Architectural historian Abigail Van Slyck will talk about her latest book, Playhouses and Privilege: The Architecture of Elite Childhood, in which she examines children’s cottages and playhouses built by upper-class families on both sides of the Atlantic. A tea will be served after her presentation. The adult grandchildren of Commodore Vanderbilt have an important role in the story, as they were among the first Americans to embrace a practice that had been pioneered by Queen Victoria, building small, yet habitable structures for the use of their children in Newport, on Long Island, and right here in the Berkshires.  Disarmingly quaint, these charming buildings were nonetheless deeply enmeshed in adult concerns, supporting parental ambitions for their offspring and for themselves.