Article by Dave Read

Edith Wharton (and husband Edward “Teddy”) built the Mount and surrounding gardens, comprising an estate of some 150 acres in Lenox, Mass. in 1902, and lived there until 1911, when she moved to Paris. She was honored by France for her charitable work during WWl, returned to the US only once after the war, and was buried in the American cemetery at Versailles in 1937. Edith Wharton was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1921, for The Age of Innocence, the first woman to receive the Pulitzer.

Edith Wharton Restoration, a.k.a The Mount, was founded by in 1980 by Shakespeare and Co., the theatre group that set up shop there in 1978, after the property had been left vacant years earlier by the Foxhollow School. In 2001, Shakespeare and Co. moved from the Mount and in recent years, the Edith Wharton Restoration has been plagued by financial problems, which led to the resignation of its president under the threat of foreclosure in 2008 when it defaulted on repayment of a $4.3 million loan. The National Endowment for the Humanities gave it a grant that helped re-structure the debt. Edith Wharton Restoration has won several preservation awards, including from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The Mount contact info.

• 2 Plunkett Street- Box 974-Lenox, MA 01240-0974;
• Open daily May 1 – October 31 – 10am to 5pm;
• Admission: $16 adults; $13 college students; 18 – under free;
• Phone: (413) 551-5111 –
• Web: edithwharton.org

Driving directions to The Mount