Victorian Summer: The Historic Houses of Belle Haven Park, Greenwich, Connecticut

At the height of the Gilded Age, America’s wealthiest families began to cluster in Newport, Southampton, Bar Harbor, and Tuxedo Park. In these idyllic locales they built luxurious summer “cottages” away from the grit and grime of New York or Boston or Philadelphia. The Belle Haven peninsula, in Greenwich, Connecticut, is home to one of the first and most spectacular residence parks in the country. Its development occurred rapidly, and between 1884 and 1894 Belle Haven Park was transformed f...