Eight glass negatives, made in 1908 and on a February day in 1909. Thirteen years later the son of the house had it pulled down. These are very close to the last photographs of a place that stood for something over thirty years, and the man who demolished it was at that moment offering prize money to anyone who could fly a kilometer.
I. Two names on the negatives
The Lenox Library’s titles are supplied by the cataloguer, but Edwin Hale Lincoln’s own notes survive with the plates, and they give the place two owners at once. One reads “Interlaken, D.W. Bishop Estate, Owned by Mrs. J.E. Parsons 1909.” Another: “Interlaken, Mrs. J.E. Parsons, Feb. 17, 1909.”
Lenox History places the Bishops at Interlaken from 1888 to 1922. The photographer’s note has it in the hands of Mrs. J. E. Parsons in 1909. A summer let would explain both, but this page does not assert one; the two records are set side by side as they stand.
II. The Bishops
David Wolfe Bishop — who had inherited the greater part of the fortune of Catharine Lorillard Wolfe — is the D.W. of the negative. Interlaken was his and his wife’s.
Their son, Cortlandt Field Bishop, was born in New York on 24 November 1870 and took four degrees at Columbia between 1891 and 1894 — A.B., A.M., Ph.D. and LL.B. — publishing on American colonial voting practices at twenty-three. He married Amy Bend in 1899.
What he is remembered for is flight. As president of the Aero Club of America he put up money to make aviation happen: in 1909 — the same year as the February negative below — he offered $250 to the first four people who could fly one kilometer. In 1923 he bought the American Art Association and turned it into a major auction house, and he collected rare books, stamps and pictures on a scale that took years of sales to disperse after his death.
He died at Lenox on 30 March 1935.
III. 1922
Cortlandt Bishop’s mother died in 1922, and he razed his parents’ house. In 1927 he built Ananda Hall in its place. That was demolished in turn in 1940.
So the ground has carried two houses and neither survives, and the photographs on this page are of the first of them, made about fourteen years before it came down. There is no Olmsted job for Interlaken on the firm’s Berkshire list.
The last plate is not of the house at all. It is the view from it, and Lincoln wrote what it was on the negative: “Interlaken looking southeast showing Laurel Lake.” That is the thing the house was built for, and it is the only part of this page still there.
Sources
Lenox Library Association, Edwin Hale Lincoln Photographs, via Digital Commonwealth: eight items dated 1908, 1909 and about 1908–1909. The Library gives their rights as “No known copyright restrictions” and asks that it be contacted about reuse. Titles are the cataloguer’s; the quoted matter is transcribed from the Library’s record of Lincoln’s own notes on the negatives. Lenox History (Lenox Library Association), “Lenox as a Resort — Old Stockbridge Road,” for Interlaken under Cortlandt Field Bishop from 1888 to 1922, the razing of his parents’ house, Ananda Hall of 1927 and its demolition in 1940. Wikipedia, “Cortlandt F. Bishop,” for his birth in New York on 24 November 1870 and death at Lenox on 30 March 1935, his father David Wolfe Bishop and the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe inheritance, the four Columbia degrees of 1891–94 and the 1893 publication on colonial voting, the presidency of the Aero Club of America and the $250 prize of 1909 for the first kilometer of flight, the purchase of the American Art Association in 1923, the collections and their sale, the marriage to Amy Bend in 1899 and his daughter Beatrice Bishop Berle. The discrepancy between Lenox History’s Bishop occupancy and the negatives’ “Owned by Mrs. J.E. Parsons 1909” is shown rather than resolved, and Mrs. J. E. Parsons is not further identified here. No Olmsted job under this name appears on the firm’s Berkshire list.
