Each year the Newport Antiques Show hosts over 40 of the country’s top antiques dealers as they sell fine art, furniture, jewelry, and decorative arts from around the world. Despite value and integrity, antiques are still “other people’s stuff” from homes of the past. In August 1937, over a five day period, the entire contents of “Stonybrook” on Indian Avenue were auctioned off in 1,142 lots by order of the executors of the late Marie LeBel Knight. She was the second wife of Edward Collings Knight, Jr. (1864-1936), sugar manufacturer and railroad executive from Philadelphia. He was the original owner of “Claradon Court,” designed by Horace Trumbauer in 1903 and named for Knight’s first wife Clara (Dwight). After her death, he remarried and hired Trumbauer to build “Stonybrook” in 1927. He and Marie died there, four months apart in 1936, without surviving children.
Above: A photo of “Stonybrook” from the 1937 estate auction catalog in the NHS collection.
The 1937 Knight Estate Auction Catalogue 1937 from the NHS collections.