Ventfort Hall Mansion and Gilded Age Museum
Ventfort Hall Mansion and Gilded Age Museum is a historic, Jacobean-style mansion and museum located at 104 Walker Street, Lenox, Massachusetts. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Visitors can tour the mansion and learn about the changes that occurred in American life, industry, and society during the late 19th-century period known as the Gilded Age. History The house was built in 1893 for George and Sarah Morgan, sister of J. P. Morgan, to designs by architects Rotch & Tilden. Its exterior is brick with brownstone trim, containing approximately 50 rooms in a total of of living space, including 9 main bedrooms and 10 servant's bedrooms, 7 bathrooms, and 17 fireplaces. The house was set within a large landscaped garden of 26 acres (since reduced to 11.7 acres). A smaller home was moved off of the property and across the street prior to the construction of Ventfort Hall. This home was owned by the Haggerty family and known as Vent Fort. The colonel of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry and civil war hero, Robert Gould Shaw, spent his brief honeymoon here with his wife, Annie Kneeland Haggerty. After Robert's death, Annie moved to Europe. She did not