New Life for a Great Estate

It has been nearly 140 years since a carriage bearing Emily T. Vanderbilt and her husband, William D. Sloane, first crunched up the drive to their sprawling estate spanning the town line of Lenox and Stockbridge.

Designed in 1885 by premier architects Peabody and Sterns with 40 acres of formal gardens conceived by Frederick Law Olmsted, landscape architect of New York City’s Central Park, the estate was to be the Sloanes’ summer estate during the Gilded Age, when society’s glitterati flocked to the Berkshires.

Since its inception, the vast mansion—some 90 rooms in all—and the 89-acre estate around it have known the vagaries of time. But now it stands poised on the brink of a new future, one as luxurious as when it was first a haven for the turn-of-the-last-century elite.

Real estate developer Linda Law of Law & Associates, based in Silicon Valley and the former owner of the gilded-age Blantyre Estate in Lenox, recently purchased the estate, which is said to be the largest shingled residence in the United States and one of the few remaining historically significant gilded-age mansions in the Northeast.

Law and her business partner, Dr. Rick Peiser, professor of real estate development at the Harvard University School of Design, are currently exploring alternative concepts for the Vanderbilt Berkshire Estate (formerly known as Elm Court).

“While this grand Berkshire estate is suitable for a country retreat, we are not yet certain what the next incarnation of this legacy property will be,” said Law in a statement. “But what we do know is that our team is going to be very deliberate in its thoughtful renovation to restore the vibrancy of this treasured landmark. Collectively we have done a tremendous amount of research on the architecture and design of the Gilded Age and the history of the Vanderbilt family and we feel a tremendous responsibility to pay homage to its legendary past.”

One possibility on the table is a luxury resort. The estate could support 112 guestrooms (Law reportedly feels this is too many), as well as a 15,000-square-foot spa and a 60-seat restaurant. But Law promises, “We will pay the utmost attention to the historical importance of Elm Court as its own entity as well as its position and prominence in the Lenox and Stockbridge communities.”

Whatever the partners eventually decide to do, they already have a boon in effecting their “thoughtful restoration.” Much of the original decor can be replicated from photographs and from leftover materials and broken parts, such as wainscoting, stored in the basement. The developers even know the original paint colors.

The Vanderbilt Berkshire Estate was built during the heyday of summer “cottages” in Lenox and Stockbridge. Samuel Gray Ward, the Boston banker who later financed the U.S. purchase of Alaska, presaged the building boom in 1845 when he built a summer home near the little red cottage rented by author Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Ward extolled the virtues of the beautiful countryside and pleasant summer weather to his Boston friends. By the late 1800s Lenox and Stockbridge were booming as urbanites built increasingly elaborate summer homes.

The peak building years were from the1880s to 1920s as increasing wealth generated larger and larger mansions on the most prominent peaks. Eventually, some 76 of these cottages were constructed, only a handful of which remain.

The Sloanes’ house was originally meant to be a modest home for their five children but the unexpected death of Emily’s father, railroad tycoon William Henry Vanderbilt, and an inheritance of $10,000,000, soon allowed them to join in the display of ostentation. The building grew to encompass 55,000 square feet, 46 bedrooms, 27 bathrooms, multiple marble fireplaces, elaborate carved plaster moldings and herringbone hardwood floors.

There was little purpose in having such a grand residence—even five kids and their friends couldn’t fill all those bedrooms—if one did not show it off. The Sloanes entertained lavishly during high season, offering amusements consistent with the “informality” of the cottagers’ lives: perhaps a lawn tennis tournament, horseback riding or a picnic in a field, complete with silver and servants. Even in those pre-Tanglewood days, evenings were filled with concerts staged in the formal music room under crystal chandeliers.

The estate was also notable as the site of the “Elm Court Talks,” a meeting of officials from allied countries in 1919 that established the tenets for the formation of the League of Nations, ratified at the Treaty of Versailles in Paris in 1920.

But the failure of the stock market in 1929, increasing difficulty in attracting the 125 servants needed to run the estate and income taxes imposed during World War I put an end to this opulent lifestyle. Improbably, the Vanderbilts, once the wealthiest family in the country, were also running out of money.

When Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, founder of the family fortune, died in 1877, he left an estate of $95,000,000 (about $2.1 billion today). His son, William Henry, doubled that amount but within 30 years of the Commodore’s death, his grandchildren (and their wives) had spent most of it.

In 1948, Emily’s descendants began operating an inn, The Elm Court Club, to preserve the Berkshire estate and provide summer employment for area residents. The inn failed, and faced with overwhelming operating costs, the family shuttered the house in 1957. It was unused for 42 years.

In 1999 the property passed to Robert Berle, great-great-grandson of the Sloanes, and his wife, Sonya. They put more than a $5,000,000 into upgrading the property and opened it as a luxury inn. In 2002, it became a wedding destination, a short-lived proposition, and in 2005 went on the market at $21,500,000. It was unlisted at the end of 2006, again sitting idle until 2012 when the Berles sold it for $9,800,000 to Amstar/Travaasa Experiential Resorts.

What followed was 10 years and an investment of $20,000,000 in procuring land use permissions to create a luxury five-star wellness resort. Litigation sapped energy from the project and Travaasa put the estate up for sale in 2020 for $12,500,000, a sum too rich for the Covid years. Travaasa took the property off the market at the end of 2021 but Linda Law, who had vied for the property for years, stepped into the void and purchased it at the end of 2022 for the bargain-basement price of $8,000,000.

It appears that Law, an experienced real estate investor, will also pay much less than the $20 million to $30 million earlier thought to be necessary to renovate the estate. She reported that about 75 percent of the property has been restored and she has said the remaining work can be completed for about $6,000,000.

While the building’s ultimate fate is undisclosed, she is in discussion with different resort companies about managing the property. Law hopes to welcome guests to what is now the Vanderbilt Berkshires Estate by 2025.