All this Art showed
a profit from the start, for the lots sold well and there was
something like a rush to build in the new Addition. Its main
thoroughfare, an oblique continuation of National Avenue, was called
Amberson Boulevard, and here, at the juncture of the new Boulevard and
the Avenue, Major Amberson reserved four acres for himself, and built
his new house--the Amberson Mansion, of course.
This house was the pride of the town. Faced with stone as far back as
the dining-room windows, it was a house of arches and turrets and
girdling stone porches: it had the first porte-cochere seen in that
town. There was a central "front hall" with a great black walnut
stairway, and open to a green glass skylight called the "dome," three
stories above the ground floor. A ballroom occupied most of the third
story; and at one end of it was a carved walnut gallery for the
musicians. Citizens told strangers that the cost of all this black
walnut and wood-carving was sixty thousand dollars. "Sixty thousand
dollars for the wood-work alone! Yes, sir, and hardwood floors all
over the house! Turkish rugs and no carpets at all, except a Brussels
carpet in the front parlour--I hear they call it the 'reception-room.
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