Walls, Steps And Sphinxes To Garden South Of Oldway Mansion

The walls, steps, and sphinxes to the garden south of Oldway Mansion were built around 1907, during the remodelling of Oldway Mansion for Paris Singer. The grounds were designed by A Duchesne, a prominent French formal landscape architect. The structure features concrete walls, a paved terrace, and white Italian marble sphinxes. In front of the house, there is a plain, low, coped concrete wall leading to a paved terrace, with flights of steps ascending from the south garden. The central flight of steps is flanked by elegant 18th-century style sphinxes, noted by Pevsner as "delightfully haughty," adorned with intricate hairstyles, earrings, and fichus. Low, coped concrete walls on the west and east sides of the garden return at the north end, where there is another flight of steps leading up to the lawn. These features are part of the setting for Oldway Mansion, with the sphinxes complementing the erotic sculpture in the pediment of the south front.