Pendleton intro paragraph

At the end of his life, antiques dealer Charles Leonard Pendleton (1846-1904) bequeathed his valuable collection of eighteenth-century furniture to the Rhode Island School of Design, stipulating that its museum must replicate his Federal-era home as a stand-alone wing and preserve its interior arrangements. Opened in 1906, Pendleton House was “furnished as the home of a gentleman of means and taste one hundred and fifty years ago.” With this oft-repeated phrase the museum replaced its problematic donor with a spotless eighteenth-century avatar. A high-stakes gambler, recluse, and purveyor of sometimes dubious antiques, Pendleton did not even own the house the museum had reproduced. His greatest gamble – to erase his disreputable past with an ersatz “gentleman’s home” — paid off. Few today connect the man with his collection.