal estates of once- a cocktail at The Willcox / Cooling down after a training session New York. famous people like Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. And among them, one “Five or six musicians can play as loud as of the most famous–Hopelands Gardens, bequeathed to the city by the they want, anywhere in the house, and not be heard by one another. And American heiress, Mrs. C. Oliver Iselin, as a public garden in 1969. The the ballroom would be great for performances that everybody in Aiken 14-acre estate also houses the aforementioned Thoroughbred Racing could come to,” Smith told the New York Times in 1996. Hall of Fame and Museum–fitting for the former winter home of Iselin, the first woman to compete as a crew member in the America’s Cup Indian lore tells of a chief who was instructed in a dream to carry his yacht race and owner of many thoroughbred racehorses. ailing daughter to the land of the whispering pines, where she would find her cure. Today, the whispering pines are known as Hitchcock Only the foundation of the main house stands today–now an elevated, Woods, one of the largest urban forests in the country. Fox hunts take brick courtyard with reflective ponds and fountains that lay tucked under place on its nearly 2,100 acres and visitors are welcomed to participate. 100-year-old oaks and deodar cedars, thought to have been planted by Iselin herself. A web of peaceful walking paths, benches carved from the Fresh from the hunt, a few gentlemen hounds and lady foxes decked out broken branch of a prominent cedar and a children's playhouse to be in their tall boots and full riding attire pass through the Willcox Inn, a “grand white-pillared glory.” Reminiscent of Summerville’s famed Pine envied have been added over the years. Forest Inn in interior and history, the well-appointed rooms once hosted Just a few turns in the road from Hopelands, literally on Easy Street, stands famous heads of state, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, the Joye Cottage. Hardly a cottage in definition, the 60-room colossus, in addition to Summerville’s own, Elizabeth Arden. But the pictures of thought to be the largest private residence in the state of South Carolina, jockeys that line the halls are a continuous reminder the Willcox sits in built by New York’s millionaire robber baron William C. Whitney (who the heart of thoroughbred country. also brought polo fields to Aiken), and designed in part by the architects of the Fifth Avenue New York Public Library, Carrere & Hastings, is a Perhaps an understatement, Aiken is idyllic – the quintessential recipe sight to behold. Now owned by Gregory White Smith and Steven Naifeh, for a Southern Stepford–built on history and the things of legend with the Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of Jackson Pollack’s 1991 biography a healthy dose of comfort and hospitality sprinkled in. It’s a place to who also immortalized the estate in their book On a Street Called Easy, reminisce, to play and where the horse will always reign supreme. AM Spring 2014 AZALEAMAG.COM 91