Ten Chimneys Foundation

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Mission

Ten Chimneys Foundation’s Mission

Preserve and Share the buildings, furnishings, collections, and grounds of a national treasure – Ten Chimneys, the estate created by Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.
Serve as a continuing resource and powerful inspiration for theatre, the arts, and the art of living.
Offer public programs consistent with the Lunts’ varied interests and core values, while maintaining the integrity and intimacy of this extraordinary estate.

Ten Chimneys is a National Historic Landmark, a “Save America’s Treasures” project site, and is listed in the National Registry of Historic Places. Ten Chimneys is owned by the non-profit 501(C)3 organization Ten Chimneys Foundation, Inc.

Tea Time With Lynn & Alfred

Alfred and Lynn at Tea

Please visit “Tea Time with Lynn and Alfred,” an exhibition featuring tea and coffee sets from the Ten Chimneys Collection. This eclectic assemblage of colors, shapes, and patterns will be on display in the Lunt-Fontanne Program Center from April through October, 2004.

Listen carefully as the clock strikes four on a drowsy summer afternoon at Ten Chimneys and you can almost hear Lynn asking if you would prefer milk or lemon in your tea, darling. From Alfred’s kitchen wafts the mouthwatering smell of freshly baked scones and tea breads.

Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne on the Grounds of Ten Chimneys, 1949

English born and raised, Lynn Fontanne simply had to have her afternoon tea. The sprawling Ten Chimneys estate provided Lynn with a host of miniature “sets” in which to stage her favorite daily ceremony. Four o’clock might find her pouring for her lucky guests in any one of the fabulous rooms or entertaining on the lawn.

Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne on the Main House Terrace, 1942

Alfred preferred coffee to tea, but not just any “joe” would do, mind you. He delighted in brewing huge steaming pots of “Swedish coffee” – a concoction that featured egg shells as a secret ingredient.

Just as Lynn and Alfred loved variety in the tea time setting, they also enjoyed using different tea and coffee sets. Ten Chimneys is equipped with more than twenty different sets ranging from fine porcelain to common earthenware – a truly eclectic collection of colors, shapes, and patterns. A sampling from the Ten Chimneys tea and coffee pot collection will be on exhibit in the Program Center from April through October, 2004.

Interested in knowing more about tea time at Ten Chimneys? Read on for first hand accounts by lucky guests!

Diana Enright (a young Genesee Depot friend of Lynn): “We loved to have tea together. Alfred enjoyed it but not always. Lynn took tea alone and had a ball. She enjoyed it very much. If he was busy – and he worked very hard in his garden, very hard. If he was too busy to stop for tea, she would be happy to have tea by herself. If I happened to be there I always joined her. Sometimes we would be in the house…and we would have tea many times in the Flirtation Room on that little table. We had tea there a lot. There was a time when the double doors were open and we would go outside…I asked if I could sit please in this one little chair and she said of course. So I got to sit there!”

James and Marilyn Auer (describing a 1960s visit): “At 4:00, we had tea. She brought out this wonderful silver tea set, and she said, “milk and sugar” and she poured the tea and the milk simultaneously in the English manner and then we had it with wonderful cookies. And then they told us that Alfred had made them.”

Drinking Tea

Claire Greene (niece of Louisa Sederholm Greene, Alfred’s sister): “(The cottage was very lovely, actually, but the charming part was the kitchen and the Scandinavian part, where Hattie (Alfred’s mother) loved to entertain at tea and sometimes I would be invited up. Well, I would take my children up to see her. She loved that. And they were, of course, absolutely thrilled, because it was quite a different experience for the little girls to see a woman like that and be entertained with little pastries and a formal afternoon tea.”

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