12 DANE from 11


cash into one of his Pack- ards and drove it up to New Hampshire where it was placed in a hidden location until Bay State Governor Calvin Coolidge intervened with state forc- es and forced an end to the strike. “He also bought 50 .38


caliber revolvers for the bank’s workers, the most useless gun ever, so that they could stop bank rob- beries,’’ Dane recalls. The Danes were fabu-


lously wealthy in what was known as the Gilded Age of American plutoc- racy and well-connected in the world of business and finance at the turn of the 19th century. Dane said that his family


had been regular visitors to the Lakes Region ever since 1892 and that Ed- ward Blaney Dane, then a student at Harvard Uni- versity, his future wife, Helen Pratt, “a neat young lady in a carriage’’ on Coe Hill Road. She was one of eight


children of Standard Oil tycoon Charles Pratt, who was for many years a busi- ness partner with John D. Rockefeller. Dane said that when


Pratt sold his own oil company to Rockefeller that he took shares in Standard Oil, rather than


THE WEIRS TIMES & THE COCHECO TIMES, Thursday, December 1, 2011


property, until Depression and World War II took their tolls. Most of the Pratt houses are today public or semi-public fa- cilities, and the Pratt Oval is just a memory. “But wait---that ac-


counts for the six Pratt sons and one sister, but there was a sixth Pratt child unaccounted for


brothers, but they were, nevertheless, impressive by most standards. “Soon after their mar-


riage, the Danes bought the Cox estate, Rough- wood, on Heath St. in Brookline. It was a very large chateauesque shin- gle and stone house de- signed a few years earlier by Andrews, Jacques, &


Preparing paintings for transport to storage, 1942. Alfred J. Jakstas, Assistant to Picture Restorer.


money, and became very wealthy. His grandfather’s court-


ship of Helen Pratt took 11 years according to Nate Dane, who said that his grandmother had felt obliged to take care of her ailing mother and didn’t


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think that she was ready to marry. The Downeast Dilettante


last December ran the fol- lowing interesting story headlined “The Pratt Who Got Away:” “Standard Oil tycoon


Charles Pratt had eight children and a strong dy- nastic streak. He famously bought 1100 acres of land in Glen Cove, New York to create a compound for his family, giving each child a share of the property. Ever the efficient busi- nessman, he consolidated estate operations for the various family houses into one compound, called the Pratt Oval, with a central administration building and stable and service fa- cilities for each property. “Although Pratt died


soon after creating the estate, his children em- barked on major build- ing sprees, building five famous mansions at Glen Cove, among the most admired houses of their time, using architectur- al firms such as James Brite, Delano and Aldrich, Walker & Gillette, and Charles Adams Platt. In turn, their children built more houses on the family


Packing painting by Fra Angelico, 1942, The Burial and Assumption of the Virgin.


COURTESY ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM ARCHIVES


in Glen Cove. What hap- pened to her? Where did she live? “In New England of course, almost in the Dil- ettante’s back yard. Hel- en Pratt married Ernest Blaney Dane, a wealthy investor and president of the Brookline Savings & Trust Company, and un- like her siblings who had their beachheads on Long Island and Park Avenue, she lived in Brookline, with a summer home in Seal Harbor, Maine, where also lived the son of her father’s old business partner, John D. Rock- efeller. The E.B. Danes houses were perhaps not as architecturally distin- guished as those of her


Rantoul. One of the as- sistants on the project was a young MIT graduate named Charles Sumner Greene, who would soon move to California with his brother, where they became famous as the firm of Greene & Greene. “After purchasing the


estate, the Danes made many improvements, add- ing an Elizabethan Music Room wing, and an enor- mous crystal palace style palm house at the other end of the mansion. “Early devotees of mo-


toring, they built a large garage, capable of holding nine cars, with a lower level carwash and ma- chine shop, and chauf- See DAE on 13


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