The Berkshires
The work
These houses took thousands of people to design, to build, and then to run — and almost none of them were written down. What the archives do hold, trade by trade, in the order a house came into being.
6 stories
Designing it
Before a stone was cut somebody had to draw it. The offices that took the commission, the draftsmen who signed the sheets, and the New York firms that decided what the rooms would look like.
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7 stories
Building it
Ground, water, stone, timber, iron. The trades that put the shell up, in the order the season allowed — and, in two towns, the public buildings and the current that came with them.
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5 stories
Finishing it
The part that took the longest and shows the most: plaster, carving, glass, and the marks left by the hands that did it.
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6 stories
Running it
A finished house is a payroll. Inside and out, the people who made these places work once the builders had gone.
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17 stories
The people themselves
The year they worked, the houses they slept in, the places they went when it ended — and the two books that record more working people in these towns than anything else that survives.
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Keep up with it
New properties go up here as the research turns them up.