Saving Beauty: Hugh McCain's Firsthand Account of Louis Comfort Tiffany and the Rescue of an American Legacy

In the annals of American art preservation, few stories are as compelling as Hugh McCain's personal connection to Louis Comfort Tiffany and his subsequent mission to save the master's work from destruction. Through a remarkable interview conducted by Les Anderson, we gain intimate access to McCain's memories—not just as a scholar and museum director, but as one of the last people to know Tiffany personally and witness the splendor of Laurelton Hall before its tragic demise.

A Young Artist Meets the Master

Hugh McCain's story begins in 1930, when as a recent graduate of Rollins College, he received an unexpected fellowship to the Tiffany Foundation. His father had submitted one of Hugh's paintings—a scene of the sugar mill at New Smyrna—without his knowledge, earning him two months at what would become a life-changing experience.

"I remember Louis Comfort Tiffany and I don't want the side of him that I knew or saw to be forgotten," McCain begins his recollection, determined to share a more complete picture of the man often dismissed as merely eccentric and egotistical. What emerges from McCain's vivid memories is a portrait of an artist deeply committed to beauty as a civilizing force in American life.

McCain's first impression was telling. When he arrived at the wrong train station in Oyster Bay, a chauffeur still met him—Tiffany's attention to hospitality extending even to logistical mishaps. The mile-long gravel driveway, lined with espalier fruit trees and fields of flowers, was Tiffany's deliberate introduction to his world. As the driver explained, "Mr. Tiffany insisted that every young person coming to his foundation come in the front driveway the first time because he wanted them to understand that they were his guest."

Life at Laurelton Hall: A Palace of Beauty

McCain's descriptions of Laurelton Hall transport us to a world that seems almost mythical today. The structure itself was "as long as a football field" and "fastened to the side of that hill... as determined to stay there as a barnacle fastened to a post." The converted horse stalls had become artist studios, each looking out onto acres of gardens, petunias, and tennis courts.

But it was the Sunday evening gatherings in Tiffany's fountain court that truly captured the master's vision of beauty as a total experience. McCain recalls the extraordinary sight: "some of the light came from a vase in the center of the court... the vase changed color. The fountain was lighted by... a series of color wheels... so that different combinations, almost an infinite number of color combinations would fall on that vase so that you couldn't really predict what color would be next."

Above it all, a Skinner pipe organ filled the space with music while polar bear rugs covered the floors, their mounted heads creating an almost surreal atmosphere. This wasn't merely luxury—it was Tiffany's carefully orchestrated environment designed to immerse young artists in beauty itself.

The Artist's Philosophy and Methods

Through McCain's eyes, we see Tiffany not as the dilettante some critics portrayed, but as a master craftsman obsessed with perfection. The famous story of Tiffany's glass inspections reveals this dedication: armed with "a little stick," he would examine every window before shipment, punching out any piece that wasn't exactly right. With 5,000 coded colors of glass in his workshops, Tiffany would demand sheet after sheet until the perfect piece was found.

"He never gave any consideration to expense of anything he was making," McCain observed, noting that while this exacting standard might drive workers to leave, "they never left in anger. They would leave and set up their own shop."

McCain also provides insight into Tiffany's relationship with new technology, particularly photography. While French painters feared the camera would end their profession, Tiffany embraced it as another tool. McCain suggests that one of Tiffany's family paintings at "Sumsville" was likely created using both a photograph and sketches—an early example of multimedia artistic process.

The Chemistry of Color

Perhaps nowhere is McCain's respect for Tiffany's genius more evident than in his discussion of glass-making. He carefully explains the complexity of creating colored glass—how iron creates green, how selenium, copper oxide, or gold solutions create red—before marveling that "it's fascinating that Louis Tiffany could pick it up and do it and do it better than anybody else had ever done before."

McCain understood that Tiffany's breakthrough wasn't just technical but aesthetic. Unlike 19th-century glassmakers who applied colors with enamel brushes, Tiffany embedded colors in the glass itself, creating what McCain describes as an impressionist effect. "If you put them on in little touches of color, it gives an effective atmosphere. And I think Louis Tiffany wanted his windows to have the general effect of atmosphere that he saw in the impressionist paintings."

The Decline and Fall

McCain witnessed not only Tiffany's glory but also his decline. The 1913 Armory Show, which introduced Picasso, Matisse, and Duchamp to America, marked a turning point. "Mr. Tiffany was very very much out of date and very angry about it and hurt because he'd been left out of the show," McCain recalls. The master who had once been at the forefront of American art suddenly found himself relegated to the past.

Louis Comfort Tiffany, c1930

The economic realities following World War I and the 1929 crash further undermined Tiffany's world. The man who had traveled in private railroad cars and stayed in imperial suites "didn't really know how to adjust to the fact that he was short on funds." When Tiffany died of pneumonia in 1933, his foundation faced financial ruin.

The Rescue Mission

Here begins the heroic chapter of Hugh McCain's own story. After the foundation sold Laurelton Hall's contents for a pittance and the building later burned down in 1957, McCain and his wife Jeannette surveyed the wreckage. What they found was devastating: "blackened pipes and things standing up against the sky. It was a disaster."

Jeannette and Hugh McKean, 1955

Hugh McKean at Laurelton Hall

But crucially, someone had rescued many of the windows, storing them in the chapel building which had survived. Jeannette's immediate response would change art history: "We must get everything that's here and take it to Winter Park, Florida."

As McCain notes with quiet satisfaction, "Curiously enough, all of these what he considered his masterpieces, things that had stunned the world with their beauty and so on. All that's left of them is down here in Winter Park, Florida."

The McKean Legacy

Hugh F. McKean (1908–1995) transformed from a young fellowship recipient into the longtime director of the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, creating what became the world's most comprehensive collection of Tiffany's work. Together with his wife Jeannette Genius McKean, he didn't merely collect—he rescued and reconstructed, most notably the chapel interior from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and countless elements from Laurelton Hall.

McCain understood that he was preserving more than objects; he was safeguarding a vision. As he reflected, "Mr. Tiffany believed that art was a kind of magic that you put into things which will somehow vitalize young people in the future." Tiffany had "charged Laurelton Hall with beauty of all kinds" and believed it would be "a permanent gift" that would inspire future generations.

A Legacy of Preservation

Thanks to Hugh McCain's vision and dedication, however, that career lives on—not in the rolling hills of Long Island, but in the careful preservation and presentation of Tiffany's masterpieces for new generations to discover. The magic Tiffany believed art could work continues to vitalize young people, just as he dreamed, through the remarkable foresight of a former fellowship recipient who understood the true value of what might have been lost forever.

A Note of Gratitude

We owe a profound debt to Les Anderson, whose thoughtful interview with Hugh McCain preserved these irreplaceable firsthand memories of Louis Comfort Tiffany and Laurelton Hall. Just as McCain rescued Tiffany's physical masterpieces from destruction, Anderson rescued McCain's precious recollections from the passage of time. Without Anderson's foresight in conducting and recording this interview, these intimate glimpses into Tiffany's world—the Sunday evening gatherings with their color-changing fountains, the master's perfectionist inspections of his glass, the splendor and eventual tragedy of Laurelton Hall—would have been lost forever. In capturing McCain's voice, Anderson performed his own act of cultural preservation, ensuring that the human story behind one of America's greatest artistic legacies would endure for future generations to appreciate and learn from.

About the Author: Eduardo Montes-Bradley is a writer and filmmaker currently working on "Tiffany in the Wild," a documentary film focusing on Louis Comfort Tiffany works currently in semiprivate and public spaces. This project continues the tradition of preserving and documenting Tiffany's artistic legacy for contemporary audiences.