This is The Elms, the summer home built for Hermione and Edward J. Berwind during the Gilded Age.
The Elms was built for the Berwind family as their summer cottage, amongst many of their friends who came from New York for about six weeks a year.
Those neighbors and friends included the Vanderbilts, the Astors, and many other names you might recognize from the turn of the century.
The Elms was completed in 1901, and came to a total of 60,000 square feet.
Most of what that 60,000 square feet serves, however, are the domestic workers, and not the Berwinds themselves.
But you'd never know, because of the way the architect designed and engineered this building.
The Elms was designed to conceal the labor that made it run and perform at one of the highest levels during the Gilded Age.
Nearly every great space of this house has a support space adjacent to it, where servants are doing their work in a nearly invisible way, so that the house would operate like magic.
Edward Berwind was a first-generation American, born to German immigrants, and then went on to become a multimillionaire in a global empire of not only coal production, Edward Berwind was a first-generation American, born to German immigrants, and then went on to become a multimillionaire in a global empire of not only coal production,
What we see in this hall are a variety of different kinds of marble imported, What we see in this hall are a variety of different kinds of imported marble, as well as gilt bronze, and a whole host of artwork that helped communicate to the Berwinds’ guests what a Gilded Age interior should
