Great Barrington

The Searles Castle is a romantically imagined castle-style house in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Built in the 1880s, and in the French... chateau-style, it has seven stories and includes a "dungeon" basement. There are 40 rooms containing over 60,000 square feet of floor space, as well as 36 fireplaces. It was commissioned in 1888 by Mary Hopkins, widow of railroad millionaire Mark Hopkins. She married Edward Francis Searles, who had designed the interior, while the castle was being built. Hopkins died in 1891, but Searles maintained the castle until his death in 1920. After his death, the structure was used as a private girls' school for 30 years, then passed through various owners and was used as a storage area and conference center. Since the mid-1980s it has housed John Dewey Academy, a school for troubled teens, which put the castle on the market in 2007. The $15 million asking price, and the elaborate and romantic architecture, attracted some press coverage of the listing.
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Lauren Ambrose is an American film, television, and stage actress. She is best known for playing Claire Fisher on the HBO funeral drama series Six... Feet Under. Ambrose was born Lauren Anne D'Ambruoso in New Haven, Connecticut. She is the daughter of Anne , an interior designer, and Frank D'Ambruoso, a caterer. She is of Italian descent on her father's side and German, English, and Irish on her mother's. Ambrose attended Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Connecticut, Wilbur Cross High School, High School in the Community, and the ACES Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven. She is also a trained opera singer who studied voice and opera at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. Ambrose also sings New Orleans-flavored ragtime with the seven-piece combo Lauren Ambrose and the Leisure Class. Ambrose has been married to professional photographer Sam Handel of Needham, MA since September 2001. They have a son, Orson and currently live in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Ambrose began her career in New York theater, mainly in Off-Broadway productions.
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Hamish Linklater is an American actor. He is best known as Matthew in the CBS sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine. He is the son of dramatic... vocal trainer Kristin Linklater. Linklater was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, to Scottish-born Kristin Linklater, Professor of Theatre and Chair of the Acting Division at Columbia University and a renowned teacher of vocal technique, and Jim Cormeny. A single mother, Kristin Linklater raised her son partly in the Berkshires, where she was a founder of the Shakespeare & Company drama troupe. Her son was eight years old when he began doing small Shakespearean roles. Linklater attended the Commonwealth School in Boston, and Amherst College. His grandfather, Eric Linklater, was a noted Scottish novelist of part Swedish origin and one of the founders of the Scottish National Party. One uncle, Magnus Linklater, is a noted Scottish journalist, and another is writer and historian, Andro Linklater author of amongst many other books, 'Measuring America'. While first establishing himself on the stage, he made his big screen debut in 2000's Groove.
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Massachusetts , officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. Massachusetts is the 7th least extensive, but the 14th most populous and the 3rd most densely populated of the 50 United States. The... state features two separate metropolitan areas – the eastern Boston metropolitan area and the western Springfield metropolitan area. Approximately two thirds of the state's population lives in Greater Boston, most of which is either urban or suburban. Western Massachusetts features one urban area – the Knowledge Corridor along the Connecticut River – and a mix of college towns and rural areas. Massachusetts is the most populous of the six New England states and has the US's sixth highest GDP per capita. Massachusetts has played a significant historical, cultural, and commercial role in American history. Plymouth was the site of the colony founded in 1620 by the Pilgrims, passengers of the Mayflower.
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