Groton Place, Home of the Windsor Mountain School – from the Berkshire Eagle Heinz Bondy Obituary
With its emphasis on experiential learning and letting the learner define the pace and structure of learning, progressive education techniques were/are particularly appropriate for young people who had trouble learning in more traditional environments. In the Berkshires there were three private boarding schools focused on progressive education techniques: the Buxton School in Williamstown, the Stockbridge School in Stockbridge, and the Windsor Mountain School in Lenox. Only the Buxton School is still operating as of this date.*
The Windsor Mountain School was also a magnet for left leaning parents – some famous – who wanted their children to have a good but liberal education. Well-known Americans who sent their children to Windsor Mountain included Harry Belafonte, Thelonious Monk, Randy Weston and civil rights lawyer Clifford Durr. **
The school was founded by educational reformer Max Bondy and his wife Gertrud Bondy who had studied with Sigmond Freud. Both their progressive orientation and their Jewish faith made them targets of Nazism. They re-established their school in Switzerland in 1937, moved to the United States in 1939, and to Lenox in 1944. **
They were able to purchase the former Winthrop estate on Old Stockbridge Road as a home for their school. In his recently published book, The People of Windsor Mountain, alumnus Rick Goeld describes the family-like atmosphere when he attended with the gifted counseling of Gertrud Bondy and a small student body (no more than 50 in the early days.) Some of the faculty were fellow European refugees that lent a unique atmosphere to the school. In the early days, classical music was played at breakfast every day.*
When Max Bondy died in 1951, Max and Gertrud’s son Heinz took over as headmaster. He continued his parents practice of sponsoring orphans and others who would not normally be able to attend a private boarding school. To address the costs of maintaining the extensive building and grounds while maintaining scholarships and excellent teaching staff, he expanded the student body to 250. Consistent with the political and educational philosophy of the school, a diverse student body was recruited and in 1970, 40 of the 250 students were African American.**
In his book and at his talk (9/25/14) at the Lenox Library, Rick Goeld commented that Lenox was quite conservative at the time and town residents criticized school attendees as “hippies,” and were very concerned about drug use and inter-racial dating…leading to a town/Windsor Mountain School meeting at Church on the Hill. He also noted the fun outings to Wendover for a burger (now Shear Design on Church St. ), Hagyard’s Drug Store, or, when parents were around to foot the bill, The Yellow Aster (now Mazeo’s).*
*People of Windsor Mountain, by Rick Goeld, Published May 14, 2014 by GGFC Properties LLC
** Wikipedia, Windsor Mountain School, September 2014
A.J. Jessup Mansion built in 1890 is a typical Lenox Gilded Age Mansion
Belvoir Terrace was designed by Rotch & Tilden and built between 1888-1890 for Morris K. Jesup, with landscaping by Frederick Law Olmstead. John Shepherd purchased the estate in the early 1920’s, making many renovations: the addition of two rooms, the enclosure of the porch, and the installation of a slate roof. Like Mr. Jesup, Mr. Shepherd and his family enjoyed summering at Belvoir. As a summer camp, Belvoir Terrace preserves the great lawn, wooded paths, and imported trees, while restoring the mansion and carefully developing new facilities.
In 2001, a study prepared by The Pioneer Valley Planning Commission and The Berkshire Regional Planning Commission stated, “Among the great estates, Belvoir Terrace is one of the best examples of an estate that maintains a reasonable balance between active use and preservation. The balance is attributable to the current owners’ singular knowledge of building preservation standards, adherence to a maintenance plan, and to the estate’s successful re-use as a summer arts camp. The estate is itself an important focal point on Cliffwood Street.”
45 West St., William Ellery Sedgewick House – 1855
From Surveys Completed 2011-2012 by the Lenox Historical Commission
ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION:
This stone edifice is designed in the style of an English Manor, but with eclectic architectural elements. The house is two stories in height, has a hipped roof with slate shingles, and seven bays on its symmetrically organized front facade. In addition there are 3-bay wings on each side, with hipped roofs. There are seven brick chimneys, two of which are on the front wall of the right wing. One-story turrets are near the outer edges of the main section. The center entrance pavilion has a front gable roof having exposed rafter ends. The entrance door surround is marble with a Roman- or round-arched opening, a broken pediment, two engaged Doric columns and flanking pilasters. Other architectural features of the building are more Gothic in style, with peaked windows and steeply pitched broken-eave dormers. The left wing is deeper than the right and has a much more recent 1-story, gable roofed, rear extension off of it. There are some intact pairs of 6-light metal-framed casement windows with 4-light transoms, but a good number of the windows have been replaced. The foundation is stone. A wide terrace is located behind the house extending between the outer wings.
A small 1-story octagonal garden building with dressed marble walls and copper clad dome is located southeast of the house. It has dentils at its cornice and bas-relief panels in a vase and floral design are above the wall openings. It has lost its original garden setting to newer surrounding facilities. Behind this structure is a wood-framed dormitory, built c.1970, with concrete block first floor and vertical T-1-11-type siding on the second. It has a hipped roof. A c.1950 wood-framed garage with front gable roof and wood novelty siding is sited directly east of the house. Its single-car vehicle bay has been in-filled with a door and flanking windows. Marble piers flank the entry to a long driveway off West Street that curves back a circular drive centered on the front entrance to the house. This circular section has a low stone wall encircling it. A driveway branches off the long drive northeast of the house to provide access to the rear portions of the property, which includes outdoor tennis and basketball courts. A stone wall runs along the front property line/West Street right-of-way from the marble entry piers.
Architects Carrere and Hastings
John Merven Carrère was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the son of John Merven Carrère, a Baltimore native and Anna Louisa Maxwell, a Scots/Brazilian native of Rio who was the daughter of Joseph Maxwell, a prosperous coffee trader. The architect’s father entered Maxwell’s coffee business and later developed other business interests of his own in Brazil. As a boy Carrère was sent to Switzerland for his education until 1880, when he entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, where he was in the atelier of Leon Ginian until 1882. He returned to New York where his family had resettled after leaving Brazil and worked as draughtsmen for the architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White. He and his Paris acquaintance, Thomas Hastings, worked there together before striking out on their own in 1885. During this period Carrère independently designed several circular panorama buildings in New York and Chicago. After he married Marion Dell in 1886 they lived in Staten Island and had three daughters, one of whom died as an infant. In 1901 they moved to East 65th Street in Manhattan, and built a country house in Harrison, NY.
Thomas S. Hastings was born in New York City on March 11, 1860. His father, also Thomas S. Hastings (1827–1911), was a noted Presbyterian minister, homiletics professor, and dean of the Union Theological Seminary. His grandfather, Thomas Samuel Hastings (1784–1872), was one of America’s leading church musicians of the 19th century: he composed hymns, including ‘Rock of Ages,’ and published the first musical treatise by a native-born composer in 1822. Hastings was educated in private schools in New York, and began his architectural apprenticeship at Herter Brothers, the premier New York furnishers and decorators. He attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris from 1880–1883 as a student in the atelier of Jules André. There he met his future partner, and both maintained ties to Europe throughout their lives (Hastings earning the French Legion of Honor as well as the Gold Medal of the RIBA).
The architects were noted for their contributions to the country house and garden movement of the early 1900s, where they introduced both stylistic and compositional ideas that shaped domestic architecture for decades to come. Their garden designs were extensively published, and they created a comprehensive staff to handle interior design in large houses, one of the first offices to offer these services. Their largest and most notable country houses included Blairsden (1898) in Peapack, New Jersey, Bellefontaine (1897, altered) in Lenox, Massachusetts, Arden (1905–09) in Harriman, New York, and Nemours (1910) in Wilmington, Delaware.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE:
A ‘gentleman’s estate’ was established on this land in 1855 by William Ellery Sedgwick, a member of the locally prominent family. The original house was a substantial stone farmhouse rather than a mansion of any kind. The house was subsequently purchased by Professor Salisbury of Yale, who in turn sold it to William R. Robeson in 1872. Robeson, a wealthy Boston banker, enlarged and remodeled the house and named it “The Elms”. In 1901-02 Grenville Winthrop purchased the property and had the existing house substantially enlarged and remodeled according to plans by Carrere and Hastings. Winthrop, a direct descendent of the first governor of Massachusetts, filled the house with art and sculpture, most of which he bequeathed to Harvard’s Fogg Museum. He was the President of the Lenox Library Association for 26 years, and with the gift of Bald Head Mountain established the Pleasant Valley Bird and Wild Life Sanctuary. He was an amateur gardener and horticulturalist, and was awarded a silver medal by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society in 1914 for “harmonious lawn and woodland effect”, and the Hunnewell gold medal for the same organization in 1934 for the care and treatment given the property, (with the help of a large staff). Winthrop’s estate “represented the last word in landscape architecture”, with some 40 varieties of trees and 65 acres of lawn, over which exotic birds such as peacocks and pheasants roamed. Even rarer ornithological specimens were kept in a 10-acre, 8 foot high wire enclosure. An aquarium was also located in a building on the grounds. After Winthrop’s death in 1943, the property was acquired by the Windsor Mountain School. It was acquired by Boston University in 1980.
BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES:
Lenox – Massachusetts Shire Town. David H. Wood, 1969
The Berkshire Cottages – A Vanishing Era. Carole Owens, 1984
The Berkshire Eagle 7/17/44, 7/18/44 (Berkshire Athenaeum clipping file)
From Surveys Completed 2011-2012 by the Lenox Historical Commission
ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION:
This rambling, 2-story, wood-framed house evolved over quite a number of years and is categorized as Colonial Revival. It incorporates both a hipped and a gable roof with hipped roof dormers on the front, left and rear sides. Two 2-story wings extend from the central section, one from each side. The main section of the house is topped by a metal balustrade, as is a lower 1-story addition off the left side ell. It has three tall brick chimneys. The cladding is wood clapboard and it has wood corner boards, cornices, and trim. A porch is created by a recessed entry with the second floor over it supported by three chamfered pillars atop collared and paneled plinths. A secondary entrance to the right of the front entrance is also recessed with a smaller overhang supported by a single pillar matching those for the main porch. These porches are separated by a 2-story bow window topped by a projecting pedimented front gable roof. The earliest portions of the house have stone foundations. There is a 2-story, cross-gabled rear ell, with bow window on its rear facade. A 2-story, 2-bay-wide, front-gabled pavilion (projecting to both front and rear) to the right side was also added. Both additions appear to have been constructed sometime after 1939. There is a large circular driveway in front of the house, accessed from one point on Kemble Street, with adjoining parking area. The house is at a lower grade from the street necessitating a large retaining wall in the right front corner of the lot (recently constructed). Newly planted young coniferous trees have been planted between the driveway/retaining wall and the street. There are other mature coniferous and deciduous trees on the property.
NOTE: The 1905 Sanborn Map labels this property “Mrs. F. L. Sturgis” and “Clipston Grange.” The 1911 and 1939 Sanborn Maps depict the same building footprint as the 1905 map. The architect is still unknown.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE:
This once festive Lenox country house of New Yorkers, Florence Lydig and Franklin K. Sturgis, had almost been forgotten before its rescue and restoration in 2007 by the Jurney family in conjunction with their plan for Spring Lawn. The panel core of this fascinating structure is an old village house, which originally stood at the junction of Main and Cliffwood Streets. George G. Haven, a New York Stockbroker and a Lenox real estate speculator moved the old house to its present location in c.1893.
Frank and Florence Sturgis enlarged the house in 1894 in the Colonial Revival style adorning the roofline with a parapet, installing elegant bow windows in the dining room and study and adding a new reception room at the south end. A childless couple, the Sturgises were devoted to animals. Florence’s family property is now the Bronx Zoo and Frank was a founder of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The epitome of this dapper gentleman, businessman and sportsman, Frank served a term as President of the New York Stock Exchange, on the building committee of Madison Square Garden, on the boards of the Jockey Club and the New York Coaching Club.
Four years after Mrs. Sturgis died in 1922, Mr. Sturgis left Clipston Grange to the new and growing Lenox School for Boys which was at that time based in Sunnycroft which was next door.
From Surveys Completed 2011-2012 by the Lenox Historical Commission
ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION:
This Federal style building has two stories, an asphalt shingle roof and is intact. It has a five-bay center entrance; wood frame; hipped roof; and an octagonal cupola with a spire atop a tall square base. It has wood clapboard siding with a dentil band at the cornice. It has very light paneled corner boards, Palladian window on the second floor. The front façade is centered above the front entry with brackets below the sill and a dentiled cornice. The door surround has an entablature having metopes and triglyphs, and a gable above with modillions, fluted pilasters and 2/3rds-length 10-pane sidelights. There are intact 6-over-6 windows; authentic window blinds; and a large dressed stone foundation
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE:
On January 5, 1803, a group of twenty-five Lenox citizens petitioned the State Legislature to grant an incorporation to their group for the purpose of establishing an Academy. They were incorporated February 22, 1803 as “The Berkshire Academy,” the name being changed to the Lenox Academy in June of that year. The Academy flourished throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, and had a number of illustrious headmasters and students including John Hotchkiss, Josiah Lyman, Mark Hopkins and Charles Sedgwick. The Academy closed in 1866, serving as a public high school from 1869 until 1879. In 1879, under the direction of Judge Julius Rockwell, the building was moved to a new foundation and repaired, reopening the following year under principal Harlan H. Ballard. In 1886 the building was again put to use as a public high school, serving in that capacity until 1908. The Academy was incorporated as a private school, the Trinity School, in 1911 and remained in operation as such until the 1920’s.
After a period of vacancy and the threat of demolition, the decision was made at a special town meeting to preserve the building, and in 1947 the trustees of the Academy turned the building over to the town. Since that time it has served as office and meeting space for various public groups including the Girl Scouts, the Lenox Garden Club, the Chamber of Commerce, the Historical Society, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Lenox Historical Commission.
Listed on National Register of Historic Places, September 30, 1982
BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES:
Old Form B
Town of Lenox Assessor’s Map
Lenox Academy records 1803-1947 (manuscript in collection of Lenox Library)
Berkshire County Historical Society Survey form – D.S. Smith, October 1972
“Saving of Lenox Academy,” Berkshire Eagle, October 25, 1946
From Surveys Completed 2011-2012 by the Lenox Historical Commission
ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION:
This Greek Revival style building has one story, an asphalt shingle roof and has been minimally altered. It has a 3-bay center entrance, and is a wood frame structure. The front gable roof has dentils along the eaves, and an oval 6-light attic window. There is a small brick rear wall chimney, paneled corner pilasters and the door surround has an arched pediment and fluted pilasters. The window headers are molded and some are early 6-o-6 sash windows.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE:
Built as the schoolhouse for District No.2, the “Center District”, this property was sold in 1859 to Richard A. Stanley, who paid $60 for it. Stanley, whose home stood on the adjacent lot, opened a meat market in this building in partnership with James D. O’Brien.
The property was purchased by Clifford L. Snyder in 1985.
BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES:
1854 Clark Map
Registry of Deeds, Pittsfield, Mass. 169.250
Gazetteer of Berkshire County Hamilton Child (Syracuse, N.Y.: Hamilton Child, 1885)
County Atlas of Berkshire Mass., F.W. Beers (N.Y.: R.T. White & Co. 1876)
Atlas of Berkshire County, Mass. Barnes & Farnham, (Pittsfield: 1904)
