Berthold Nebel’s studio.
Photo: Realty Plans
The sculptor Berthold Nebel left his mark across Manhattan, from the sea nymphs in the ceilings of the old Cunard Building at the foot of Broadway to the limestone reliefs at the Hispanic Society up on 155th Street. He was a Swiss immigrant who won spots at Cooper Union and the Art Students League and hustled in studios downtown, cranking out bronze Great Men and lounging marble ladies for garden fountains. But Nebel spent the second half of his life outside the city on an old apple orchard in Westport, Connecticut, where he built a studio that could serve his specific needs. The floors are reinforced. The ceilings are 17 feet high. A pulley system allowed him to wheel a heavy piece out from the main room to a terrace, through high double doors, where he could look at his work in daylight.
The interior. Barrister bookcases date to Nebel’s use of the studio, and the plaster medallions on the walls are his work.
Photo: Realty Plans
Nebel in the studio with The Wrestlers, his student thesis project. He died in 1964, aged 74.
Photo: Lucia Nebel White
That studio is now on the market for the first time. It looks less like a house than a tiny English church with thick stone walls and a vaulted ceiling. A local architect is named on the original plans, but Nebel may have also relied on some masons he knew to build it. There’s a great room at the center where Nebel would work, and wings with lower ceilings hold a study and bathroom on one side and a small kitchen on the other. A basement allowed him to store supplies, which could be driven in through the garage. A slice of the ceiling also opens up to allow a crane to reach in. With one bedroom and one bathroom across 1,500 square feet, it may be an oddity in today’s Westport. But when Nebel arrived in 1928, the area was known for its artists. Landscape painters liked the Connecticut River, and Nebel’s mentor, James Earle Fraser, designer of the Buffalo nickel and a lot of other Americana, had settled in Westport, building himself a custom studio. When Nebel won a major commission in 1928 to build a set of bronze doors for a building in Manhattan, he followed him, buying an 1883 farmhouse with nine acres of land, according to a family history by relative Sara Drought Nebel.
The home was built in 1932, and the plans name architect Lewis Welch. This view of the back shows garage-style doors that lead straight to the basement.
Photo: Lucia Nebel White
The farm life appealed to Berthold’s wife, Marietta, who came from a small Italian village; they met when she modeled for him at the American Academy in Rome. She entertained the local art crowd with big Italian meals and fresh-baked bread. They had two children, and after Berthold’s death in 1964, their son took over the main farmhouse and cared for his mother.
The couple’s daughter, the photographer Lucia Nebel White, was a bit more bohemian, according to her daughter Maria White Keogh. She married an architect who subdivided the old orchard and built six homes there. Then the 1970s economic crunch hit. “The studio was sort of empty,” explained Keogh, “and my father couldn’t have an empty building. So we all moved in.” There were, for a time, four kids sleeping in the great room — the two boys up in a loft, the two girls on the main floor below — and everyone shared a bathroom. The basement became a darkroom and studio. But White never removed her father’s old sculptures — busts of generals on a mantel, casts for doors against a wall. “She didn’t want to change it,” said Keogh. “She loved any opportunity that she’d get to bring people over to show them the artwork.”
White lived there until her death in 2017 at age 93. Her eldest son moved in during the pandemic and nursed the orchard’s last remaining tree back to health. Selling the place was impossible until the siblings could figure out what to do with their grandfather’s stuff, which wasn’t the usual matter of donating a few boxes and holding an estate sale. One of Nebel’s major works was still there — The Wrestlers, a huge plaster work of two sinewy men locked in combat, which had been his thesis as a student. Moving it out would cost thousands. And where would it go? One potential site fell through and then a proper plan emerged: donating it to an art academy in Lyme and fundraising to get it there. Last month they pulled it off, watching as a crane plucked the sculpture off the terrace and set it onto a truck. Once it was gone, the last Nebel heir followed it out. The space is now being emptied of a few remaining smaller objects. As for the house itself, “The interest is keen,” said broker Kelley Long Thrush. “Buyers know you’ll never find this architecture here again.”
Nebold’s The Wrestlers as it was taken out for display at the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts.
Photo: Maria White Keogh
Photo: Realty Plans
The back of the house today. The central door leads to the basement level.
Photo: Realty Plans
The front was built so sculptures could be wheeled out to a terrace for viewing in natural light.
Photo: Lucia Nebel White
The terrace doubles as a spot for outdoor dining and looks over a lawn where Lucia Nebel White once kept a garden.
Photo: Realty Plans
The main space has a platform loft (at left) and plaster casts Nebel made for architectural commissions.
Photo: Realty Plans
The family kitchen with a photo by White on the wall at right.
Photo: Realty Plans
The last major Nebel work exits the building.
Photo: Maria White Keogh
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