Armstrong
Chamber Concerts
Lenox Town Hall, Lenox (413) 637-3646
Using world-renowned musicians, the Armstrong group offers
their unique programs of musical enrichment. The Armstrong
Chamber Concerts season runs traditionally from October through
June. |
Becket
Arts Center
Route 8, Becket (413) 528-5471
Located in an historic 1850's Greek Revival School, the
center features 8 revolving exhibitions of Berkshire artists and
20 different art workshops taught by local artists. Topics from
basket making, to writing, to painting and more. Children's
workshops for ages 6 to 12 too. |
Berkshire
Botanical Garden
Rtes 102 & 183, Stockbridge (413) 298-3926
Founded in 1934, the garden is one of the oldest
horticultural centers in the U.S. featuring over 200 varieties
of day lilies, spring daffodils, and flowering crab apples. Its
greenhouses are filled with succulents, and there's a gorgeous
primrose walkway and an assortment of rock gardens. |
Berkshire
Theater Festival
Main Street, Stockbridge (413) 298-5536
This festival boasts the 2nd-oldest summer theater in
America. Originally known as the Berkshire Playhouse, first
opened its doors in 1928. Since then, many of America's most
noted thespians have graced the stage to perform everything from
Wilder to Helllman to Williams. The theater's cumulative cast
has included the likes of James Cagney, Lionel Barrymore, Lilian
Gish, Kathryn Hepburn, Michael Keaton, Gene Hackman, Dustin
Hoffman, and Al Pacino.
|
Chesterwood
4 Williamsville Road (off Rte. 183), Stockbridge (413)
298-3579
The 122-acre Chesterwood, located just minutes from
downtown Stockbridge, is where sculptor Daniel Chester French
(1850-1931) spent his summers in the 1920's. French is most
noted for having sculpted the Lincoln Memorial statue. French
also sculpted the famous Minute Man statue in Concord,
and the working models he used for the Minute Man and the
Lincoln Memorial are both on display at Chesterwood, his
combination vacation home and studio. |
Edith
Wharton's The Mount
2 Plunkett Street, Lenox (413) 637-1899
Novelist Edith Wharton
loved architecture as much as she did writing, and that shows
in every detail of her summer home, which she affectionately
named "The Mount."
The Mount is fashioned after a 17th-century English
estate, but features a French courtyard and an Italianate
terrace. The garden's resplendent colors and seamless design
once prompted the author to proclaim, ""Decidedly,
I'm a better landscape gardener than novelist." The Mount
is open to the public from May through October and will
celebrate its 100th birthday during the summer of 2002.
|
Jacob's
Pillow Dance Festival
George Carter Road, Becket, MA (413) 243-0745.
Pre-festival hours (May 15 to June 17): Monday to Friday,
10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Festival hours (June 18 to August 27):
Mondays and Tuesdays from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Wednesdays to
Saturdays from 10:00 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., and Sundays from 11:30
a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
The oldest dance festival in America, The Pillow (the name
given to the festival's outdoor performance venue) was designed
by Joseph Franz, the renowned architect responsible for
designing the Boston Symphony Orchestra's Tanglewood Shed. the
Pillow attracts elite artists from the United States, France,
Japan, Ireland, Africa, Sweden, Brazil, Spain, Canada, and The
Netherlands. Each summer the Pillow showcases everything from
ballet to Flamenco to contemporary gyrations set to hip-hop.
|
Merwin
House
14 Main Street, Stockbridge (413) 298-4703
This late Federal-era brick house was built in 1825, just
above the Housatonic River in one of the most picturesque spots
in Massachusetts. The William and Elizabeth Doane family
purchased the home in 1875 and proceeded to turn it into one of
Stockbridge's more charming summer homes. The home is now the
property of the Society for the Preservation of New England
Antiquities. It is open for seasonal tours. |
 Mission
House
Main Street, Stockbridge (413) 298-32339
John Sergeant, the first missionary to the Stockbridge
Indians, built this simple frame house for his bride, Abigail,
in 1739. The home's period furnishings include a bookcase and
chairs belonging to Sergeant. Herbs and bright perennials grow
in the colonial garden, and visitors are welcomed to the house
by a striking Connecticut doorway that, according to legend, had
to be hauled to Stockbridge by a team of oxen. |
Naumkeag
House and Gardens
Prospect Hill Road, Stockbridge, MA (413) 298-3239
This 26-room gabled mansion offers visitors an insightful
peak into the gilded age and features a collection of gardens
that rank amongst America's most beautiful. The home was
designed in 1886 by noted architect Stanford White. Landscape
architect Fletcher Steel helped create the gardens. Joseph
Hodges Choate, a noted attorney and an ambassador to England,
turned Naumkeag into his summer home towards the end of the 19th
century, and the rooms today remain graciously appointed with
relics from the Choate family's affluent lifestyle. |
Pleasant
Valley Wildlife Sanctuary
West Mountain Road, Lenox (413) 637-0320
The 1,500-acre sanctuary features 7 miles of scenic trails
and a museum open from May to October and The forest, brooks,
beaver ponds, meadows, and slopes of beautiful Lenox Mountain
all complement one another in creating a well-balanced
ecosystem. The sanctuary's vast landscape also features a
hemlock gorge, a limestone cobble, and a hummingbird garden. |
Richmond
Performance Series
Route 41, Richmond (413) 298-2837
Mark Ludwig, a violist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra,
serves as artistic director of this performance series, which
involves providing opportunities for music students to share the
stage with professionals. Ludwig's BSO colleagues often perform
as featured artists. |
Ventfort
Hall
104 Walker Street, Lenox
This 1893 Elizabethan Revival mansion was designed by Rotch
and Tilden for Sarah Spencer Morgan and her husband, George Hale
Morgan. An exterior of brick and Longmeadow redstone creates a
somber and formidable look befitting the Bostonian aristocracy
that flocked to the Berkshires in the late 19th century to build
mansions that they referred to as their "summer cottages." |
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