Naumkeag

Object Type: Folder
In Folder: Trustees: Our Properties

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Naumkeag

NKPROP

Property: Naumkeag

Title: Naumkeag

Description: Naumkeag is a 48-acre property in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Built in 1885, this Gilded-Era estate is, at its heart, a family home. Joseph Choate (1832-1917), a leading 19th-Century attorney, hired the architectural firm of McKim, Mead, & White to design the 44-room “cottage” which would serve as a summer retreat for three generations of Choates. Landscape architects Nathan Barrett and Marion Cruger Coffin designed the estate grounds. Several of the first floor reception rooms still reflect the results of Stanford White’s antique and fine art shopping expeditions with Mrs. Caroline Sterling Choate in the 1880s. Mabel Choate (1870-1958) inherited the property in 1929 from her parents; she engaged landscape architect Fletcher Steele and spent the next 30 years creating one of the most important transitional American Modern gardens in the country. Bequeathed in its entirety to The Trustees in 1958, the bequest included the complete estate and household furnishings, furniture, and decorative arts in their original locations. Naumkeag is one of the finest surviving examples of a late 19th-Century summer estate with its full complement of outbuildings and one of the best-preserved Fletcher Steele gardens. Naumkeag was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2007.

Date: 1959 (Original acreage a bequest, with endowment, of Miss Mabel Choate. Additional land given by J. Graham and Margaret Parsons in 1985.)

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