The Berkshires: Coach Inns to Cottages

Images of America: Massachusetts

by Carole Owens

Those hustling to find lodging in the Berkshires today may not know they are repeating a two-hundred fifty-year-old ritual. In the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, the Berkshires played host to some of the most fascinating characters in American literature, politics, business, and the arts. They came with the warm breezes and left when they felt the first cold snap in the autumnal air. The Berkshires: Coach Inns to Cottages is a photographic record of Berkshire dwelling places from the rough simplicity of stagecoach inns to the glittering luxury of Gilded Age cottages. Come inside the Berkshire coach inns where "one might be subjected to disagreeable exposures," as Timothy Dwight noted in 1823. Come inside the Berkshire cottages where the rich and powerful were entertained according to the precepts of fashionable society. Use this volume as a guide to the many structures that have been preserved.

Genres: History

130 pages, Hardcover

First published September 8, 2004

Reviews

[Jack]

Interesting --- Pictures and stories of the early inns of the Berkshires when it was a crossroads between Boston and the West. The book then moves on to the Cottages, huge mansions on large acerage for people like the Vanderbilts. Great history of the wealth and cache of the area in the 1800s.