Will the salon piano fall through the beetle-eaten, 19th-century parquet floors? Is there any way to get the great hall’s 185-pound mahogany pocket door to stay on its track? How many more rainstorms can the patched roof withstand?
In Lenox, Mass., a small town in the Berkshires, a bootstrapped foundation has spent nearly three decades tackling these questions while rebuilding, repairing and protecting a 28,000-square-foot Gilded Age mansion called Ventfort Hall. The pinnacle of grandeur when it was built in 1893, this 17-fireplace, 22-bedroom, Jacobean Revival “summer cottage” first belonged to J.P. Morgan’s sister, Sarah.
Its present-day stewards have a lot on their minds. They are front desk attendants one moment, apprentices to a septuagenarian master craftsman the next. They’ve always been underfunded, and there is always more to do.
But in the past three years, a new energy is swirling, propelling things forward. Or is it an old energy — old as the mansion’s original owner herself? The museum’s matriarchs, teenage tarot students, pro bono paranormal investigators, and history buffs say it’s the ghost of Sarah Morgan, taking part in the restoration of her manorial magnum opus. She isn’t alone.
A Mansion, Abandoned
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