HOUSES OF THE BERKSHIRES
R ICHARD S. J ACKSON J R ., a native of Greenwich, Connecticut, and a graduate of Yale University, moved to the Berkshires in 1962. As past chairman of the Lenox Historical Commission and the Tanglewood Council, and as a member of the Naumkeag committee, he has worked to preserve several of the houses described in ---this volume. He lives in Lenox, Massachusetts.
C ORNELIA B ROOKE G ILDER spent most of her childhood in Lenox, Massachusetts, in the house her grandparents bought in 1906. A graduate of Vassar College, she has worked for the New York State Historic Preservation Office in Albany and has since contributed to a number of exhibitions and publications, most recently Hawthorne’s Lenox (2008) and Architects in Albany (2010). She lives in Tyringham, Massachusetts with her husband George.
THE ARCHITECTURE OF LEISURE An Elegant Wilderness: Great Camps and Grand Lodges of the Adirondacks, 1855–1935 GLADYS MONTGOMERY 2011 Houses of the Hamptons, 1880–1930 GARY LAWRANCE AND ANNE SURCHIN 2007
Palm Beach Houses, 1910–1950 GARY LAWRANCE AND RICHARD MARCHAND 2013
1870–1930 REVISED EDITION
—S AMUEL G. W HITE
PRINTED IN CHINA
The scenic hills of the Berkshires, with their beautiful lakes, clean air, and spectacular autumn foliage, have provided a respite from urban living for wealthy New Yorkers and Bostonians since the 19th century. In Lenox and Stockbridge
fortunes communed, played, and cut deals. Too far from the cities to be considered suburban, the estates had the feeling of true country seats in the European manner. Illustrated with over 300 photographs and floor plans, Houses of the Berkshires, 1870–1930, surveys 37 of the great country houses, including Naumkeag, Wheatleigh, Tanglewood, Blantyre, and the Mount. The resort area’s pioneer visitors, in the 1840s, were intellectuals: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, the actress Fanny Kemble and the painter Thomas Cole, among others. Patrons soon followed, hiring the best architects from New York and Boston, along with some remarkably able local practitioners, to build magnificent “cottages” and elaborate gardens and greenhouses. This revised, expanded edition reflects new research since the original publication in 2006. With two additional chapters and almost two dozen new photographs, Houses of the Berkshires is an informative architectural history of the great American resort, an elegant photographic tour of some of the region’s most beautiful houses, and an unmatched chronicle of this distinctive social,
FRONT COVER: LOGGIA AT WHEATLEIGH BACK COVER: NAUMKEAG
R ICHARD S. J ACKSON J R . AND C ORNELIA B ROOKE G ILDER
nation’s leading architects. Here the creators of America’s great
There are not many places in America that combine architecture, ambition, and nature in such abundance, but I cannot think of a combination of riches that is more American.
1870–1930
and surrounding communities, grand houses were built by the
R ICHARD S. J ACKSON J R . C ORNELIA B ROOKE G ILDER
FORTHCOMING Houses of Hawaii, 1850–1950 D ON H IBBARD 2013
HOUSES OF THE BERKSHIRES
HOUSES OF THE BERKSHIRES
R ICHARD S. J ACKSON J R .
AND
C ORNELIA B ROOKE G ILDER
ACANTHUS PRESS
artistic, and literary colony and now vanished way of life.
WWW.ACANTHUSPRESS.COM
THE ARCHITECTURE OF LEISURE
HOUSES OF THE BERKSHIRES 1870–1930 REVISED EDITION
RICHARD S. JACKSON JR. AND CORNELIA BROOKE GILDER FOREWORD BY SAMUEL G. WHITE
A CANTHUS P RESS NEW YORK : 2011
ACANTHUS PRESS, LLC 1133 BROADWAY, STE. 1229 NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10010 WWW.ACANTHUSPRESS.COM 212-414-0108
COPYRIGHT Š 2006, 2011, RICHARD S. JACKSON JR. AND CORNELIA BROOKE GILDER Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify the owners of copyright. Errors of omission will be corrected in subsequent printings of this work. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in any part (except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publisher. Excerpts published with permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University; Princeton University Library; Smith College Library; and Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jackson, Richard S., 1943Houses of the Berkshires : 1870-1930 / by Richard S. Jackson, Jr. and Cornelia Brooke Gilder. -- Rev. and expanded ed. p. cm. -- (Architecture of leisure) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-926494-82-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Country homes--Massachusetts--Berkshire Hills--History--19th century. 2. Country homes--Massachusetts--Berkshire Hills--History--20th century. I. Gilder, Cornelia Brooke. II. Title. NA7613.M4J23 2011 728'.37097441--dc22 2011000232
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CONTENTS
GUSTY GABLES
Foreword [ 9 ]
Residence of Mary de Peyster Carey
Acknowledgments [ 11 ]
[ 50 ] Introduction [ 13 ] ALLEN WINDEN Residence of Charles Lanier TANGLEWOOD
and Sarah Egleston Lanier
Residence of William Aspinwall Tappan
[ 54 ]
and Caroline Sturgis Tappan [ 26 ]
COLDBROOK Residence of John S. Barnes and Susan Hayes Barnes
BONNIE BRAE
[ 60 ]
Residence of Henry Ivison and Sarah B. Ivison [ 32 ]
MERRYWOOD Residence of Charles Bullard
WINDYSIDE
[ 66 ]
Residence of Richard Cranch Greenleaf and Adeline Stone Greenleaf
SUNNYRIDGE
[ 39 ]
Residence of George Winthrop Folsom and Frances Fuller Folsom
OAKWOOD
[ 71 ]
Residence of Samuel Gray Ward and Anna Barker Ward [ 44 ]
THE HOMESTEAD Residence of Charles Follen McKim and Julia Amory Appleton McKim [ 77 ]
[6]
NAUMKEAG
WHEATLEIGH
Residence of Joseph Hodges Choate
Residence of Henry Harvey Cook and Mary McCay Cook,
and Caroline Dutcher Choate
Carlos de Heredia and Georgie Cook de Heredia
[ 82 ]
[ 135 ]
DEEPDENE
WYNDHURST
Residence of Francis Parker Kinnicutt
Residence of John Sloane and Adela Berry Sloane
and Eleanora Kissel Kinnicutt
[ 144 ]
[ 91 ] SHADOW BROOK ELM COURT
Residence of Anson Phelps Stokes
Residence of William Douglas Sloane
and Helen Louisa Phelps Stokes
and Emily Vanderbilt Sloane
[ 151 ]
[ 97 ] LAKESIDE KELLOGG TERRACE
Residence of Charles Astor Bristed
Residence of Mary Frances Sherwood Hopkins
and Mary Rosa Donnelly Bristed
[ 105 ]
[ 161 ]
ERSKINE PARK
CHERRY HILL
Residence of George Westinghouse
Residence of Dr. Charles McBurney
and Marguerite Erskine Walker Westinghouse
and Margaret Weston McBurney
[ 112 ]
[ 168 ]
BELVOIR TERRACE
BELLEFONTAINE
Residence of Morris Ketchum Jesup
Residence of Giraud Foster and Jean Van Nest Foster
and Maria De Witt Jesup
[ 174 ]
[ 120 ] CHESTERWOOD VENTFORT HALL
Residence of Daniel Chester French
Residence of George Hale Morgan
and Mary Adams French
and Sarah Spencer Morgan
[ 185 ]
[ 127 ]
[7]
THE MOUNT
GROTON PLACE
Residence of Edward Robbins Wharton
Residence of Grenville Lindall Winthrop
and Edith Newbold Jones Wharton
[ 242 ]
[ 194 ] BROOKHURST VALLEYHEAD
Residence of Newbold Morris
Residence of J. Frederic Schenck
and Helen Schermerhorn Kingsland Morris
and Mary Louisa Stone Schenck
[ 246 ]
[ 204 ] HIGH LAWN BLANTYRE
Residence of William Bradhurst Osgood Field
Residence of Robert Warden Paterson
and Lila Vanderbilt Sloane Field
and Marie Louise Fahys Paterson
[ 258 ]
[ 209 ] EASTOVER OVERLEE
Residence of Harris Fahnstock
Residence of Samuel Frothingham
and Mabel Metcalf Fahnstock
and Elinor Meyer Frothingham
[ 264 ]
[ 217 ] ASHINTULLY PINE NEEDLES
Residence of Robb de Peyster Tytus
Residence of George Baty Blake
and Grace Seeley Henop Tytus
and Margaret Hunnewell Blake
[ 269 ]
[ 224 ] STONOVER SPRING LAWN
Residence of Mary and Gertrude Parsons
Residence of John Ernest Alexandre
[ 277 ]
and Helen Webb Alexandre [ 229 ]
Portfolio of Houses [ 285 ]
BROOKSIDE
Architects’ Biographies [ 292 ]
Residence of William Hall Walker
Notes [ 299 ]
and Carrie Jones Walker
Bibliography [ 311 ]
[ 236 ] Index [ 315 ] Photo Credits [ 323 ]
[8]
FOREWORD
original builders for an earlier, presumably better, time and place. In assessing these houses in terms of artistic accomplishment, it is important to consider the way they are integrated into the landscape. Their designers conceived and developed them in relation to a landscape of valleys, hills, and lakes. That context influenced the site planning, site circulation, and planting of each property in its entirety, as well as the siting, massing, orientation, and even the architectural images of the manor houses themselves. The biggest estates are elaborate compositions involving formal and informal gardens, terracing and natural slopes, open space and forest, and multiple outbuildings. Greenhouses, barns, silos, and stables (later to be converted to garages) were sited and designed to reflect a dynamic relationship between buildings and nature in which architecture actively engages the landscape. Porches, balconies, and terraces animate the massing and simultaneously exploit and evoke distant views. Enriched ornament animates building facades. Wings inflect in response to the infinite wilderness. Yet for all of their eccentric individual characteristics, these manor houses are subordinate to the Berkshires, the real spectacle in this equation and one of America’s most beautiful natural landscapes. The buildings are worthy architectural documents, both in themselves and as descendents of Andrea Palladio’s villas published in the Quattro Libri. They were planned and designed to solve the problem of private living on a substantial public scale, and they reconcile program with
THE HISTORY of the American country house between the Civil War and World War I reflects a number of factors that are social and artistic in origin but which in the aggregate can be expressed in terms of an economic equation. On the “demand” side we have the rise of a moneyed leisure class with escalating cultural ambitions and a taste for artifacts bearing a European provenance, and on the “supply” side we see the establishment of architecture as a respectable American profession, with its farm system in a small number of famous offices and its finishing school at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The intersection of ambitious clients with versatile architects achieved a significant physical presence in a number of cities and resorts, and particularly in one small corner of Massachusetts. Within a few hundred square miles comprising Lenox and Stockbridge, the best architects from New York and Boston, plus some remarkably able local practitioners, invented a unique and uniquely American landscape of great country houses. Many of those houses are still there for us to enjoy, although we are not always certain how to appreciate them. If it is difficult to imagine living in a dwelling based on (and not much smaller than) Henry VIII’s Hampton Court, it is easier to approach these structures as cultural artifacts. Even the casual observer can draw perfectly valid conclusions about the structure and activities of modern society in the Gilded Age, including its reluctance to fully embrace, at least in its choice of architectural styles, the modern itself. The preponderance of English medieval prototypes betrays powerful nostalgia on the part of the
[9]
HOUSES OF THE BERKSHIRES
wonderful as the main houses. Wilson’s attractive farm structures at Shadow Brook were carefully calibrated to support the hierarchical primacy of the main house, and they have survived. In addition to plenty of evidence of good architectural manners, there are some powerful examples of great architectural design. A tour around the Stockbridge Bowl features Belvoir Terrace’s muscular porch, Wheatleigh’s lyrical friezes, and, in Windyside’s Music Room, a cyclopean, hallucinogenic, and thoroughly unforgettable fireplace. There are not many places in America that combine architecture, ambition, and nature in such abundance, but I cannot think of a combination of riches that is more American. —Samuel G. White
image, function with spirit, and glamour with domesticity. An architect today might question Helen Stokes’ need for 17 public rooms on the ground floor of Shadow Brook, but we must salute her architect, H. Neill Wilson of Pittsfield, for making it all seem natural. The variety and fluency of styles were further manifestations of the architects’ skill. Both the interiors and exterior of Hoppin & Koen’s Eastover are literate adaptations of James River plantation houses, themselves an adaptation of the work of Christopher Wren. Robert H. Robertson’s Blantyre is convincingly medieval in detail even if thoroughly modern in arrangement. For a while, area clients’ enthusiasm extended to the modern in image, as well, and the Berkshires were an important breeding ground for Charles McKim’s explorations of the Shingle style. The service buildings were just as
[ 10 ]
THE MOUNT 1902
Residence of Edward Robbins Wharton and Edith Newbold Jones Wharton
Garden facade, present-day view
[ 194 ]
THE MOUNT
Entrance facade
TODAY the most famous early Lenox “cottager” is Edith Wharton (1862–1937), who is justly celebrated as a masterful writer of fiction. Most of her novels were based on the upper-class New York world into which she was born. Her maiden name was Jones, and the family had been prominent enough in New York that it inspired the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses.” Ironically, probably her most famous work is Ethan Frome, a tale of simple New England farm life that was based on a horrific sledding accident in Lenox, not far from The Mount, the country house she built in 1902. Edith Wharton’s first published book was not fiction, but an influential manual of taste, The Decoration of Houses
(1897), written with architect Ogden Codman Jr. (1863–1951), which expertly explicated and promoted classical proportion and symmetry in place of Victorian clutter. With its examples drawn from European palazzi, it was not for the impecunious, but the book influenced a generation of architects—and also decorators such as Elsie de Wolfe— toward the more historically correct houses of the early 20th century all across America, including the Berkshires. Edith Wharton’s biographer R.W.B. Lewis wrote, “Her nearly professional competence, then and later, regarding architectural design and interior decoration is another not entirely explicable quality in this offspring of old New York and descendant of Joneses and
[ 195 ]
THE MOUNT
Gallery
[ 196 ]
THE MOUNT
The Mount from the northeast, present-day view
Rhinelanders.”1 Wharton’s fictional descriptions crackle with architectural precision. In her autobiography, A Backward Glance, she wrote, “My photographic memory of rooms and houses . . . was from my earliest years a source in inarticulate misery, for I was always vaguely frightened by ugliness.”2 As a temporary financial retrenchment, her family lived in Europe during part of her childhood. She wrote, “What could New York offer to a child whose eyes had been filled with shapes of immortal beauty and immemorial significance? One of the most depressing impressions of my childhood is my recollection of the intolerable ugliness of New York . . . this little low-studded rectangular New York, cursed with its universal chocolate-colored coating of the most hideous stone ever quarried.”3
Here was a strong-minded and educated client, who was fully involved with two architects in the creation of The Mount, the only house in which she lived, on either side of the Atlantic, that was created from scratch. Edith Wharton’s husband, Teddy (Edward Robbins Wharton, 1849–1928), has been maligned by her biographers. He had mental-health problems, drank too much, and eventually embezzled money from Edith’s trust fund before the couple divorced in 1913. But he was a popular and gregarious sportsman, and the fact that his mother and sister had a house, Pine Acre, in Lenox was certainly an important reason for their move to the Berkshires. A gentleman without an occupation or much income, he made a job out of running the estate. A fortunate legacy from a relative and the
[ 197 ]
THE MOUNT
Living room
[ 198 ]
THE MOUNT
Living room details
sale of the couple’s house in Newport made The Mount possible. Mrs. Wharton’s royalties from her increasingly popular fiction supported the estate’s maintenance. The obvious choice for an architect was Wharton’s coauthor Ogden Codman. He had redecorated the Whartons’ house Land’s End,4 in Newport, where they lived much of the year from 1893 until coming to Lenox. He had also de-Victorianized their tiny sliver of a brownstone winter pied-à-terre at 884 Park Avenue in New York, which they owned from 1891 to 1910.5 Anticipating the move to Lenox, Edith wrote to Codman, “The truth is, that I am in love with the place— climate, scenery, life & all.”6 In the summer of 1901, they bought 113 acres (and later added 13 more) of the old Sargent farm overlooking Laurel Lake.
Codman did some sketches, but then the relationship began to fall apart. The Whartons’ budget was tight. Codman saw no reason to cut his regular commission rates. Edith felt that their relationship and the fact that she had championed him for jobs for New York plutocrats like the Cornelius Vanderbilts7 entitled them to a discount. Teddy made scenes. Codman withdrew, and the Whartons turned to Francis L. V. Hoppin (1867–1941). A pouting Codman wrote to his mother that Hoppin was “having an awful time with the house . . . He has been cut down in every way . . . I consider myself well out of it.”8 However, eventually Codman was asked back to decorate the interiors. The Mount was the first of four major Berkshire houses designed by Hoppin. The other three, Brookhurst,
[ 199 ]
THE MOUNT
Library detail
[ 200 ]
THE MOUNT
Library
Eastover, and Ashintully, were historically correct Georgian. The Mount is a truncated version of Belton House, a symmetrical Carolinian manor in Lincolnshire, England, then thought to have been by Christopher Wren.9 It has an H-shaped plan surmounted by a prominent cupola. Except for a service wing to the south, the dazzling white facade is symmetrical to the degree of having false balancing windows. In deference to the Whartons’ budget, it is built of stucco over wood frame instead of masonry.
“Proportion is the good breeding of architecture,” wrote Wharton and Codman in The Decoration of Houses.10 Such was the sense of classical proportion and the scholarship of this designing trio, Hoppin, Codman, and Wharton, that The Mount’s pastiche of an English envelope containing a French plan and an Italian terrace and gardens comes together in a successful European country house with a surprisingly authentic feeling. One enters the property down an allée passing a gate lodge and stable and proceeds down a drive that winds
[ 201 ]
THE MOUNT
Walter Berry on the terrace
past field and forest until finally curving to reveal the house. This approach and much of the garden planning was done by Edith’s niece Beatrix Cadwalader Jones (later Farrand). Passing through an austere walled courtyard, which the miffed Codman described to his mother as looking like a “clothes yard,” one reaches the first of many stages before being allowed into the living center of the house. “While the main purpose of a door is to admit, its secondary purpose is to exclude,” The Decoration of Houses tells us.11 The stout outer door of The Mount opens into a narrow, 35-foot, grottolike vestibule with a tile floor. The stucco walls simulate falling water. It is like an exotic Mediterranean version of the entrance to a city house.
The house is built on a slight hill, and much of the rest of the basement is unexcavated. If encouraged, one enters a separate stair hall leading to the piano nobile. One emerges on the main floor into an elegant 44-by12-foot gallery with a barrel-vaulted ceiling. It runs along the west side of the house and connects all the principal rooms. The formal symmetry of this space echoes the condemnation in The Decoration of Houses of the informal living hall of the Free or Shingle style. At the end of the gallery is Teddy’s den, which connects to the Louis XV library, the drawing room, and the dining room; these run enfilade along the east side of the house and all open directly onto the long terrace. The carefully balanced openings, including false doors,
[ 202 ]
THE MOUNT
provide all kinds of access between the spaces. Here, finally, one has the freedom of the house. Within individual rooms, a veritable common market of European styles blend in harmony. For example, the 36-by-20-foot drawing room has a French fireplace coexisting with wall treatments and pediments out of 18th-century England. The brick-floored terrace is linked by a Palladian staircase to a gravel walk and lawn terraces, to flanking walled and parterre gardens, and to the lake and hills beyond— international landscaping that reflects the polyglot themes of the interior. The Whartons sold the house at the end of 1911, two years before their divorce. Edith had already been spending a lot of time in Europe, and she lived the rest of her life
in France. The Mount had two more private owners, the Albert Shattucks and the Carr Van Andas. In 1942 it became part of the Foxhollow School. After the school closed in the 1970s, The Mount became the home of an acting troupe, Shakespeare & Company, which, in order to receive preservation grants, created the present owner, Edith Wharton Restoration. This organization is reviving the property and celebrating the residency of Edith Wharton, who wrote, “There for over ten years I lived and gardened and wrote contentedly . . . The Mount was to give me country cares and joys, long happy rides through the wooded lanes of that loveliest region, the companionship of a few dear friends, and the freedom from trivial obligations which was necessary if I was to go on with my writing.”12
Plan
[ 203 ]