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| Frank O'Connor Painting |
On page 510 of Atlas Shrugged (of the paperback Signet edition), Dagney Taggart decides to withdraw to a family lodge in Woodstock, which Rand describes as being in the Berkshires. I checked Google Maps and could not find a Woodstock, Massachusetts, although there is a Woodstock, Connecticut and a Woodstock, Vermont.
Rand's husband, Frank O'Connor, was an artist and a member of the Art Students League from 1955 to 1966. The Art Students League opened the Woodstock, New York School of Art in 1906 and discontinued its Woodstock summer program in 1979. According to the Woodstock School of Art's website, a local not-for-profit corporation, the Woodstock School of Art, had taken over the building complex in 1968. I recall when the Art Students League was housed in the Woodstock School of Art building back around 1970. Ironically, the building was built by one of the New Deal's make-work programs, the National Youth Administration. It is currently listed in the national and New York registers of historic places.
My guess is that Rand knew about Woodstock, New York from her husband's involvement with the Art Students League. I'm unclear as to why she decided to say that Woodstock was in the Berkshires. Often, New Yorkers bunch together provincial locales. Alternatively, she may not have wanted to give credit to one of the birthplaces of American communism.*
*From Wikipedia:
The Communist International, to which the UCPA and the CPA both pledged their allegiance, sought to end duplication, competition and hostility between the two communist parties and insisted on a merger into a single organization. That was eventually effected in May 1921 at a secret gathering held at the Overlook Mountain House hotel, near Woodstock, New York. The resulting unified group was also known as the Communist Party of America, which morphed into the Workers Party of America (December 1921) and changed its name in 1925 to Workers (Communist) Party and to Communist Party USA in 1929.
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