February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Ray O’Hanlon
Call it Windows 250,000. And it might need a Bill Gates type to afford it.
Christie’s auctioneers in New York are offering the "Thomas Lynch Window" for sale in Manhattan on June 7.
It is no ordinary piece of glass. It was commissioned by Thomas Lynch, a wealthy son of Irish immigrants, around 1905.
The person commissioned was no ordinary blower of glass. Lynch wanted to fondly depict his family’s ancestral farm near Dungarvan, Co. Waterford, so he placed his order with the greatest glass decorator of his day, Louis Comfort Tiffany.
The window was built into the new home that Lynch built for himself and his family in Greensburg, Pa., in 1907.
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Lynch was born in Pennsylvania in 1854. His parents, Patrick and Nancy Daniel Lynch, had left Ireland in the wake of the Famine.
According to family tradition, the farmhouse depicted in the later Tiffany window is the home in Ballyduff, near Dungarvan, of Thomas Lynch’s grandfather.
A period photo since provided by Lynch family members in the Dungarvan area has confirmed to the satisfaction of Christy’s that the house in the Tiffany window is indeed based on a real building.
The auction house also received help from the Dungarvan Historical Society in its effort to link the window with an authentic site in County Waterford.
Thomas Lynch was clearly a successful man, given that he could afford Tiffany’s services.
He was a leading figure in the coal and coke business in the closing years of the 19th century, a time when the steel industry was rapidly expanding in Pennsylvania, particularly in Pittsburgh.
Lynch was also in the front lines during some of the most troubled years for the coal industry in a state where many miners could match his Irish roots.
Lynch, however, took a progressive approach to mining and is credited with pushing through many new safety measures on behalf of mineworkers at the time. He is particularly credited with coining the phrase "Safety First."
After Lynch died in 1914, the house, with its Tiffany Irish window, passed into the hands of his wife, Sarah Agnes McKenna Lynch. The house was handed on to Thomas Lynch Jr. in 1922 before being sold out of the family in 1945.
The 56-by-84-inch window didn’t stay put in the house after that sale and made its way through the hands of several owners before ending up in Christie’s of New York, where the hammer will come down next week — though not on the glass itself, which is estimated in value at somewhere between a less than fragile $200,000 and $300,000.