The Tiger House

Photos via Hudson Valley Magazine.

Public Sale staff had the recent privilege of gathering some pieces from Hudson NY’s famous “Tiger House,” a rare example of Dutch Jacobean architecture that some have called “the grandest house in Hudson.” Many items from the house, including antique furniture, rugs, artworks, and assorted decorative items, are included in our upcoming Beauty and the Beast auction on August 28th, 2021.

The Tiger House was built in 1906 as a hunting lodge for the soap heir Morgan Jones and his wife Clarice, a noted suffragist said to have been known as the "Belle of Honolulu.” What to Gilded Age fortunes was an upstate “lodge” is by today’s standards a luxurious mansion bathed in riches.

The Tiger House is equally rich in history. A private residence until the 1980s, it had a brief stint as an upscale nursing home before its 2005 acquisition and renovation by Dini Lamot and Windle Davis, longtime partners and former band members of the 1980s new wave band Human Sexual Response. It is during this era, or perhaps its later incarnation as the Tiger House Inn, when music icon Lou Reed is rumored to have stayed there.

Among the artworks included in the Beauty and the Beast auction are a Harry Herman Roseland painting, 3 framed Audubon bird prints by Daniel Giraud Elliot, and a signed Chinese floral silk painting. Furniture includes many mahogany period pieces that may have been original to Tiger House’s decor, like a writing desk, a marble console side table, and a stunning Lazarus & Co bar with copper top. Other lots feature several Art Nouveau lamps, upholstered chairs, and Oriental rugs. And more items of a more Modern aesthetic that were tastefully integrated into Tiger House’s decor will be included in future PS auctions.

At Public Sale, we relish the opportunity to explore dusty attics and bat-ridden barns to find the old, the forgotten, and the neglected. But we’re also grateful that our work allows us to occasionally experience such well-preserved architectural gems as the Tiger House, and to pass along some of their history to the lucky bidders in our auctions.