Blantyre is one of the grand Berkshire "cottages" put up during the Gilded Age in Western Massachusetts. Built in 1902 by Robert Paterson, a wealthy New York City businessman, it is named for his mother's ancestral home in Scotland. After Paterson's death, his widow sold it in 1925, whereupon it became, among other things, a clubhouse for a golf course that had been built there. In 1938, Hollywood film director D.W. Griffith purchased the property, envisioning it might become a movie studio although that idea was never realized.