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Beyond the Bottle Room is a room long nick-named as the Sunday Night Supper Room. Guides routinely inform visitors that it received that name from the Bellingraths who often had a simple supper here on Sunday nights after their weekend company had departed. A small table is set with two place settings to reaffirm this tale.
Mrs. Bellingrath’s nephew, Ernest Edgar, Jr. disagreed. He recalled a larger table and said that the room was used during the winter months when they could not use the screened-in Dining Porch. After Mrs. Bellingrath’s 1943 death, her friend Sara Curran, an antiques dealer, was called upon to create an inventory completed in 1947.
Mrs. Curran’s entry for this room is under the title “Winter Breakfast or Dining Room.” She places the large table now on the Dining Porch in this room, noting that with all the leaves in place it could seat 22 people. She had actually sold it to Mrs. Bellingrath so was quite familiar with it. On the “Summer Dining Porch” she listed a “Victorian dining table.” At some point after 1947 the two tables were swapped.
A photograph of the room taken around 1936 reveals yet another, much smaller table in this room. Apparently Mrs. Bellingrath had not yet purchased the large table. Another startling fact is that the room was painted a light cream color.
By 1964 when Margaret Taylor Moore compiled her book, the room was called “The Small Dining Room, sometimes called the Sunday Night Supper Room.” She offers no reason for the nickname and describes the room as being painted “a dark, leaf green.”
When the Home opened to the public in 1956 the tours entered this room by way of the glass door leading to the porch. The “Victorian dining table” was deemed an obstruction and was moved to the basement and later sold to a member of the garden staff. Guests could now easily pass by the diminutive table set for two and head into the Bottle Room.
As the Home approaches its 90th year this room has had its current color scheme for nearly seventy. This year the peach colored carpet which had begun to dry rot was replaced by a handsome Oriental rug with colors that complements its surroundings. And, visitors no longer have to go outside to view this intimate dining room.