Naumkeag: A Gilded Age Estate in the Berkshires
Near Lenox, Massachusetts
Naumkeag is a Shingle Style mansion built in eighteen eighty-six in Stockbridge, Massachusetts for Joseph Hodges Choate, one of the most prominent lawyers in Gilded Age America. Choate argued before the Supreme Court more than any other attorney of his era, most notably winning the case that overturned the federal income tax in eighteen ninety-five. The house was designed by Stanford White of McKim, Mead and White, the firm that defined American elite architecture of the period.
What makes Naumkeag exceptional today are its gardens, laid out in stages by landscape architect Fletcher Steele between nineteen twenty-six and nineteen fifty-five. The Blue Steps, a cascading staircase flanked by silver birches, is considered one of the masterworks of American landscape design. Mabel Choate bequeathed the estate to the Trustees of Reservations, which took it in nineteen fifty-eight.
