Smoking Rooms of the Gilded Age

(Jack Bettridge) Grandeur was not the standard in American homes when Ruggles Sylvester Morse planned his Portland, Maine, show house in the late 1850s. Still Morse, a successful hotelier in New Orleans, was quite familiar with the closest things to palaces that the country had: the grand hotels of the day. From this model he cribbed the notions that his house should be filled with public spaces, utilize central heating, running water and toilets, and include a smoking room to which gentleman could repair to enjoy cigars.

That room, an exotic Turkish-style retreat with Moorish arabesques and strapwork fresco painted in vivid red and green, is considered the country's earliest existing domestic smoking parlor. Continued