The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home [Paperback]

George Howe Colt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2004

Faced with the sale of the century-old family summer house on Cape Cod where he had spent forty-two summers, George Howe Colt returned for one last stay with his wife and children. This poignant tribute to the eleven-bedroom jumble of gables, bays, and dormers that watched over weddings, divorces, deaths, anniversaries, birthdays, breakdowns, and love affairs for five generations interweaves Colt's final visit with memories of a lifetime of summers. Run-down yet romantic, the Big House stands not only as a cherished reminder of summer's ephemeral pleasures but also as a powerful symbol of a vanishing way of life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The epicenter of the Colt family is the Big House, built in 1903 on Wings Neck, a deserted strip of Cape Cod. It's not only an architectural gem but a device to chronicle family, local history and the culture of Boston Brahmins-and it accomplishes that task with charm, style and solid research. For 42 summers, Colt traveled from winter homes across the U.S. to partake in this magical place. It's where he learned to swim and play tennis, and where he kissed his first girl. Indeed, the Big House has seen five weddings, four divorces, parties, anniversaries and love affairs. The Colts, a once venerable tribe, had lost their money-"it is not wealth so much as former wealth that defines Old Money families"-but were determined to keep their ancestral home. Time may have marched on, but the Big House refused to cooperate: "Everything in this house breathes of the past." Gilbert & Sullivan sheet music, rotary telephones and ancient globes grace its interiors. Yet all is not perfect in this palace by the sea. Colt, like playwright A.J. Gurney, is adept at exposing the dark underbelly of WASP restraint, recording the mental illness, alcoholism and despair that have plagued his family. His one comfort? The Big House. This love letter to the past is a quiet delight.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The New Yorker

In 1903, the author's great-grandfather, a Boston Brahmin named Edward W. Atkinson, built his family a house on Cape Cod, at Wings Neck, the last undeveloped peninsula overlooking Buzzards Bay. The Big House, as this multi-storied conglomeration of gables, dormers, and bays came to be called, included "eleven bedrooms, seven fireplaces, and a warren of closets, cupboards, and crannies that four generations of Wings Neck children have used for games of Sardines." It was also an expensive firetrap with sixty-seven windows in need of attention, leaking roofs, wildlife procreating in its walls, and no indoor shower. In 1992, after agonized debate, the family decided to put it on the market. Colt's account, like the house that lies at its center, is full of surprises and contains more than seems humanly possible: a family memoir, a brief history of the Cape, an investigation of nostalgia, a catalogue of local fauna, a study of class, and a meditation on the privileges and burdens of the past.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (June 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 074324964X
• ISBN-13: 978-0743249645
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (75 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #564,638 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

68 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, Thoughtful, Heartbreaking, December 29, 2003

By 

crazyforgems (Wellesley, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home (Hardcover)

"The Big House" is a big piece of work by George Howe Colt.
For a century, "The Big House," an eleven bedroom architectural gem on Cape Cod, has been in the Atkinson/Colt family. At the start of the book, Colt describes taking his young family to the house for what may be the last summer. Alas, the extended family can no longer afford to keep the home and it must be sold.

The house has served as a center of gravity for this family, a place which pulls them back each summer to live out graceful and simple Boston Brahim traditions. The house also serves as a metaphor for the fading fortunes of this once wealthy, once socially prominent family whose entire caste-the Brahmins of Boston--has become irrelevant.

Through the prism of the house and its meaning to his family, Colt also delves into his family's history of mental illness, of marriages that become estranged, of boys that start out as golden children and end up tarnished old men.

He also recounts his own story. He began his adult life as a young Brahmin with disdain for his heritage. Now in mid-life and a New Yorker, he is deeply proud of the many traits (e.g., thrift, reverence for family) bred deep in his bones.

I would recommend this book to those who gravitate towards serious memoirs and thoughtful accounts of profound issues (e.g., meaning of family). It is a beautiful read.

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars big house revisited, August 22, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home (Hardcover)

This is a marvelous book. It is not just the story of a summer house, and of the family that owned it for it's first hundred years, It is a book about what Aristocracy means, about letting go, about accepting oblivion.
There is only one draw back to the book : No maps, No family tree, No photographs. The maps you can buy, the family tree you can draw yourself as you read the book, but you need the photographs. Especially when there are so many descriptions of photos in the book.
I suggest the publishing of a new " Special Edition" of the book, with reproductions of the original blueprint for The Big House, and photos of it and the successive generations of Forbes-Atkinsons- Colts -Singers who summered in it.

45 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wistful and nostalgic. Beautiful!, July 15, 2003

By 

Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home (Hardcover)

The Big House on Cape Cod was built more than a century ago by the author's great-grandfather. It weathered 2 world wars, joy and tragedy, the changing seasons and fortunes of two families, and the transition from the simpler life-styles of past times to our own modern `very fast is still too slow' culture. When the house becomes financially untenable for family members to maintain, Colt returns for one last visit before it goes on sale...and there the story, a touching and wistful memoir, begins. Don't miss this lovely book.