Villa Virginia | |
Location | Ice Glen Rd., Stockbridge, Massachusetts |
---|---|
Coordinates | 42°16′27″N73°18′41″W / 42.27417°N 73.31139°W |
Area | 54.1 acres (21.9 ha) |
Built | 1914 |
Architect | Harry Ellis |
Architectural style | Renaissance |
NRHP reference No. | 83003930 [1] |
Added to NRHP | November 29, 1983 |
Villa Virginia is a historic country estate situated on Ice Glen Road in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Built between 1914 and 1915, it stands as one of the last significant examples of the grand Berkshire Cottages and showcases Renaissance Revival architecture. This estate was added to National Register of Historic Places in 1983. [1]
Villa Virginia is located on the east side of Ice Glen Road, between its northern end and the Ice Glen trailhead. The property spans over 50 acres (20 ha), encompassing the western side of the Ice Glen ravine. [2] In the late nineteenth century, this area was part of an estate owned by John and Isabella Wyman Winthrop, who ran a gentleman's farm. [2] The renowned dancer Isadora Duncan performed on the lawn of their property. [3]
The site was acquired by William H. Clarke, who demolished the existing structures and commissioned the architectural firm Hiss and Weekes to build a new estate in 1914. It is constructed in the style of a Tuscan villa of the Renaissance. The estate functioned as a working farm, featuring extensive outbuildings for animals and farm machinery. [4]
The estate's architecture is a prime example of the Mediterranean Renaissance Revival style. The landscape was designed by Ferruccio Vitale, [5] incorporating formal features such as a lily pond, grotto, and walled garden. [2]
By the 1970s, many of the Berkshire cottages, including Villa Virginia, were considered "white elephant" due to their size and maintenance costs. The estate became uninhabited and fell into disrepair. However, from 1979 to 1998, it was owned by Kazys Varnelis who used it as his home and private gallery. Varnelis undertook extensive restoration work to revive both the structure and the grounds. [6]
The Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, previously known as Villa Vizcaya, is the former villa and estate of businessman James Deering, of the Deering McCormick-International Harvester fortune, on Biscayne Bay in the present-day Coconut Grove neighborhood of Miami, Florida. The early 20th-century Vizcaya estate also includes extensive Italian Renaissance gardens, native woodland landscape, and a historic village outbuildings compound.
Naumkeag is the former country estate of noted New York City lawyer Joseph Hodges Choate and Caroline Dutcher Sterling Choate, located at 5 Prospect Hill Road, Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The estate's centerpiece is a 44-room, Shingle Style country house designed principally by Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White, and constructed in 1885 and 1886.
Elm Court is a former Vanderbilt mansion located on Old Stockbridge Road, straddling the town line between Lenox and Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and until July 2012 was owned and operated as a hotel by descendants of the original owners.
America's Gilded Age, the post-Civil War and post-Reconstruction era, from 1865 to 1901 saw unprecedented economic and industrial prosperity. As a result of this prosperity, the nation's wealthiest families were able to construct monumental country estates in the Berkshires in Massachusetts.
Wheatleigh is a historic country estate on West Hawthorne Road in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, United States. Built in 1893 to a design by Peabody and Stearns, it is one of the few surviving great Berkshire Cottages of the late 19th century, with grounds landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted. Its estate now reduced to 22 acres (8.9 ha), Wheatleigh was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. It is now operated as a hotel.
Hill–Stead Museum is a Colonial Revival house and art museum set on a large estate at 35 Mountain Road in Farmington, Connecticut. It is best known for its French Impressionist masterpieces, architecture, and stately grounds. The property was designated a National Historic Landmark as a nationally significant example of Colonial Revival architecture, built in 1901 to designs that were the result of a unique collaboration between Theodate Pope Riddle, one of the United States' first female architects, and the renowned firm of McKim, Mead & White. The house was built for Riddle's father, Alfred Atmore Pope, and the art collection it houses was collected by Pope and Riddle.
Vernon Court is an American Renaissance mansion designed by architects Carrère and Hastings. It is located at 492 Bellevue Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island, on the Atlantic coast of the United States. The design is loosely based on that of an 18th-century French mansion, Château d'Haroué.
Montgomery Place, now Bard College: The Montgomery Place Campus, near Barrytown, New York, United States, is an early 19th-century estate that has been designated a National Historic Landmark. It is also a contributing property to the Hudson River Historic District, itself a National Historic Landmark. It is a Federal-style house, with expansion designed by architect Alexander Jackson Davis. It reflects the tastes of a younger, post-Revolutionary generation of wealthy landowners in the Livingston family who were beginning to be influenced by French trends in home design, moving beyond the strictly English models exemplified by Clermont Manor a short distance up the Hudson River. It is the only Hudson Valley estate house from this era that survives intact, and Davis's only surviving neoclassical country house.
Locust Grove is a National Historic Landmark estate located on US 9 in the Town of Poughkeepsie, New York. The 200-acre park-like estate includes homes, a carriage house, ice house, trails, a flower garden, and vegetable garden, and it overlooks the Hudson River from a bluff. The property includes a home designed by architect Alexander Jackson Davis for Samuel F. B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph. An Italianate style mansion, it was completed in 1851.
Shadow Brook Farm Historic District is located in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It is a historic district that includes six re-purposed farm buildings related to the former 'Shadowbrook' mansion destroyed by fire in 1956. Designed by architect H. Neill Wilson with landscaping by Frederick Law Olmsted, the mansion and farm buildings were built for Anson Phelps Stokes in 1893. Andrew Carnegie acquired Shadowbrook in 1917 and died there in 1919. It served as a Jesuit novitiate from 1922 until 1970. Following the fire, a non-equivalent structure of the same name took its place and currently is home to the Kripalu Center. Today the historic district primarily encompasses Berkshire Country Day School, which acquired its campus from the Stokes family in 1963. The historic district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.
Charles Freeman Gillette was a prominent landscape architect in the upper South who specialized in the creation of grounds supporting Colonial Revival architecture, particularly in Richmond, Virginia. He is associated with the restoration and re-creation of historic gardens in the upper South and especially Virginia. He is known for having established a regional style—known as the "Virginia Garden."
H. (Henry) Neill Wilson was an architect with his father James Keys Wilson in Cincinnati, Ohio; on his own in Minneapolis, Minnesota; and for most of his career in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The buildings he designed include the Rookwood Pottery building in Ohio and several massive summer cottages in Berkshire County, Massachusetts.
Echo Lawn Estate, also known as Stonegate after the Great War, is a historic estate located at Balmville in Orange County, New York. The main house was built about 1860 and is a two-story brick dwelling in the Second Empire style. It features sweeping concave mansard-type roofs. Also on the property is a cluster of mid-19th-century service buildings, an early 20th-century formal garden, and a substantial set of Arts and Crafts inspired gateposts and stone walls.
Rockwood is an English-style country estate and museum located in Wilmington, Delaware. Built between 1851 and 1854 by banker Joseph Shipley, Rockwood is an excellent example of Rural Gothic Revival Architecture. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.
Scaleby is a historic estate home and farm located near Boyce, Clarke County, Virginia. The main house and associated outbuildings were built between February 1909 and December 1911 for Henry Brook and Hattie Newcomer Gilpin. The 30,000-square-foot (2,800 m2) house was named for the wealthy family's ancestral home in England.
True Farm is a historic farm and summer estate in Holderness, New Hampshire. Located off New Hampshire Route 113 on True Farm Road, the farm is based around a c.1820 farmhouse, and was expanded into a summer estate in 1920 by George Saltonstall West. The 100-acre (40 ha) estate includes numerous outbuildings and a lakefront cottage. The farm was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.
The Asa Morse Farm, also known as the Friendly Farm, is a historic farmstead on New Hampshire Route 101 in Dublin, New Hampshire. The main farmhouse, built in 1926 on the foundations of an early 19th-century house, is a good example of Colonial Revival architecture, built during Dublin's heyday as a summer retreat. The farmstead was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
The Farm House is a historic summer estate at 15 Highbrook Road in Bar Harbor, Maine. The estate includes a 19th-century farmhouse which was extensively altered in the 1920s to Colonial Revival designs by Arthur McFarland, who also designed a caretaker's cottage on the property. The property also includes a series of garden spaces designed by Beatrix Farrand. This work was done for Mildred McCormick, an heir to the fortune of Cyrus McCormick, inventor of the combine harvester. The estate was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.
Ferruccio Vitale (1875-1933) was a landscape architect. Born in Italy, he became a United States citizen in 1921. The historian Terry R. Schnadelbach considered him to be "America's forgotten landscape architect."
Oronoque was built as the country home of Birdseye Blakeman, Esq., and is located in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The building was designed by William Henry Miller and built by Powers & Sons, Rochester. The house exterior was built to resemble a royal hunting lodge. The 12-acre (4.9 ha) grounds were landscaped by Nathan Franklin Barrett.