Williamstown, Mass.
Cole Porter home
“Buxton Hill”
1411 Main Street
In 1919, composer Cole Porter (June 9, 1891-1964) married sophisticated divorcee Linda Lee Thomas, a woman eight years his senior. Linda proved a perfect “beard” for her husband, agreeing to separate bedrooms early in the marriage and tolerating his frequent, though always brief, sexual encounters with men. Some rumors suggest Linda may have been queer, too.
The Porters had homes in Los Angeles and New York City before purchasing this estate in the northwest corner of Massachusetts in 1940 as a summer getaway. Cole hated the place at first, complaining that it was too far removed from the social life of Manhattan. Later, he grew to love the sprawling estate, when he discovered he could entertain in the style he enjoyed and accommodate numerous guests in the spacious main house and separate guest cottage. Prospective weekend visitors received a detailed map directing them to Buxton Hill (“down dirt road & up over hill”), complete with a schedule of the best train service from Grand Central.
As his private workplace, Cole used the gatekeeper’s cottage, posting a warning sign saying “No Trespassing.” Here he could work any hour of the day or night without disturbance, and he reportedly wrote much of the score for Kiss Me, Kate there.
Linda Porter died in 1954, and during the remaining 10 years of his life, Cole became a virtual recluse at Buxton Hill. He was embarrassed and incapacitated by the amputation of one of his legs, which was crushed in a riding accident in the 1930s. According to one of his biographers, visitors to Buxton Hill became fewer and fewer because most weekends Porter was drunk and ignored his guests, some of whom dubbed the farm “the torture chamber.”
At Cole’s death, Buxton Hill went to Williams College, but returned to private hands in 1966. It is now a luxury inn, with tennis courts, “the largest private swimming pool in the Berkshires,” and nature trails.
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