The story is set in the late 1920s,
as lumber baron George (Bradley Cooper) struggles under the economic pressures of the impending Great Depression.
This is a tiny hamlet of nineteenth - century settlement, much reduced from its ancient prosperity, yet the house is there, newly built from the ashes of its fiery ruin, Piety Hill, an Italianate pile, which began
as a lumber baron's residence, sank to a refuge for impoverished gentry, and became the seat of a literary man — a history suggestive of larger changes in American society since 1918.
Not exact matches
Railroad access from Chicago made the area a popular summer retreat for the
barons of wealth in
lumber, cattle, oil, steel, cement, manufacturing, and durable goods (e.g., Morton Salt, Wrigley Chewing Gum), with mansions and large homes such
as Stone Manor and Black Point built on the lake from the 1850s, through the heyday of the Roaring 20s, and up...