15. French Gothic Ballroom

The grandest and most famous of Belcourt Castle's interiors is The French Gothic ballroom, seventy feet long, thirty-five feet wide, and thirty-five feet high - the perfect acoustic formula (2 cubes).

The architect designed Mr. Belmont's ballroom to accommodate the five authentic thirteenth century stained glass trefoil windows alternating in the red and blue backgrounds. Like the great contemporary stained glass masterpieces in Chartres and Notre

Figure 12 Apse, with organ loft balcony

Dame Cathedrals, 4-panel lancet windows below depict scenes from medieval French court life or peasantry with Old French inscriptions quoted from 13th century poetry. The window-doors may be opened to a seventy-foot long narrow balcony, with wrought iron railing, overlooking the north courtyard.

Beautiful oak paneled doors, with carved gothic arches above create an apse with a graceful vaulted ceiling of faux caenstone surrounding the tracery in the organ loft above.

Gothic clustered columns form the base for the deep ribbed vaulting suspended from the roof timbers by iron rods threaded top and bottom with nuts and washers buried within the hemp and plaster at points of stress. Large Gothic style cabinets made for the Castle, to display small arms and weapons.

The Castle fireplace, 30 feet high, is a replica of a castle in the 13th century Loire valley. Figures, scaled to give the illusion of greater height, depict castle characters: the monk, the soldier, the young lady, the page, the courtier, and the crone. Their faces and expressions show varying attitudes toward Belmont's Gilded Age parties held within their sight.



A. The Organ Loft balcony opens to a spacious wainscoted room, where a 10-rank Aeolian pipe organ was installed by Oliver Belmont in 1894. Alva gave it to a church before she moved to France. The Tinney family raised the roof about 11 feet to accommodate the present organ, a 26-rank tracker instrument built by E. & G.G. Hook (1864).

Figure 13 Overview from the balcony

B. The Musician's Balcony extends the entire length of the south wall. Gothic trefoils of the exact dimensions as the stained glass opposite open to the gallery where sculptured figures of medieval characters including musicians, monks, court ladies and gentlemen, etc. abound within the details of the third floor area.