October 14, 2008 The Mount may fall victim to foreclosure Play video

(Greg Wayland, NECN) - "On the slope overlooking the dark waters and densely wooded shores of Laurel Lake we built a spacious and dignified house to which we gave the name of my great-grandfather's place, The Mount."

Edith Wharton -- writing of that grand Berkshires mansion in Lenox, Mass which she called home from 1902 to 1911.

Edith Wharton, who died in 1937 at the age of 75, wrote, among other things, the age of innocence, a tale of turn of the century New York aristocracy from which a celebrated 1993 Martin Scorsese film was made, featuring Daniel Day Lewis, Wynona Ryder and Michelle Pfeiffer.

Many people argue - I think can make the argument that Edith Wharton remains one of our most important authors. And The Mount remains one of America's most important author's homes. But The Mount's trustees are struggling to keep it from falling victim to these hard times.

We are presently in the last month of a six-month standstill that we were able to negotiate with our creditors. The Mount is facing foreclosure unless it makes up a three million dollar deficit by the end of October.

This is a sorrow to those re-visiting the Mount this weekend, or encountering it for the first time.

Financial troubles did not stop an armada of vintage, elegant English carriages from coming to the mount this weekend. It is the kind of on-going event, along with a recently -relocated Shakespearean theatre company , for which the

Each carriage was painstakingly restored . Each passing by the sprawling stables that, like Edith Wharton's sprawling mansion, are undergoing lengthy, expensive restoration.

This coach was built in the 1886 era and was made for the Mount family in England and has been passed from three members of the family, sold out of the family and is now owned by Misty Rigley Miller.

Hundreds came to feast on these sights and sounds of the lost opulence of the gilded age Nearly twenty five thousand visited the mount last year.

They are the kind of people who contributed fourteen million dollars during the nineties to restore the mount's spacious., elegant interior .... And its famous gardens. And to purchase Ethan Wharton's extensive library from a European book dealer.

But all that was not enough to meet the mount's operating expenses. Hence, the three million dollar debt.

Gordon Travers is a New York City executive and chairman of The Mount's board of trustees.

And the thought was that, given how much money had been able to be raised that borrowing from a bank to bridge a major fund-raising effort to provide for operating expenses and an endowment eventually was a pretty safe bet, given how much money had been raised. But it turned out not to be the case.

We came to the conclusion in the past year that we could not make it just as an historic house museum.

There is a plan now to save the Mount. A plan that would remind everyone who came here that this was once the home of a writer and a place where writer's were welcome.

That it would be the home of the Wharton Center for the Written Word.

A writing center -- that would host an-income-producing summer writer's festival and other events all year long, supplementing income from a stream of year-long visitors.

We will have writing programs and workshops for adults. We hope to have creative writing programs for school children, particularly I'd say north of sixth graders, junior high kids, middle school kids and college kids.

And Travers says the mount's new board of trustees consists of business-savvy executives who have cut operating expenses by thirty-five per cent and are currently restructuring the mount's debt.

And so the home of the author of the age of innocence may find a way to survive in the age of foreclosure.