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CNBC
April, 2004
"The Berkshires... hill country... covered bridges over winding creeks - What's really happening there that is so much fun now... is what is going on in the lodging industry. Elm Court is a 70,000 square foot shingle style mansion built during the Gilded Age by Emily Vanderbilt and her husband W.D. Sloane and just opened as a B and B - a beautiful place!" - Mark Orwoll
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Where to Stay: Berkshires B&B
Town & Country Travel
Fall 2004
Good news for travelers who are heading to the Berkshires this fall: a historic country estate recently opened its doors as a refined bed and breakfast. Located in Stockbridge - in the hills of western Massachusetts, home to the Tanglewood Music Festival - Elm Court was built in 1886 by furniture magnate William Douglas Sloane and his wife, Emily Vanderbilt. In 1999 the Shingle-style house was rescued by Robert Berle (the Sloanes' great-great-grandson) and his wife, Sonya, who are restoring it to its Gilded Age grandeur.
Today five spacious suites and several public rooms are done up in the high Victorian manner, with splendid fabrics, European and American antiques, hardwood floors and Oriental rugs. There's a plant-filled conservatory with a view of the reflecting pool and grapevine-festooned pergola, a safari-themed library and a formal dining room where guests enjoy romantic catered dinners. Open for slightly more than a year, Elm Court is still a work in progress, but what it lacks in the niceties - turndown service, excercise room - it makes up for in other ways. The Berles are excellent hosts who take pleasure in sharing their heritage. And they mean it when they tell you to put your feet up and make yourself at home. - Jamie Marshall
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Best Places to Vacation
Money Magazine
November 2003
"Back in the days when the American plutocracy could afford a separate estate - or two - for each season, the quiet Berkshires village of Lenox enjoyed a certain notoriety. The lions of the Gilded Age called the homes they built here cottages, but they were being modest, if not delusional. These were castles.... Elm Court, built by William Sloane and Emily Vanderbilt Sloane, has just reopened as a B&B - operated by the Sloanes' great-great-grandson and his wife. - Robb Mandelbaum
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Bob Vila's Home Again
2004
Three episodes of "Bob Vila's Home Again" were filmed at Elm Court. View video clips of these television shows and learn more about the history and restoration of Elm Court. Includes formal rooms, overnight accommodations, exterior, kitchen and basement.
CLICK HERE to go to BobVila.com and search 'Elm Court'
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The New Berkshires
Travel and Leisure Magazine
April 2004
"... what thinking man wouldn't choose pedigree - not to mention grandeur, glamour and history? Elm Court. -Christopher Petkanas
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HAVENS; Weekender / Lenox, MA
The New York Times
March 2004
"You can't go far in Lenox without encountering a remnant of the Gilded Age. The Vanderbilts, Astors, Morgans, and other millionaires who converged on Lenox, starting in the 1880's, left their fingerprints, if not their money, all over town. ...Sample the Gilded Age life... Elm Court." - David A. Kelly
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CBS News
November 2003
"...a showplace. Walk through the gates of Elm Court, and step back in time.... They painstakingly restored fabrics, furnishings and colors true to High Victorian Style." -Mary Beth Wenger
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Berkshire Bliss in Lenox, MA
Flying Adventures Magazine
July/August 2004
"Because summer in the Berkshires is a splendor of music (Tanglewood), dance (Jacob's Pillow), theater (Shakespeare & Co.) and other cultural marvels, only an inn as splendid as the scene itself will do for aviators winging-in. Enter Elm Court ...gourmet omelets in the formal dining room, traditional afternoon tea in the library, in-room spa services, and other pampering pleasures well-prep eager culture-seekers for a roaring good Berkshires retreat.
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Elm Court Mansion Regains its luster as vandalism is undone
The Berkshire Eagle
2003
"Skyward rush the moldings to cornices of flowers and swirls, while marble floors hide beneath Persian rugs and thick bear hides. Outside, a colonnade overlooks a flagstone driveway and an antique fountain. If you like, you can spend the evening... Now the Elm Court estate, open [for the first time] after 45 years, is set to become an illustrious gathering spot for A-list people...." -Stephanie Cohen
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Berkshire Resort Topics
1904
It was in 1887 that Mr. and Mrs. Sloane began the creation of Elm Court and the intervening years have seen so many aquisitions of contiguous lands, so many improvements and enlargements to the original buildings and the erection of so many new structures, that the place has become famous, not only in Lenox but throughout the country, as an example of what the progressive modern spirit, backed by abundant capital can accomplish."
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John Foreman and Robbe Pierce Stimson
The Vanderbilts and the Gilded Age
1991
"Architectural historian Wheaton Holden described Peabody and Stearns [architects of Elm Court] as 'one of the chief wellsprings of architectural inspiration in their time.' Karl Putnam summed the firm up as, 'the most important arbiter of building taste after H.H. Richardson.' ... As a matter of fact, Elm Court is a tour de force of clever juxtapositions employing early-American architectural elements with the structural and decorative innovations of the industrial age. ...Its great aesthetic achievement is that it manages simultaneously to be both grand and picturesque." - Foreman and Stimson
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George William Sheldon
Artistic Country Seats
1886
"...visitors at Lenox, Mass. consider Mr. William D. Sloane's magnificent new villa [Elm Court] the most important architectural attraction of the place." And of the entry hall - "a more comfortable sitting-room than this spacious hall does not exist on this side of the Atlantic." - Sheldon
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Arnold Lewis
American Country Houses of the Gilded Age
1982
The "architectural attraction" of the house eludes easy description because it is so large... Its scale can be sensed from the dimensions of the major rooms: the main hall, 35' x 22'; the library, 22' x 20'; the dining room, 38' x 28'; and the guest chamber, 28' x 18'. - Lewis
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Robert B. King
The Vanderbilt Homes
1989
"Inside [Elm Court], the house was bright and cheery, qualities not often associated with the Queen-Anne Victorian style. Highly waxed and polished parquetry floors reflected the cheerful fires that roared in fireplaces framed by carved mantels of imported marble. Tapestries hung from gilded and molded paneled walls, while sunlight that beamed through French glass doors danced off crystal chandeliers." - King
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Jerry E. Patterson
The Vanderbilts
1989
"Emily Sloane and her husband were among the few in their generation to build a genuine country house, albeit a huge one.... The social columns of the day are filled with accounts of Vanderbilts, Webbs, Sloanes, Twomblys, etc. traipsing between New York, Newport, Bar Harbor, the Adirondacks, Biltmore, and Lenox on visits to each other." - Patterson
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John M. Bryan
Biltmore Estate
1994
"As the Vanderbilt mansions rose on Fifth Avenue [New York City], several members of the family were simultaneously establishing seasonal estates beyond the city. In 1878 Cornelius became the first to settle in Newport when he purchased the original Breakers.... Eliza Vanderbilt and her husband, William Seward Webb, purchased for and built their estate, Shelburne Farms.... Peabody and Stearns designed Frederick Vanderbilt's Rough Point in Newport (1887) and Emily and William Sloane's Elm Court in Lenox, Massachusetts (1887). Frederick Law Olmstead did the landscape plans for Elm Court and Rough Point and consulted on a plan for Shelburne. It may have been inevitable that he and [Richard Morris] Hunt would work with George Washington Vanderbilt, both on Biltmore and other projects." - Bryan
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