Norfolk’s Hermitage Museum, home to an impressive art collection

Sitting on a bench beneath an enormous 70-year-old magnolia tree in Norfolk, Va., I gazed across the waters of the Lafayette River. The huge cranes and derricks of busy Portsmouth and Norfolk harbors dominated the far shore. When the tree whose shade I was enjoying was planted, though, the view would have been far different, more bucolic, with tree-lined banks, extensive wetlands and sandy strands.

Behind me, the rambling Hermitage Museum has undergone an equally impressive transformation.

Details: Norfolk

Originally a five-room summer residence built for William and Florence Sloane in 1908, the house over the years was added to, remodeled and literally turned 90 degrees to accommodate the growing art collection of Florence Sloane, a transplanted New Yorker who came to Norfolk with her husband, who owned several nearby knitting mills. The house eventually became the family home, where the Sloanes raised their two sons. Today, the mansion contains one of the finest Asian art collections in the Southeast, as well as American impressionist paintings and a sculpture collection.

Its a hidden gem, said curator Colin Brady, who greeted my wife, Carol, and me at the front door on our recent visit.

Wed just driven up the entrance road that winds through the estates 12 acres of gardens, walks, woods and fields in a residential area of Norfolk. The drive gave us a sense of the place. The house is a 42-room Arts and Crafts structure built in the Tudor style, with Gothic- and Tudor-inspired rooms. In addition to the museum and gardens, the estate includes a Visual Arts Studio, where art courses and workshops are available to the public, and a Studio Artist Cottage, offering studio space to guest artists.

Florence Sloanes collection, which spans 5,000 years of art, started in 1901 with her sisters gift of a Japanese bowl. For the next 50 years, Florence would dedicate her life to the thoughtful acquisition of art, showcasing it in her ever-expanding and evolving home. And that collection remains here today, complete under one roof.

Brady took us first to the drawing room, done in Gothic revival style, with a hand-carved rood screen and a pipe organ, a Steinway piano and the family silver. Built in Philadelphia in 1922 and transported to Norfolk by rail, the room felt like something out of Elizabethan times with its oak paneling, half-beam ceiling, plaster walls and walnut floor. Mrs. Sloane wanted her house to be 500 years older than it actually was, Brady said. And thats certainly the feeling it conveys.

Evidence of Florence Sloane is everywhere. A handle placed unusually low on the drawing room door tells a story of its own. Standing only 4 feet 10 inches, Florence required latches that corresponded to her height. In the large painting of her with her Russian wolfhound, Zonoza, that hangs in the central gallery downstairs, the artist rendered the dog shorter than it really was so as not to accentuate Mrs. Sloanes diminutive stature.

The dining room is a hand-carved wood masterpiece. Artisan Charles Woodsend took three years to construct this room, which felt to me like the interior of a wooden sailing ship. The walls and ceiling are hand-cut wood. The large wooden table and other furniture are also hand-carved. A blue Persian carpet designed by Sloane graces the floor.

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Norfolk’s Hermitage Museum, home to an impressive art collection