The new Ellipse of the 1960s also saw updates to the Box Walk. Running horizontal to the terraced gardens, the Box Walk was originally a grass covered slope with risers to ease the descent from the Main House, and the Ellipse served as its terminus. With the shift from boxwood to hornbeams in the Ellipse under Alden Hopkins and new Ruth Havey design interventions, the Box Walk was altered to a patterned brick walkway with stairs. The first set of risers up from the Ellipse hosts a pair of pineapple ornaments purchased on behalf of the Blisses at auction in New York in 1957. In 1969, Havey designed a pair of stone pedestals for the ornaments based on a Farrand design of a French-inspired pedestal outside the Orangery. The ornaments are merely one example of the many different pieces of statuary placed by the Blisses throughout the gardens, juxtaposing themselves with their surroundings in conversation with the landscape.
Image: Ruth Havey, Pair of stone pedestals for pineapples at the Ellipse, The Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C., Dec. 1959. Garden Archives, K-3-43
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