The Detroit Publishing Company photographed Fairlawn three times and gave one whole plate to a sundial. It is catalogued “The Sun-dial at Fairlawn, Miss Adele Kneeland’s garden, Lenox, Mass.” — the garden named, and named after a woman who never married and owned the place in her own right.
I. Miss Kneeland
Adele Kneeland lived from 1856 to 1937. Her father was Charles Kneeland (1830–1866), a cotton merchant who died when she was ten; her mother was Louise Taintor Kneeland (1832–1890). She kept a house at 6 East 38th Street in New York and Fairlawn in Lenox.
That is nearly all that is readily established about her, and it is worth saying plainly rather than padding. American Aristocracy carries her dates, her parents and her two addresses, and records no associated histories at all. The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Gardens holds a Fairlawn record in the Garden Club of America collection, which is where anyone wanting more should start.
II. The garden is the subject
Eleven of the Lenox Library’s plates and all three of the Detroit ones survive, and the weighting is unusual. There is a decorated doorway of about 1885, the back of the house, the drive under its trees. Everything else is garden: a pool, a fountain, garden sculpture among trees, the back lawn, a walk down to a pond, and a view described in the catalogue as “garden toward Bald Mountain.”
The earliest are dated about 1880–1885 and the latest about 1907–1930, so the set spans roughly half a century of one place, made by more than one hand.
III. What is not known here
The Berkshire Eagle has written about Fairlawn under the heading “Lenox’s forgotten treasure,” which is about the size of it.
This page exists because the photographs are public and good and nobody has put them in one place. It is a starting point, not a finished account.
Sources
Photographs: Lenox Library Association, eleven items via Digital Commonwealth, titles and dates quoted exactly as catalogued, licensed CC BY-NC-ND; Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection, three plates (LC-D4-72065, LC-D4-72066 and LC-D4-72067), no known restrictions on publication. Text: American Aristocracy, “Adele Kneeland,” for her dates of 1856–1937, her parents Charles Kneeland (1830–1866), cotton merchant, and Louise Taintor Kneeland (1832–1890), and her two addresses. The Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Gardens holds a Fairlawn record (Garden Club of America collection), not consulted here. The Berkshire Eagle has covered the estate as “Fairlawn: Lenox’s forgotten treasure.” No Olmsted job for this estate appears in the firm’s Berkshire list.
