Historic New England | Merwin House
During my adventure through the Berkshires in June 2023, I visited Merwin House, a 19th century property in Stockbridge, MA operated by Historic New England. First constructed around 1825, the house came to fame because of its final owner, fully named Marie Vipont DeRiviere Doane Perry Webb Merwin, who went by the name Vipont. The house serves not only as a museum but also as a meeting place for the Housatonic Valley Association (HVA). This organization monitors water quality for the Housatonic Valley area in the Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York.
Early Years of Merwin House
Local carpenter Francis Dresser constructed the red brick Federal style house in 1825. He married Connecticut schoolteacher, Clarissa Dowd, in 1833, and the couple had four children. Unfortunately, Dresser died in 1847 after fourteen years of marriage. By 1875, the wealthy Doane family purchased the home as a summer vacation getaway from their regular residence in New York City. Vipont was the younger of two daughters in the family, which also included father William, mother Elizabeth, and sister Elizabeth. The family added a wooden, Shingle style section of the house, which is currently painted deep blue and not open to tours, as a resident lives here.
The Vipont Years
Vipont lived in the home at least part time for ninety years until her death 1965. Her life was remarkably different than other women of her generation. Vipont had three marriages but no children. In 1903, she married her first husband, Stockbridge resident Newman Kershaw Perry, who served in the Navy on the first USS Bennington. The boat had been decommissioned, then recommissioned, and given a faulty boiler. When the boiler exploded in 1905, sixty-six sailors died, including Vipont’s husband, who was only twenty-three years old. Vipont secretly remind four years later in 1909 to Edward Webb and received a divorce in Reno, NV four years later in 1913, as the city was then known as the “divorce capital of the world” for its loose laws.
With enough family money that she did not need to work or marry, Vipont became a frequent traveler, horseback rider, and sports player. She did marry Edward Payson Merwin in 1923, giving Merwin House its name. However, the couple called the property “Tranquility”, as it gave them a respite from the busyness of New York City, where Merwin had a seat on the stock exchange. The couple moved to Tranquility permanently after Vipont’s mother died in 1932, but Merwin died four years later in 1936. Vipont lived in the house with her employees Catherine and Albert Martinengo for the next twenty-nine years, continuing to travel and enjoy life. She left the property with an endowment to HNE.
The house itself is a fairly standard building for the time period. The objects in the house are more likely to be antiques that Vipont liked rather than items of significance for her family. The dining room, now used as the meeting room for HVA, is filled with photographs of Vipont with her many friends on adventures. Other highlights include a an oil painting of the Doane family when Vipont was a baby, a sculpture of turtles, and a tall clock near the stairs.
Merwin House Today
Tickets are standard HNE small house pricing: $10 for adults, $9 for seniors, $5 for students, and $0 for Stockbridge residents and HNE members (like me!) The house is only open a handful of days a year with tours on the hour from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Tour last for forty-five minutes or less. Like most historic house museums, Merwin House is only accessible by stairs and cannot be visited by people using wheelchairs or with limited mobility. However, this house does offer an extensive virtual tour. Visitors can park on the street, in the Merwin House driveway, or in the lot across the street from the cemetery about a quarter mile down a paved sidewalk.
Abby Epplett’s Rating System
Experience: 8/10
Accessibility: 6/10