At the height of the Gilded Age, America's wealthiest families began to
cluster in Newport, Southampton, Bar Harbor, and Tuxedo Park. In these
idyllic locales they built luxurious summer "cottages" away from the
grit and grime of New York or Boston or Philadelphia. The Belle Haven
peninsula, in Greenwich, Connecticut, is home to one of the first and
most spectacular residence parks in the country. Its development
occurred rapidly, and between 1884 and 1894 Belle Haven Park was
transformed from scenic pastureland set above the glistening ribbon of
Long Island Sound into a bastion of Victorian luxury. Successful
American magazine described the Belle Haven of 1902 as "a nonpareil
spot, surpassing in beauty, while equaling in elegance, the pet of the
fashionable world, Newport, and outshining Tuxedo in brilliance and
gaiety." The New York Times, meanwhile, called it "the flower garden of
Greenwich, and, indeed, of the whole Connecticut shore." Victorian
Summer: The Historic Houses of Belle Haven Park, Greenwich, Connecticut
focuses on that great flowering of Belle Haven, from 1884 to 1929. The
45-year span began with Robert Law Olmsted's storied firm laying out
Belle Haven's graceful, lamp-lit streets, and continued with the Gilded
Age's most renowned architects designing masterpieces, in styles ranging
from the whimsical Queen Anne to the ponderous Richardsonian Romanesque,
for the illustrious movers and shakers of the day - men who raised up
the Manhattan skyline, co-founded U.S. Steel, formed Nabisco, ran
Standard Oil's domestic business, and mined gold, silver, and iron ore
to supply an exploding railroad industry. Victorian Summer features
estate biographies - each telling the story of a house, an architect,
and a predominant owner. Some of these houses are sadly gone or
unrecognizably changed--though preserved here in photographs--but many
shine on as brightly as ever. Together the biographies weave a portrait
of the Gilded Age and its aftermath, with an emphasis on the
architecture, but touching on such events as the Civil War, the
industrial boom, and the sinking of the Titanic.
