There is a documentary that begins with an evocative statement: “A community determines its own destiny; the market doesn’t always decide.”
“One Big Home” is a documentary about trophy homes, gigantic residences of 20,000 square feet and more. The average single-family house in America is 10 percent of that: 2,000 square feet or less. The mere size would be worthy of note anywhere, but these houses were built on a tiny island.
“Gentrification comes in many forms,” we are told. “On the tiny island of Martha’s Vineyard, where presidents and celebrities vacation, trophy homes threaten to destroy the island’s unique character.”
The documentary was not made by a professional filmmaker or an invader from the city taking note; it was made by a carpenter whose livelihood was dependent on working in these giant homes.
“When he feels complicit in wrecking the place he calls home, he takes off his tool belt and picks up a camera.”
His journey winds through angry homeowners, angrier builders and a concerned community. It is a journey with a purpose: to determine if there is a way to preserve the character of the Island.
“Intelligent and thoughtful throughout, ‘One Big Home’ starts out with bias and ends up with one of the fairest assessments of a complex cultural issue seen on our screens in recent years,” wrote film critic Jennie Kermode.
A homeowner asks why anyone should object. A poorer resident asks what will happen to the working man if the island becomes a series of mega-mansions for rich people. A newer resident came to the island from the Hamptons, where the character of his community changed house by house until he was forced to leave. If it happens on Martha’s Vineyard, he will move again. An architect claims the vision of the carpenter is limited, and the real story is patronage of the art of architecture.
At journey’s end, the community passes a bylaw limiting house size to 5,000 square feet in an effort to preserve the character and the views.
The Berkshires faced this problem, or looked the other way, more than 100 years ago. At 55,000 square feet, Elm Court is large and Shadowbrook was larger. While it changed the Berkshires from a farming community to a Gilded Age resort, while it created work for builders and their crews as it is doing in Martha’s Vineyard, it was also very different.
First, the ratio of house size to the size of land is very different. Approximately 93 Gilded Age cottages that were built in a county the size of Berkshire had less impact that the big homes had on a small island. Economically the 19th century was very different, with many fewer people and substantially less developed land here or nationally. Environmental impacts were less well understood or considered. Yet there were similarities.
One similarity between the island mansions and the Berkshire cottages may be the reason they were built: They were status symbols. No one claims, not even the owners, that 20,000 square feet is necessary. The big homes simply make manifest economic superiority. Then and now, they were used only a few weeks out of the year. Then and now, they were very expensive to maintain.
Those on Martha’s Vineyard will create an issue for the community now, but also for the next 140 years, just as the Berkshire cottages have for the last 140 years. Many cottages started as assets and remained so. The other night I had the pleasure of attending the last night of Winterlights at Naumkeag. It was beautiful and all faces were lit with pleasure. But it was not always so. When Mabel Choate was in residence, she was an asset to the community. When she left her 15,000-square-foot house to the Trustees of Reservations, it had lean years and is now flourishing.
Some cottages burned to the ground without locals having the ability to contain so massive a conflagration. Some are moldering. Some have remained private homes. For others, there are big plans for the big places without apparent follow through. All were too big not to fail at one point or another.
Here in the Berkshires, we have a sweep of history potentially informative to others facing the “One Big Home” syndrome. A community determines its own destiny; what it does shapes not only the present but also the future.
