The Butler's Pantry, Original "Vent Fort," and the Silver Safe

As you walk down the Long Hall toward the Billiard Room, the door on the right after the Dining Room was the Butler's Pantry, which has since been rebuilt into a modern kitchen. Due to the fact that it is a modern kitchen, it is not permitted for guests to enter this space at any time. 

In the Morgan’s day, food was cooked in the kitchen in the basement and sent up to the Butler's Pantry on the dumbwaiter or brought up the back stairway, and then served by a footman into the Dining Room through the swinging door. 

In the 1950s, when the house was operating as Festival House Inn, this area was converted to a "pizza kitchen." An extension was created on the side of the house to increase the amount of space in the kitchen as it is a small area to begin with. When the Ventfort Hall Association purchased the property in 1997, this addition was removed and the exterior of the house was restored to its original brickwork. 

Just past the Butler's Pantry is an exhibit on the original Vent Fort, which was the home on this site before Sarah Morgan purchased the property in 1891. 

This home was owned by Elizabeth and Ogden Haggerty, who had two daughters named Annie and Clemence. Annie met handsome Bostonian Robert Gould Shaw at a pre-opera dinner party at his sister's house in New York City. Shaw was the colonel in charge of leading the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, which consisted of 1,007 black soldiers and 37 white officers, making it the second all-black regiment of the Union Army during the Civil War, and the first in Massachusetts. 

On May 2, 1863, Annie Haggerty married Robert Gould Shaw. 77 days later on July 18th, Shaw was killed in the battle of Fort Wagner in South Carolina alongside many members of his regiment. Robert was 26 and Annie was then widowed at 28; she never remarried after that and lived with her family in Europe increasingly as the years went on. 

When the Morgan family purchased this property, they moved the original Vent Fort home across the street and renamed it Bel Air.  

Annie Haggerty rented Bel Air, which was originally her childhood home Vent Fort, for her last Lenox summer in 1906. Bel Air was lost in a fire in 1965, its last active use as Berkshire Country Day School.

As you continue toward the Billiard Room, take a look to the left just before you enter. Here is the Morgan family silver safe. 

This walk-in fireproof safe served to store primarily silver; there were drawers for flat silver, shelves for trays, tea services, and candlesticks. Note the nearness of the silver safe to the Butler’s Pantry just down the hall. The silver safe would also be able to keep other valuables safe such as important documents, as this was one of only fireproof areas in the house. The cabinetry is original. While once protected by three doors, only the inner safe door and the regular wooden door remain. Hinges remain in between the two where a third door, likely with a large lock, would have been.