E. W. Marland Mansion

The E.W. Marland Mansion is a 43561sqft Mediterranean Revival-style mansion located in Ponca City, Oklahoma, United States. Built by oil baron and philanthropist Ernest Whitworth (E.W.) Marland, as a display of wealth at the peak of the 1920s oil boom, the house is one of the largest residences in the southwestern United States, and is known as the "Palace on the Prairie." It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1973, and is now a museum open to the public.ArchitectureThe Marland Mansion was built on the side of a small hill, higher on the west side than on the east, in an abandoned stone quarry that determined the placement for the mansion, as the excavations for the quarry was used for the construction of the swimming pool. Designed by prominent Tulsa architect John Duncan Forsyth, the mansion was constructed between 1925 and 1928, and influenced by the Palazzo Davanzati in Florence, Italy that Marland had visited while traveling in Europe. Crafted from light-colored, rusticated limestone blocks, quarried on-site, and set in concrete on a steel frame, the roughly u-shaped layout is 78 feet wide and 184 feet long. The main entrance is found on the west front and features an arched and buttressed porte-cochère with gabled, clay tiled roof, that shelters the arched, 11-panel, double wood entrance doors custom-made in New York. Under each of the four inside corners of the porte-cochère are sculptures of Marland's four hunting dogs, carved by Italian sculptor, Ernest G. Pellegrini. The windows with black painted metal surrounds, to contrast with the light colored stone, are asymmetrically arranged. The first level windows feature wrought iron grill work, while those on the second level are smaller, or have wrought iron balconies.