Tag: McKim Mead and White

The original Penn Station occupied two city blocks and featured, according to the New York Preservation Project, “an ornate exterior, arcade, waiting room, concourse and carriage-ways.”

There are many stories, true or apocryphal, about the size of the house. Suffice it to say, it was the largest private house in America on the day it was completed.

The Sketch Club was founded by Berkshire native and Great Barrington attorney William Cullen Bryant. With friends, Bryant transformed the Sketch Club into the Century Association.

She was a landscape architect at a time when architects of buildings and grounds were assumed to be men. Her aunt was Edith Jones Wharton.

Stockbridge has come as close to pure preservation, maintaining the frozen past, as is possible in the modern world. Was it to attract tourists, to maintain quality of life, or preserve a way of life? Why?

"I was the first woman of any prominence to sue for divorce for adultery ... Men, if they were rich enough, felt they could do anything they liked without consequence. The women bore it to maintain their social positions, but that was not enough for me." --- Alva Smith Vanderbilt

So by those calculations, Stockbridge just lost between $200,000 and $400,000 when it cut down a 100-year-old tree.

Were we the same country in 1906 or were we as different as chalk and cheese?