The character of Cowperwood’s New York house, which proved one of the central achievements of his later years, was one of those flowerings—out of disposition which eventuate in the case of men quite as in that of plants. After the passing of the years neither a modified Gothic (such as his Philadelphia house had been), nor a conventionalized Norman-French, after the style of his Michigan Avenue home, seemed suitable to him. Only the Italian palaces of medieval or Renaissance origin which he had seen abroad now appealed to him as examples of what a stately residence should be. He was really seeking something which should not only reflect his private tastes as to a home, but should have the more enduring qualities of a palace or even a museum, which might stand as a monument to his memory. After much searching Cowperwood had found an architect in New York who suited him entirely—one Raymond Pyne, rake, raconteur, man-about-town—who was still first and foremost an artist, with an eye for the exceptional and the perfect. These two spent days and days together meditating on the details of this home museum. An immense gallery was to occupy the west wing of the house and be devoted to pictures; a second gallery should occupy the south wing and be given over to sculpture and large whorls of art; and these two wings were to swing as an L around the house proper, the latter standing in the angle between them. The whole structure was to be of a rich brownstone, heavily carved. For its interior decoration the richest woods, silks, tapestries, glass, and marbles were canvassed. The main rooms were to surround a great central court with a colonnade of pink-veined alabaster, and in the center there would be an electrically lighted fountain of alabaster and silver. Occupying the east wall a series of hanging baskets of orchids, or of other fresh flowers, were to give a splendid glow of color, a morning-sun effect, to this richly artificial realm. One chamber—a lounge on the second floor—was to be entirely lined with thin-cut transparent marble of a peach-blow hue, the lighting coming only through these walls and from without. Here in a perpetual atmosphere of sunrise were to be racks for exotic birds, a trellis of vines, stone benches, a central pool of glistening water, and an echo of music. Pyne assured him that after his death this room would make an excellent chamber in which to exhibit porcelains, jades, ivories, and other small objects of value.