Gutted Ophir

Included in what the late Mrs. Whitelaw Reid passed on to her children were not only large holdings in the New York Herald Tribune, a Manhattan house, but also a huge, ugly greystone palace on an eminence outside White Plains, N. Y. Last year the contents of the Manhattan house were sold. Last week Son Ogden

Reid called in the auctioneers to sell everything in the great palace known as Ophir Hall.*

The Whitelaw Reids had Edwardian tastes and they fitted their palace with the best of what they liked. They liked French tapestries, British, French and Dutch paintings of landscapes and fine-looking people, Persian rugs on the floors, Chinese pottery everywhere, and their favorite kind of chair was one covered with fine needlepoint. Last week, through four days of sightseeing and five of auctioning, Ophir Hall was full of socialites of Edwardian tastes, bidding against the usual agents.

The two great Gobelin tapestries of boar-hunting and falconry went for $11,000 apiece. A Gainsborough was knocked down for $6,700, a Joshua Reynolds landscape for only $1,600, a Jan Steen for $3,200, a Rembrandt Peale Washington for $3,400. A Chippendale mahogany and needlepoint settee sold for $2,600; two silver chocolate pots and brandy saucepan for $820. Three Gothic stained & painted glass panels and a roundel were taken out of the west window for $1,400. Then the auctioneers walked all over the house, auctioning as they went, sold off even the servants' billiard table downstairs. Total proceeds: $290,322.50.

*Named by Ben Halliday of Pony Express fame, after his Ophir gold mine, which he had named for the legendary Biblical land of Ophir whence King Solomon got some of his gold.

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