The Coaches coming through the main gate at Edith Wharton’s home, The Mount during the Berkshire Coaching Weekend.
One of the visual high-points of the Columbus Day Weekend in Lenox and Stockbridge, which are located in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, other than the gorgeous Fall foliage, is the sighting of road coaches traveling through those towns and on country roads that connect them.
The Berkshires, also known as the Inland Newport, as in Newport, Rhode Island, was a place during the Gilded Age (1870 to about 1900) where fabulously successful men from places like New York City, Boston and other locations, and their families built opulent country homes, that they called “cottages”. People with surnames like Vanderbilt, Astor, Fields, Morgan, Carnegie and Westinghouse, among others, erected great estates where they emulated the lives of European aristocrats for just a few weeks each year. One of the hobbies of those “Summer Colonists” was driving coaches and carriages.
This year, for the ninth time, members of the New York Coaching Club and Four-in-Hand Club of America came together for three days of “drives” reenacting the glorious days of the Gilded Age that have long gone by.
All three days of the coaching weekend started out at the hosts of the event, Harvey and Mary Stokes Waller’s Orleton Farm in Stockbridge and the drives proceeded out from there.
The first day of driving brought the coaches to Elm Court, built by William Douglas Sloane and his wife Emily Thorn Vanderbilt in 1885. Their Berkshire cottage was designed by Peabody and Stearns and has 106 rooms. Elm Court is the largest Shingle Style house in the United States, and is done in the Tudor Revival Style.
The second day of coaching brought “Whips” drivers of the coaches and their guests through the picturesque village of Stockbridge, home of the famous artist/illustrator of Saturday Evening Post covers Norman Rockwell, and they proceeded to a private estate where they had lunch.
On the third day of the coaching event they drove to the home of Edith Wharton. Edith Wharton (1-24-1862 through 8-11-1937) was an American novelist, short story writer, playwright and designer. She is best known for her books The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome and her book which revolutionized interior decorating opinions from Victorian standards of design to what we think of as correct today, The Decorating of Houses, which she co-authored with Ogden Codman. The photos for this blog post were taken at The Mount. Continue reading →
