Art Chowder September | October, Issue 23 | Page 35

The Entry Foyer and Northwest Corner of the Living Room The unglazed porcelain bust of Marie Antoinette in the Foyer is after a work by Felix Lecompt (1737-1817), original in the Musée National du Château, Versailles The pair of French, gilt-bronze mounted, porcelain vases in the corner of the Living Room are early 20th century, in the Louis XVI style. The unusual folding card table in front of the sofa is gilt-bronze mounted, inlaid tortoiseshell, Louis XIV style, late 19th-early 20th century productions photo: Melville Holmes M iss Woldson had engaged me to gild the frame of her mother’s petite “slipper chair.” Because the work had to be done in stages I went back a number of times, and she would tell stories from her prodigious memory — how her father had emigrated from Norway when he was 15 and became a successful railroad builder; her school years in San Francisco; how she came to acquire this or that piece of furniture and more, from Alaska to Philadelphia. One time she took me to the lower level to see the spacious music room, where the thing I most remember was on top of the elegant, small grand piano — a small-framed, hand-tinted photo of a very lovely young lady in a pretty party dress. I asked who she was. “It is I,” she replied. She was 98 when we met. Before then I had only heard of “Miss Woldson” as a singular personage about town who had donated three million dollars to save the Fox Theater (an Art Deco masterpiece) from demolition, after which it became home to the Spokane Symphony. I didn’t realize that she had grown up with classical music and had played the harp and piano since girlhood. Miss Woldson’s mother, Edwidge (Milot) Woldson, of French extraction and a devotee of fine art and literature, was both a mentor and a close companion (the two of them worked together on the interior décor and the formal French garden on the property) who instructed her girls in the social refinements, such as kindness, courtesy, and respect for elders. Her father, Martin Woldson, passed to his eldest daughter the business acumen that had enabled him to rise to the economic and social status which the family enjoyed. His teaching of the workings of the business world would enable her to amass a fortune surpassing his own, through wise investment especially in real estate. Some readers may recall the Seattle newspaper stories about a little parking lot, prime real estate, which the City and developers were aching to take from some obscure old lady in Spokane. They failed. In 2014, not long after Miss Woldson passed away at age 104, a call came from the Gonzaga University architect, requesting that I come to the Woldson home to match paint colors, wallpaper, and carpet. September | October 2019 35