Yuki Kato, Rotch & Tilden Architects, and the Lenox Tub Parade

Immediately as you take a left out of the Dining Room, the left wall in the Long Hall contains an exhibit about Yuki Kato, wife of George Denison Morgan.

The middle child of Sarah Morgan, George Denison Morgan was a bit rebellious and scandalous -- he was often caught having affairs with many women and was supposed to graduate from Yale in 1894 but dropped out. He had been engaged, however upon hearing about George's many affairs, his fiancee broke off the engagement. His family decided to send him on a tour of the world in the hopes that he would return to America and want to settle down, finish his education, get a job, have a nice family, and everything could work out. However, that’s not what ended up happening…

George Denison Morgan met a young Yuki Kato during a visit to a geisha house in 1901. Yuki and George were married on January 20, 1904, in Yokohama, Japan. The photo on the wall shows her and George at the wedding; Yuki is in the middle wearing the lighter colored kimono and George is the gentleman on the left side of the photo. While Yuki’s family was in attendance, George’s was not. They traveled, living in Paris and Japan. George died in Seville, Spain in 1915. She returned to Japan in 1938. After simplifying her life and becoming a member of the Catholic church, she passed away in 1963 in Japan.

On the wall opposite the portrait of Yuki, there is an exhibit on the architects of Ventfort Hall: Arthur Rotch and George Tilden.

Ventfort Hall was one of 75 Berkshire “cottages” built during the Gilded Age. Ours was designed by the architects Arthur Rotch and George Tilden, who were a firm out of Boston. They did numerous houses in the New England area, 5 of which were here in the Lenox area during the Gilded Age. Although less than half of the original 75 cottages remain, the five Rotch and Tilden houses all still stand today. Most are privately owned; Ventfort Hall is the only house open to the public as a historic house museum.

Heading back up the Long Hall will bring you into the Great Hall. Across from the staircase to go upstairs is the bright and feminine Salon.

The photos on display are from the annual Lenox Tub Parade (circa 1904). Beginning in the early 1890s, it was common practice in the midst of September for all of the women to put on their best outfits, dress up their carriages in the prettiest flowers from the summer season, and parade around the town of Lenox to show off a bit at the end of the summer season and beginning of the fall season. In the photographs, the woman holding the whip and in charge of driving the carriage is Josephine Perry Morgan, wife of Sarah’s oldest son Junius. The little ones are her children; the woman sitting by her side is Sarah's daughter, Caroline Lucy Morgan (who never married or had children of her own).