|
Elm Court Featured in "New York Social Diary."
Please view this fantastic article, by John Foreman author of
Vanderbilts and the Gilded Age, for an entertaining and profound understanding of the before/after aspects of Elm Court's resorative efforts. There are numerous excellent pictures!
www.newyorksocialdiary.com
Please click on the top right picture of the Vanderbilt family to
access the story from its home page.
|
Peabody and Stearns Book - 2010
Annie Robinson's spectacular book is now available! Please purchase via your local bookstore, Barnes & Noble.com or Amazon.com.
|
CNBC April, 2004
"The Berkshires... hill country... covered bridges over winding creeks - What's really happening there that is so much fun now... is what is going on in the lodging industry. Elm Court is a 70,000 square foot shingle style mansion built during the Gilded Age by Emily Vanderbilt and her husband W.D. Sloane and just opened as a B and B - a beautiful place!" - Mark Orwoll
|
Town & Country Travel-Fall 2004
Where to Stay: Berkshires B&B
Good news for travelers who are heading to the Berkshires this fall: a historic country estate recently opened its doors as a refined bed and breakfast. Located in Stockbridge - in the hills of western Massachusetts, home to the Tanglewood Music Festival - Elm Court was built in 1886 by furniture magnate William Douglas Sloane and his wife, Emily Vanderbilt. In 1999 the Shingle-style house was rescued by Robert Berle (the Sloanes' great-great-grandson) and his wife, Sonya, who are restoring it to its Gilded Age grandeur.
Today five spacious suites and several public rooms are done up in the high Victorian manner, with splendid fabrics, European and American antiques, hardwood floors and Oriental rugs. There's a plant-filled conservatory with a view of the reflecting pool and grapevine-festooned pergola, a safari-themed library and a formal dining room where guests enjoy romantic catered dinners. Open for slightly more than a year, Elm Court is still a work in progress, but what it lacks in the niceties - turndown service, excercise room - it makes up for in other ways. The Berles are excellent hosts who take pleasure in sharing their heritage. And they mean it when they tell you to put your feet up and make yourself at home. - Jamie Marshall
|
Money Magazine
Best Places to Vacation November 2003
"Back in the days when the American plutocracy could afford a separate estate - or two - for each season, the quiet Berkshires village of Lenox enjoyed a certain notoriety. The lions of the Gilded Age called the homes they built here cottages, but they were being modest, if not delusional. These were castles.... Elm Court, built by William Sloane and Emily Vanderbilt Sloane, has just reopened as a B&B - operated by the Sloanes' great-great-grandson and his wife. - Robb Mandelbaum
|
Bob Vila's Home Again
2004 -Three episodes of "Bob Vila's Home Again" were filmed at Elm Court. View video clips of these television shows and learn more about the history and restoration of Elm Court. Includes formal rooms, overnight accommodations, exterior, kitchen and basement.
CLICK HERE to go to BobVila.com and search 'Elm Court'
|
Flying Adventures Magazine
Berkshire Bliss in Lenox, MA July/August 2004
"Because summer in the Berkshires is a splendor of music (Tanglewood), dance (Jacob's Pillow), theater (Shakespeare & Co.) and other cultural marvels, only an inn as splendid as the scene itself will do for aviators winging-in. Enter Elm Court ...gourmet omelets in the formal dining room, traditional afternoon tea in the library, in-room spa services, and other pampering pleasures well-prep eager culture-seekers for a roaring good Berkshires retreat.
The Berkshire Eagle
Elm Court Mansion Regains its luster as vandalism is undone 2003
"Skyward rush the moldings to cornices of flowers and swirls, while marble floors hide beneath Persian rugs and thick bear hides. Outside, a colonnade overlooks a flagstone driveway and an antique fountain. If you like, you can spend the evening... Now the Elm Court estate, open [for the first time] after 45 years, is set to become an illustrious gathering spot for A-list people...." -Stephanie Cohen
Berkshire Resort Topics
It was in 1887 that Mr. and Mrs. Sloane began the creation of Elm Court and the intervening years have seen so many aquisitions of contiguous lands, so many improvements and enlargements to the original buildings and the erection of so many new structures, that the place has become famous, not only in Lenox but throughout the country, as an example of what the progressive mdern spirit, backed by abundant capital can accomplish."
|
Books
John Foreman and Robbe Pierce Stimson The Vanderbilts and the Gilded Age 1991
"Architectural historian Wheaton Holden described Peabody and Stearns [architects of Elm Court] as 'one of the chief wellsprings of architectural inspiration in their time.' Karl Putnam summed the firm up as, 'the most important arbiter of building taste after H.H. Richardson.' ... As a matter of fact, Elm Court is a tour de force of clever juxtapositions employing early-American architectural elements with the structural and decorative innovations of the industrial age. ...Its great aesthetic achievement is that it manages simultaneously to be both grand and picturesque." - Foreman and Stimson
George William Sheldon Artistic Country Seats 1886
"...visitors at Lenox, Mass. consider Mr. William D. Sloane's magnificent new villa [Elm Court] the most important architectural attraction of the place." And of the entry hall - "a more comfortable sitting-room than this spacious hall does not exist on this side of the Atlantic." - Sheldon
Arnold Lewis American Country Houses of the Gilded Age 1982
The "architectural attraction" of the house eludes easy description because it is so large... Its scale can be sensed from the dimensions of the major rooms: the main hall, 35' x 22'; the library, 22' x 20'; the dining room, 38' x 28'; and the guest chamber, 28' x 18'. - Lewis
Robert B. King The Vanderbilt Homes 1989
"Inside [Elm Court], the house was bright and cheery, qualities not often associated with the Queen-Anne Victorian style. Highly waxed and polished parquetry floors reflected the cheerful fires that roared in fireplaces framed by carved mantels of imported marble. Tapestries hung from gilded and molded paneled walls, while sunlight that beamed through French glass doors danced off crystal chandeliers." - King
Jerry E. Patterson The Vanderbilts 1989
"Emily Sloane and her husband were among the few in their generation to build a genuine country house, albeit a huge one.... The social columns of the day are filled with accounts of Vanderbilts, Webbs, Sloanes, Twomblys, etc. traipsing between New York, Newport, Bar Harbor, the Adirondacks, Biltmore, and Lenox on visits to each other." - Patterson
John M. Bryan Biltmore Estate 1994
"As the Vanderbilt mansions rose on Fifth Avenue [New York City], several members of the family were simultaneously establishing seasonal estates beyond the city. In 1878 Cornelius became the first to settle in Newport when he purchased the original Breakers.... Eliza Vanderbilt and her husband, William Seward Webb, purchased for and built their estate, Shelburne Farms.... Peabody and Stearns designed Frederick Vanderbilt's Rough Point in Newport (1887) and Emily and William Sloane's Elm Court in Lenox, Massachusetts (1887). Frederick Law Olmsted did the landscape plans for Elm Court and Rough Point and consulted on a plan for Shelburne. It may have been inevitable that he and [Richard Morris] Hunt would work with George Washington Vanderbilt, both on Biltmore and other projects." - Bryan
|
|
|
