Berkshire Cottages

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With Berkshire Cottages exclusive buildings will be referred to before the First World War in the United States originated. The name comes from the area called The Berkshires in the Berkshire Mountains with the main towns of Stockbridge and Lenox , where they are mainly to be found.

History

In the so-called Golden Age (English: Gilded Age) from 1865 to 1901 there was an unprecedented economic and economic boom in the USA. During this time, the wealthiest families, including the Rockefellers , Vanderbilts, and Carnegies , built prestigious estates in Newport , Rhode Island , Bar Harbor , Maine , and in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts . Well-known properties include Chesterwood ( Daniel Chester French ), Elm Court (Emily Thorn Vanderbilt), Naumkeag (Joseph Hodges Choate), The Mount ( Edith Wharton ), Ventfort Hall ( John Pierpont Morgan ) and The Breakers ( Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney ).

  • Chesterwood in Stockbridge , Massachusetts

  • Naumkeag in Stockbridge, Massachusetts

  • The Mount in Lenox, Massachusetts

  • The Breakers in Newport, Rhode Island

Berkshire County's oldest house (built 1735) is in the village of Ashley Falls on the southern Massachusetts border. Here Colonel John Ashley and his neighbors worked out the "Sheffield Declaration" in 1773, in which they renounced the influence of Great Britain and laid down their rights of freedom and property. In the village of Great Barrington, William Stanley installed the first AC lighting for the main street in 1886.

literature

  • Carole Owens: The Berkshire cottages. A vanishing era . Cottage Press, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 1984, ISBN 0-918343-00-3 .
  • Richard S. Jackson, Cornelia Brooke Gilder: Houses of the Berkshires: 1870-1930 . Acanthus Press, New York 2006, ISBN 0-926494-35-X ( issuu.com - reading sample).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Copy of the Sheffield Declaration ( wikisource )
  2. ↑ Jane Colihan: The Berkshires: Hills Of Heaven . In: American Heritage . tape 38 , May 4 / June, 1987 ( americanheritage.com ).