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, 1900–1940 GARY LAWRANCE AND RICHARD MARCHAND 2013
1870 –1930 REVISED EDITION
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1870 –1930 R ICHARD S. J ACKSON J R . AND C ORNELIA B ROOKE G ILDER The scenic hills of the Berkshires, with their beautiful lakes, clean air, and spectacular autumn foliage, have provided a
Bostonians since the 19th century. In Lenox and Stockbridge and surrounding communities, grand houses were built by the nation’s leading architects. Here the creators of America’s great 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
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. —S AMUEL G. W HITE
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
HOUSES OF THE BERKSHIRES
respite from urban living for wealthy New Yorkers and
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
THE ARCHITECTURE OF LEISURE
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.
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