On October 19th, over seventy guests attended a lecture and reception hosted by the Interiors Committee of The Mount, the National Historic Landmark home in Lenox, MA, designed by American author Edith Wharton. The event was held at the Headquarters House of The National Society of the Colonial Dames in New York City. Michael Simon, a Mount trustee who heads Michael Simon Interiors, Inc., was the evening’s featured speaker. Using musical excerpts from Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story” and slides of several of his design projects, Simon, who was a young protégé of Stephen Sondheim, demonstrated how his early training as a composer influenced his work as a designer. Many of the guests had strong backgrounds in either musical theory, interior design or both.

Guests included Susan Wissler, Executive Director of The Mount; Members of The Mount’s Interiors Committee and Board of Trustees: Pauline C. Metcalf, Michael Simon, Kate Wharton, and Gigi Wilmers; Members of The Decorators Club: Diane De Angelis, Janice Langrall, Pauline C. Metcalf, and Carolyn Sollis; Canterbury Choral Society Artistic Director & Conductor, Jonathan De Vries, and a number of Canterbury singers; architectural historian Kathleen Bennett; Dennis Kahn, an avid collector of Edith Wharton first editions, and his wife, Andrea; Liz O’Brien, owner of a well-known antiques shop on the upper east side of New York; and friends.

Attendance at The Mount continues to grow, thanks to an expanded and increasingly diverse array of cultural programming. In 2015, The Mount raised nearly $4 million to retire all of its outstanding debt. It is currently undertaking the restoration of its historic Stable, towards which over $750,000 has already been secured. This event establishes an ongoing fund to aid the re-creation of the original style and ambiance of The Mount’s interiors.