I Remember Caramoor

In this unusual and lively memoir, author Steven Key Meyers recaptures his early 1970s experience of being a teen-aged underbutler at Caramoor, the great estate in New York's Westchester County famous for its music festival and house museum--virtually an American equivalent to Downton Abbey. With wit and rue, Meyers recounts the charms and challenges of getting to know the house, its high-society history and its staff, both below-stairs and above, at a time when the rhythms of its way of life were already those of a bygone era.

In taking the reader behind the scenes at garden parties, dinner parties, concerts, receptions and house tours at a time of transition, after the founding Walter Tower Rosen and Lucie Bigelow Rosen family has given over the estate to the public benefit, he assesses the gifts and losses of a transformative experience.