After looking at the farm and walking up the path we headed on over to The Swan House, a large immaculate home built in 1928 that once belonged to the Inman family, an old money family with a fortune from a cotton brokerage. The house's most recent claim to fame is that it was used as the presidential palace in the filming of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.
The house is incredible to see, especially when you consider that this was the family's 'downsized' home, a retirement and vacation home for the family. The outside alone is full of intricate detail and you can see why it was used for the filming location of the presidential palace.
I couldn't resist getting a picture on the landing a la President Snow.
After finishing up with our photo shoot we moved around to the entrance of the house, which was equally as ornate as the back, playing host to a TARDIS blue door and a 1929 Hudson Super Six in all it's Great Gatsby glory. In fact, it reminded me a lot of the car Owen Wilson gets picked up in in Midnight in Paris.
To your immediate left as you walk in is the library/study which was absolutely gorgeous.
The next room we entered was the dining room, once again, filled to the gills with ornate detailing and decoration. The wallpaper is all hand painted and incredibly elegant and the face pictured above? That's carved into the mantel over the fireplace, from the days when houses themselves were art you could live your life in.
Directly off the dining room we enter the kitchen, and the beginning of the servant area of the house. The kitchen was huge and actually consisted of two different rooms and if the decadent nature of the house didn't already clue you in to the amount of money the family had then the two different huge fancy 1920's/30's refrigerators should. I may not be an expert on home life in the early 1930's, but I can tell you that none of the historic homes from this era where I come from had anything that came close to the refrigerator they had in this house.
We ascended the stairs in the servant's quarters (not pictured) before stopping off at the large upstairs landing to take a look down the spiral staircase and checking out how the better half lived in The Swan House first.
The first room was the children's room, which is as storybook and C.S. Lewis-y as you might imagine. Not pictured is the giant fireplace which certainly added to the effect.
The main bedroom is decadent to say the least. Once again, covered in hand painted wallpaper and punctuated with a four-poster canopy bed, ornately gilded mirror and marble accented fireplace, all of which is tied together by windows overlooking an amazing view of the fountain and grounds. But even more impressive than the room itself is the connected lady's spacious and heavily mirrored powder room, which boasts a classy rattan style toilet and a ceiling painted in the house's eponymous swan's.
Even though the live in maid's room was less ornate and lacked the decadent bathroom facilities of the main bedroom of the house, it was still pretty nice. It was easily larger than my bedroom in my apartment and arguably had the best view of the grounds in the entire house!
Having finished upstairs we decided to pick up our skirts and slide down the spiral banister back into the entryway! Not really, but one can dream, right? Coming down the stairs I did notice this painting that I had missed before that was absolutely magical up close, but then again I always have loved a good painting of a stormy sea.
Upon descending the staircase we realized we had almost missed an entire room off the main floor! Of course this was the family sitting room which easily matched the ornate decoration of the rest of the house with a piano, old portraits and gilded mirrors lining the wall.
And of course the tiny telephone room, a staple of the time and just the perfect size to sit and make a phone call in.
Overall, it was the small, simple kind of home in which I could easily see myself living a simple and happy life.
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