Berkshire Magazine Spring 2024 | Page 49

COURTESY OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE

COURTESY OF THE BAUGHMAN FAMILY

COURTESY OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE

Architectural drawing of the Freer Gallery of Art ( 1915 ); a collection of photographs found by the Baughmans depicting the construction of the main house ( c . 1918 ); Charles Lang Freer .

a large property at Berkshire Heights Road and Barrington Place ( also referred to as “ Scully Street ”). They were responsible for the summer hunting lodge built at 26 Berkshire Heights Road , a beautiful structure that burned down in the winter of 2020 .

Shortly before his death in 1914 , John Scully , Sr . sold an undeveloped part of the property to Charles Lang Freer . Land records suggested that the rest of Scully ’ s property was left to his wife , Mary , and their children . Mary sold her portion to Freer in 1916 .

Freer was born in nearby Kingston , New York , in 1854 . After his mother ’ s death when he was 14 , Freer began working at a cement factory and local general store . From there , railroad supervisor Colonel Frank Hecker hired him ; in 1880 , the two moved to Detroit and together started Peninsular Car Works , a railroad car manufacturing company . Peninsular merged with the Michigan Car Company in 1892 to create the Michigan-Peninsular Car Company , which then merged with

several other corporations . Freer retired at age 45 , selling his stocks in the business in 1899 and began the next phase of his life : collecting art .

Freer ’ s art collection is probably what he is best known for today . In 1906 , he donated thousands of oriental art pieces to the Smithsonian Institution . The total donation contained over 9,000 pieces from China , India , Japan , Korea , Egypt , the Middle East , and the United States , with the addition of $ 1 million for building and maintaining the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington , D . C .

The Freer Gallery of Art was something new to the National Mall , being the first of the Smithsonian museums to focus on fine arts . In the early 1980s , the Arthur M . Sackler Gallery was built across the street , and in recent years , the two galleries together became the National Museum of Asian Art . Today , Freer ’ s collection holds the majority of the pieces , having grown to almost three times its original size .

Freer spent many years working on his gallery with its architect , Charles Platt .

When Freer ’ s health took a turn for the worse , his doctors advised him not to return to Washington . He decided to build a second home and wanted to be close to his family in the Catskills . He eventually settled in Great Barrington . Having worked with Platt on both the museum and his Detroit property , Freer commissioned the architect to create a house just outside of Stockbridge , the fashionable center of the Berkshires . Right up the road from the newly established Fairview Hospital , the estate was to be built on a rocky , wooded property at the top of “ The Hill ,” the residential area just above Main Street . Inspired by the buildings and materials in the area , Platt designed a bungalow , a oneand-a-half-story house that was a popular style for vacation homes at the time .

While Platt simultaneously worked on the bungalow and the museum , Freer bounced between Detroit , New York City , and Great Barrington . In the Berkshires , he spent most of his time overseeing the estate ’ s construction from the Berkshire Inn , a large building where the CVS and

Aston Magna / Chesterfield Owners

1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030

Spring 2024 BERKSHIRE MAGAZINE // 47