New York's Gilded Age elite were a nomadic bunch, those Aster's and Vanderbilts, along with

Morgan's, Mills, and Martins, as well as those with the names of the great industrial empires

like Westinghouse and Ford, all just wanted to get out of the city. And well, who wouldn't?

New York City, regardless of how much money you had, was still a world of

soot, dust, smoke, and grime that greeted you the minute you walked out your door.

The Gilded Gentleman has been looking recently at some of the great bucolic enclaves where the

beautiful and the board sought to spend time in the presence of actual countryside and nature.

We've looked at Newport, of course, but also the Hudson Valley north of New York City and the

Adirondack Lakes. And then there was Bar Harbor, a rustic Newport of sorts, on the coast of Maine.

One of the most desirable was the area of the Berkshire

Mountains in western Massachusetts known today as an artistic enclave home to great cultural

institutions such as Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, along with

companies performing world-class dance, theater, and exhibiting the visual arts.

Many of the great estates that sprang up in the Gilded Age centered around the towns of Lennox and Stockbridge,

some to rival those in the far more well-known Newport remain today.

Some are open to the public as historic house museums. Some are in private hands,

and some are home to resorts and spas or several non-profit institutions. Along with the spectacular

beauty of the mountains, fields, and woods, the original elegance and extravagance brought to the

Berkshires by those Gilded Age barons can still be experienced today.

The architects and interior designers that created these cottages, borrowing a bit of Newport

irony, included many of the famous names from Newport and New York, including Stanford

White, Ogden Codman Jr., and firms such as Roach

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