Victorian Summer

At the height of the Gilded Age, America’s wealthiest families began to build luxurious summer cottages away from the grit and grime of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia in idyllic locales such as, Newport, Southampton, Tuxedo Park, and Lenox. Another place the new American aristocracy settled was in the peninsula of Belle Haven, Connecticut. The New York Times 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 the first great flowering of Belle Haven, from 1884-1929 – a period where the Gilded Age’s most renowned architects designed masterpieces in many styles, all for the movers and shakers of the day. Each chapter tells the story of a house, an architect, and the predominant owner. While some of these houses are, sadly, gone or unrecognisably changed, this book does the job of visually preserving them in their original glory.