Issues → January/February 2008 → Home & Garden →
House For Sale: Pittsfield, Massachusetts
Where Oliver Wendell Holmes spent "sweet summers"
by The Moseyer
You might be asking, "Which Oliver Wendell Holmes?" Holmes Sr. (1809-1894), the famous Boston physician and man of letters? Or his son, Holmes Jr. (1841-1935), the even more famous Bostonian who served on the U.S. Supreme Court for 30 years? The answer is "Both."
Holmes Sr. built this 15-room "cottage," as summer mansions were called then, in 1848, on some 280 beautiful acres (16 of which remain with the house today) in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. "Seven sweet summers, the happiest of my life ..." Holmes Sr. wrote of his time there. "One thing I shall always be glad of; that I planted seven hundred trees for somebody to sit in the shade of."
Today, thanks to those 700 trees, the Housatonic River, which touches the property, is no longer visible from the house. Nor are the nearby Berkshire Hills, so admired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow when he visited.
Still, it's grown over the years into a grand place -- including an in-ground solar-heated pool, an enclosed solarium, and an awning-covered patio; a gazebo overlooking the tennis court; an in-law cottage; five working fireplaces, seven bathrooms, and so on. In short, no doubt you, too, could enjoy "sweet summers" here -- if you can come up with a sweet $2,300,000, that is.
For details, contact Helen Gasparian, Roberts & Associates Realty, 48 Housatonic St., Lenox, MA. 413-637-4200; berkshirehouses.com
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