Houses of the Berkshires

1870-1930

Revised edition

by Richard S. Jackson Jr.
and Cornelia Brooke Gilder
Foreword by Samuel G. White

The Architecture of Leisure series

10 x 12 inches, 324 pp.

Over 300 illustrations in duotone

Hardbound, dust jacket.

ISBN 978-0-926494-82-4

June 2011

This revised edition of the award-winning volume Houses of the Berkshires,1870–1930, (2006) chronicles the distinctive social and literary colony of Lenox and Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Illustrated with over 300 photographs and floor plans, the volume 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."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." writes Samuel G. White, a great-grandson of Stanford White, in his foreword.

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, artistic, and literary colony andnow vanished way of life.

FROM THE AUTHORS

The thinking and informal research for Houses of the Berkshires goes back more than thirty years when Dick Jackson and I were college graduates with a shared but undefined interest in the social and architectural history of the big country houses surrounding us in Lenox and Stockbridge. When Dick got married in the late 1970s, he and Linda plunged into the formidable responsibilities of owning a grand house on the Stockbridge Bowl. My wedding present – a study of all the local landmarks by the architect of their new abode – presaged our future involvement in this book for Acanthus Press.

Working together as co-authors on Houses of the Berkshires, years later, we had an easy rapport and mutual respect in the planning and shaping stages.We knew instinctively who was best prepared to write on a particular house. The result was a happy blend of both our contacts with descendants of original house owners, stray knowledge on nationally known architects beyond the Berkshires, and shared research finds in obscure collections, both public and private.

— Cornelia Gilder

FROM THE PRESS

"The reproduction is beautiful; the design of the book is clean and reader-friendly... chatty, even gossipy, and it is fun to read."

— Berkshire Eagle

"With more than 300 archival photographs,Houses of the Berkshiresallows us to peek through the sort of keyholes that until now required a stepladder and written permission."

— Berkshire Home Style

2007 Historic New England Book Prize Honor Book


	Weight:	5.00
	Price: $75.00