The Mount receives $200,000 grant to furnish Edith Wharton's bedroom suite

Lenox, Mass. (July 14, 2004) -- The Mount, Edith Wharton’s estate and gardens, has been awarded a $200,000 grant from The Richard C. von Hess Foundation to furnish Wharton’s bedroom suite, where she wrote her first bestseller, The House of Mirth.

Over the next two years, The Mount will decorate the suite of rooms, which include Wharton’s bedroom, boudoir and bathroom, with period furnishings and accessories replicating her original design. Plans for the rooms were developed by studying historic photographs and letters, archival design drawings, and the design theories Wharton articulated in her landmark book, The Decoration of Houses (1897), co-authored with Boston architect Ogden Codman.

In 2003, The von Hess Foundation awarded $100,000 to The Mount to restore the architectural features of the rooms.

"More than any other area in the house, Edith Wharton’s bedroom suite illuminates the author’s character as an individual, interior designer and writer," said Stephanie Copeland, president of The Mount and Edith Wharton Restoration (EWR). "We are extremely grateful for The Richard C. von Hess Foundation’s continued support in making the complete restoration and re-creation of this important suite of rooms possible."

The boudoir and bathroom will be completed by the end of this year, while the bedroom will be completed by year-end 2005. The interior design effort is being spearheaded by EWR’s Interior Restoration Committee, chaired by Trustee Pauline C. Metcalf, and The Mount’s curator, Erica Donnis.

The Mount is focusing efforts on continued restoration of Wharton’s private suite in anticipation of the upcoming 100th anniversary of The House of Mirth. Written in 1905 in her bedroom at The Mount, the book’s critical and popular success gave Wharton the confidence to pursue her writing. The author of over 40 books in 40 years, she was the first woman awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In addition, Wharton was an authority on architecture and interior and garden design. The Decoration of Houses is credited with establishing interior design as a profession in this country.

The Richard C. von Hess Foundation for historic preservation, based in Philadelphia, was formed by the late Richard Craig von Hess a few years before his death in 1997. Von Hess was an artist, collector and art director for the Armstrong Cork Company (now Armstrong World Industries) who shared a love of architecture, gardens and the decorative arts with his late wife Louise Tinsley Steinman. Other projects supported by the Foundation have included the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Walters Art Gallery, Ladew Topiary Gardens, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Governor's Residence in Harrisburg, PA, and the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco.

The Mount

Located in Lenox, Mass., at Route 7 and Plunkett St., The Mount is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., May through October. The estate includes a 42-room mansion, a Georgian Revival stable, three acres of formal gardens and additional acres of scenic woodlands. For more information on visiting The Mount, including details on 2004 exhibitions, lectures and readings, visit www.EdithWharton.org or call (413) 637-1899.