Removal of the walls that previously separated the Front and Back Parlors, along with some restoration on the historic floors, provided us evidence that these rooms had once been connected by a passageway to the east of the fireplace. This passageway, and a second later one on the west had been closed in during an earlier restoration project in the 1960s.
Upon reopening, the Front Parlor will be beautifully furnished with New York furniture including the black marble top table and scroll-back chairs pictured above. Additional items include many Jay family owned pieces and family portraiture.
The French watered silk wallpaper is a replica of the wallpaper that originally hung in this room. William Jay wrote in his journal during an 1844 trip to Paris, where he saw in an apartment of the Palace de L’Elysees Bourbon wallpaper “like the one some years since in the parlour at Bedford, an imitation of white watered silk.” Investigations into period French sources uncovered an appropriate document of white, watered silk wallpaper from the 1820s, which Adelphi Paper Hangings was able to reproduce.