Lecture on Ventfort Hall's Mrs. Vanderbilt03:46PM / Wednesday, September 23, 2009
LENOX, Mass. - The lively and glamorous Margaret Emerson Vanderbilt, who rented Ventfort Hall during the First World War, will be the subject of a lecture by Cornelia Brooke Gilder, co-author of Houses of the Berkshires and author of Hawthorne’s Lenox.
The lecture will take place at 4pm on Saturday, October 10 at Ventfort Hall. Using photos from private albums, Gilder will illuminate Margaret Vanderbilt’s long and multi-faceted life from a privileged society hostess to a capable Red Cross administrator. The lecture will be followed by a Victorian Tea.
Mrs. Vanderbilt’s connection to Ventfort Hall was the result of her desire to establish a country home in Lenox for her two little boys after her husband, Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, perished tragically in the sinking of the ocean liner The Lusitania in May 1915.
While living at Ventfort Hall she oversaw the construction of one of Lenox’s last big “cottages” Holmwood (now known as Foxhollow) on a spectacular site next to her husband’s cousins, the Fields, at High Lawn.
Tickets for the lecture and tea are $15 per person for non-members and $12 for members and may be purchased by calling Ventfort Hall at 413-637-3206. The historic mansion is located at 104 Walker Street in Lenox.
An Official Project of Save America’s Treasures, Ventfort Hall Mansion and Gilded Age Museum offers tours of the historic mansion, as well as lectures, concerts, teas, theater and other programs. This elegant Elizabethan-Revival Berkshire “cottage,” listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is open to the public year-around and is available for private rental. Built in 1893 for George and Sarah Morgan (sister of the financier, J. P. Morgan), Ventfort Hall has undergone substantial restoration, which continues. |
