Editor’s Note: The following article won first prize in the 2025 New England Newspaper and Press Awards.
No discussion about American architecture and interior design is complete without a nod to the American Gilded Age (1865 to 1917). With their desire for city palaces and country cottages, the Gilded Age elite created an unprecedented demand for American architects.
From Plymouth Rock to the Civil War, there was no real American aesthetic, no set of guiding principles in artistic creation that were uniquely American. The phrases “American Art” and “America Literature” were considered oxymoronic. Americans agreed with the rest of the world that great art, great literature, and great architecture were European. There were no American schools of architecture. For training in art and architecture, Americans studied abroad.
By the mid-19th century, however, the proud young country wanted a voice of its own. Over the next 50 years, it produced one. American painters created an America vision. American writers created an American voice. Schools of architecture were established at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1865 and Harvard in 1874. By 1893, at the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, America was prepared to strut its stuff—its uniquely American stuff. On the pages of books, on canvases, in bricks and mortar, American style was articulated.
Fifth Avenue in New York, Commonwealth Avenue and Louisburg Square in Boston, Nob Hill in San Francisco, Bellevue Avenue in Newport all showcased the emerging American architects. The Berkshires brought it all together. Inside the Berkshire Cottages, designed by the premier architects of the day, were books by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Catharine Sedgwick, Herman Melville, Henry Ward Beecher, his sister Catherine Beecher Stowe, Edith Wharton, and Henry James. On the walls were the works of George Innes, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, and other Hudson River painters.
Architecture and interior design of the Berkshire Cottages
There are many paths to understanding the birth of American architecture, but the most direct is to follow George Rotch from Harvard and Boston to Europe and the Berkshires.
All the greats were in the Berkshires—McKim, Mead, and White; Peabody and Stearns; Ogden Codman Jr.; Carrere and Hastings; and many more (see list below). The lesser-known Rotch combines the most elements of the birth of American architecture.
In 1880, Arthur Rotch and George Tilden formed a Boston architectural firm. Both Rotch and Tilden trained at MIT and at Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. They worked steadily for 14 years, in Bar Harbor, Maine; Boston; and the Berkshires. “The firm prospered. They were properly called ‘the society architects’ both because of their own social position and their clients.” On October 11, 1888, The Pittsfield Sun called Rotch “the millionaire architect of Boston.”
Rotch and Tilden designed five Berkshire Cottages. They were Frelinghuysen Cottage, built in 1881, now the Kemble Inn at 2 Kemble Street; Belvoir Terrace, built in 1886, now a summer camp at 80 Cliffwood Street; Osceola, built in 1889, still a private home at 25 Cliffwood Street; Thistlewood, built for David and Hannah Lydig in 1890, now a private home at 151 Walker Street; and Ventfort Hall, built in 1893, now the Museum of the Gilded Age Museum at 104 Walker Street.
On May 30, 1889, The Pittsfield Sun wrote, “Mr. Livingston’s new house will be one of the handsomest in Lenox. A piazza the full length of the house and very wide commands a matchless view of the west valley. Builder Munyan of Pittsfield will establish the best of reputations by this excellent job.”
His millionaire status allowed Rotch to attend Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and take a world tour to further educate himself in the art of architecture. He then replicated his experience by forming the Rotch Travelling Scholarship in 1883, named in honor of his father, Benjamin Smith Rotch.
It is the oldest scholarship of its kind in the United States, and its influence has been felt throughout the entire profession. The roster of Rotch Scholars includes many of the country’s most distinguished architects. Moreover, it created the model for training American architects: combining courses as well as travel to study classic architecture.
Rotch and Tilden developed an “increasingly sophisticated blending of Georgian and Federal forms,” according to architectural historian Harry Katz.
According to Rotch, the Gilded Age demanded “an eclectic compilation of different styles.” Rotch continued, “Design requires a robust and keen intelligence to develop from this mass of detail a homogeneous work of art.” To put it another way, the mere size of a Berkshire Cottage required a new and exciting American architectural style.
Architects of the Berkshire Cottages
The following list groups the houses under the architect who designed them. A word about interior decorating: Today, we may consider elements permanently affixed to the walls and the walls themselves architecture, and the movable objects within the walls, the province of the interior decorator. That was an idea late in arriving. In the Gilded Age, the architect did it all.
Adams and Warren
- Overleigh
Henry Bacon
- Chesterwood
Leonard Forbes Beckwith
- Beckwithshire, also Bonnie Brier Farm
Carrere and Hastings
- Bellefontaine
- Brookside
- Groton Place
George De Gersdorff
- Konkaput
Brook Delano and Aldrich
- Stonover
- Highlawn House
A.W. Longfellow
- Clover Croft
Wilson Eyre Jr.
- Fernbrook
G. E. & G. Fountain
- Caldwell House
Hiss and Weekes
- Villa Virginia
Hoppin and Koen
- Brookhurst
- Eastover
- The Mount
Guy Lowell
- Spring Lawn
McKim, Mead and White
- Barrington House (began)
- Homestead
- Naumkeag
- Oakswood
- Yokun (renovated)
Louis Metcalf
- Strawberry Hill
Peabody and Stearns
- Allen Winden (renovated)
- Coldbrooke
- Elm Court
- Wheatleigh
- Wyndhurst
Robertson and Potter
- Blantyre
Rotch and Tilden
- Ventfort Hall
Robert S. Stevenson
- Swann House
Richard Upjohn
- Highwood
Henry Vaughan and Edward Searles
- Barrington House (completed)
H. Neill Wilson
- Shadow Brook
- Interlaken David Wolfe Bishop’s cottage
