The Mount

One of many great things that the "Friends" groups of the local libraries do is to provide passes to local museums and cultural sites that can be checked out for the weekend just as you would a library book. For locals this is a great opportunity to see some of the things we pass almost daily without paying the sometimes significant entrance fees.

A few weekends back we visited the Mount which is about 5 minutes from when I live and yes we pass it almost daily.

This is one of the "Berkshire Cottages" designed by and built for Edith Wharton in the early 1900s. She live there for about a dozen years and wrote several of her noted works there.

I been there many years ago when performances of Shakespeare & Company were done in the gardens, but had never seen the grounds in the day light or since they had been restored.

From the road and gates, what you see is the carriage house and caretakers cottage, which years ago I though was the house itself and thought what's the big deal. They are big but not much to talk about.

Inside the gates and past the carriage house is the road down to the house



Meandering along a stream the road winds down coming toward the side of the house. The formal gardens with a fountain, a path lined with trimmed aspens and a sunken garden where a wedding was going on when we arrived.



Of course when you are a local, the day to day dynamics of venues such as this are in the news and part of local talk and sometime they just blend into the background. For years this was a boarding school and then vacant for many years afterward until Shakespeare and Company began renting it for performances and sought to purchase and restore it. The non-profit they formed to pursue and implement the restoration in the end turned on Shakespeare & Company and evicted them so that the house and grounds could be use just as a monument to Edith Wharton.

The restoration has been expensive and they paid a million to purchase Edith Wharton's library from someone in the UK. Last year was almost their last as the $3 million in debt was being called by the bank and threatening foreclosure.

But with some management changes and some donor help and help from the bank that really didn't want to be labeled as foreclosing on a historic landmark that it would have a hard time selling, they seem to be OK for now. Struggling but making it, like many similar places these days.

But on this day this history was just a footnote in the context of enjoying the sights. The restoration is well done and while it still has parts to be done it is interesting and the gardens nice to walk around.