Summits in style
The former Weeks Estate, now a state park, atop Prospect Mountain in northern New Hampshire
Text from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocalProv.com
There seems to have been something of a fad among rich New Englanders in the first decades of the last century to build mansions, mostly as summer places, on the top of mountains, despite the obvious inconveniences. There’s Beech Hill Farm, in Dublin, N.H. (once used as a fancy drying-out spa); Castle in the Clouds, now a museum, on Lee Mountain, Moultonborough, N.H., and the Weeks Estate, which includes a mansion museum, on the top of Prospect Mountain, in Weeks State Park, in Lancaster, N.H. I visited the park the other week with a friend connected by marriage to the Weeks family.
The house, built by Lancaster native John Wingate Weeks (1860-1926), an investment-business mogul and important Massachusetts and national political and government figure, has a treasure trove of historical information. The main house, finished in stucco, somewhat eccentrically combines the Tudor and Spanish Mediterranean Revival styles. The interior is quirky too, with a huge top room with a pool table in the middle surmounting what had been remarkably small bedrooms below. And of course there are antlers on the wall.
The views from the estate and on the road up are spectacular.
Just nosing around New England can provide lots of pleasant surprises.
Castle in the Clouds