On this day in 1902, the writer Edith Wharton wrote to a friend about a visit to the site of her new home, The Mount, under construction in Lenox: "Lenox has had its usual tonic effect on me, & I feel like a new edition, revised and corrected." Once considered desolate wilderness, the beautiful Berkshire Hills and the quaint village of Lenox drew writers, artists, and intellectuals throughout the nineteenth century. By 1900 Lenox had become the summer place of choice for many of New York's wealthiest families. Like Wharton, they built magnificent houses — which they called "cottages" — with extensive grounds. When the Gilded Age ended, so did the "Berkshire Cottage" era. A few estates survive. Edith Wharton's The Mount is one of them.