From Palma to Princeton : Unraveling the Mystery of a Mallorcan Stairway

A beautifully illustrated look at the complex past of Princeton’s Mallorcan stairway and patioFrom Palma to Princeton weaves together a rich history that crisscrosses the Atlantic, offering a picture of trends and tastes in twentieth-century art collecting in Europe and the United States and debates regarding cultural property. How and why did stone architectural elements from Mallorca, Spain, make the journey from the Balearic Islands to New Jersey? Art historian Alexandra Letvin traces the fascinating story of how a fifteenth- to sixteenth-century stairway, together with balustrades and columns from a sixteenth-century residential patio, were dismantled in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Mallorca and reconfigured by American and Spanish art dealers living in Spain. The resulting assemblage made its way first into the collection of William Randolph Hearst, then to the home of the Baron and Baroness Cassel van Doorn in Englewood, New Jersey, and finally, in 1955, to Princeton University. Conservator Elena Torok details how cross-disciplinary research leading to the grouping’s 2025 reinstallation in the Princeton University Art Museum’s new building yielded discoveries about the stones’ past, including the fact that by the time it left the island of Mallorca in 1929, elements had been modified and recombined in ways that left them permanently altered. As the stairway, balustrades, and columns changed hands during the twentieth century and their connections to their source locations became blurred, they became challenging to recognize; for many years these pieces had been considered lost, despite having been installed in the galleries of the Princeton University Art Museum in 1965 and viewed by generations of visitors.