Lenox Massachusetts

Church on the Hill, Lenox, Mass

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The Church on the Hill, as seen from Main Street around 1905-1915. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The church in 2015:

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This historic church in Lenox was built 1805 as the town’s second meeting house, replacing a smaller church building that had been built on the same site around 1770. The building’s design is an excellent example of the traditional late 18th and early 19th century New England church architecture, and some sources, such as the Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System, credit Isaac Damon with its design. This seems doubtful, though. While Damon designed many churches in Western Massachusetts, he was still living in Weymouth when this church was built in 1805, and he would not begin his architectural career until he moved to Northampton six years later.

Regardless of who designed it, though, this picturesque church has long been popular among visitors to Lenox. The first photo was taken at a time when Lenox was a popular resort town, and for the many wealthy New York City residents who spent their summer here, the church would have contributed to the town’s appearance as a quaint New England village. Not much has changed for the church since then. Other than different windows and the addition of shutters, almost everything else on the exterior is the same from the first photo. Even the tree in the background to the left appears to be the same one. Based on its size in the first photo, it is probably at least as old as the church itself, if not older.

Lenox Academy, Lenox, Mass

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The Lenox Academy building on Main Street in Lenox, sometime around the 1800s. Image courtesy of the Lenox Library Association.

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The building in 2015:

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Lenox Academy was established in 1803 as a private school, and this building was built around that time. The school closed in 1866, and the building was used as the town’s public high school from 1869 to 1879, and again from 1886 to 1908. In between, the building was renovated and moved to a new foundation in 1879. The first photo appears to have been taken sometime after this move, probably in the 1880s or 1890s. The last school to use this building was the private Trinity School, which was here from 1911 until the 1920s. After that, it was vacant until 1947, when it was sold to the town of Lenox to protect it from demolition. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, and it is now the home of the the Lenox Historical Society and the Lenox Historical Commission.

Spring Lawn, Lenox, Mass

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The Spring Lawn estate on Kemble Street in Lenox, around 1910-1920. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The building in 2015:

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Spring Lawn was one of many summer “cottages” built in the Berkshires in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when towns like Lenox were popular resorts for the wealthy during the Gilded Age. This mansion was built in 1904, replacing The Hive, which had been the home of Charles and Elizabeth Sedgwick and the site of Elizabeth’s prestigious school for girls. Her students included Ellen Emerson, the daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson; Mary Abigal Fillmore, the daughter of president Millard Fillmore; and Jennie Jerome, the mother of Winston Churchill.

The school closed after Elizabeth Sedgwick’s death in 1864, and the property changed hands several times before being purchased by New York businessman John E. Alexandre, who demolished the old house and built Spring Lawn, as seen here. It was one of the first buildings designed by noted architect Guy Lowell, who later went on to design the New York State Supreme Court Building, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Charles River Dam in Boston.

Alexandre didn’t have much time to enjoy his new house, though. He died here in 1910, and it was sold to another prominent New York City resident, Mrs. Arthur F. Schermerhorn, who renamed it “Schermeer.” The house was later owned by the Lenox School for Boys and Bible Speaks College, and it has since gone through a number of other owners. As of the 2015 photo, the house is vacant, but in 2013 the owners announced a plan to restore the historic home as part of a proposed 14-building resort on the property.

Trinity Episcopal Church, Lenox, Mass

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The Trinity Episcopal Church in Lenox, as seen from the Walker Street side of the building around 1910-1920. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The church in 2015:

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When this church was completed in 1888, the town of Lenox was the summer home for many wealthy families in the northeast, who built massive estates known as Berkshire Cottages. Many of these summer residents provided the funding to build this church, at the corner of Kemble and Walker Streets, just to the southeast of the center of town. It was designed by Charles Follen McKim, the noted architect from the firm McKim, Mead & White. Just a few years earlier, McKim had designed St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in nearby Stockbridge, and both churches reflect the popular Romanesque style of the late 1800s.

This church replaced the town’s original Episcopalian church, which was built in 1818 on Church Street. It is still standing today, although it was converted into apartments and a store after the new building was completed. Construction on this church began in 1885, with former president Chester Alan Arthur attending the laying of the cornerstone. Arthur died the following year, so he never lived to see its completion, but a Tiffany stained glass window was added in memory of him in 1888.

The building to the far left is the parish house, which was built separately in 1896, as a gift from John E. Parsons, a New York lawyer who spent his summers at his “Stoneover” estate in Lenox. Three years later, the church itself was expanded to include a choir room and sacristy, but since the first photo was taken there have not been many changes. In 1996, the church was added to the National Register of Historic Places.