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The Berkshires Attractions
15 Results
- Historic Site
Arrowhead
Herman Melville bought this 18th-century house in 1850 and lived here until 1863. It was during this time that he wrote Moby-Dick. Though very little of the furnishings are original (most were sold in Melville's day to pay off debts), the guides do an excellent job describing what…Pittsfield
- Park/Garden
Berkshire Botanical Garden
These 24 acres of flower beds, ponds, and vegetable and herb gardens are an inviting destination for strollers and picnickers. The first weekend in October features a harvest festival.Stockbridge - Museum
Berkshire Museum
It began in 1903 as the "Museum of Natural History and Art," words chiseled in stone above the entrance. The holdings bounce from Babylonian cuneiform tablets to tanks of live fish to archaeological artifacts like a delicate necklace from Thebes dating to at least 1500 B.C. Included…Pittsfield - Historic Site
Chesterwood
Sculptor Daniel Chester French, best known for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., used this estate as his summer home for more than 30 years. His Minute Man statue at the Old North Bridge in Concord, completed in 1875 when the artist was 25 years old, launched his highly…Stockbridge - Historic Site
Frelinghuysen Morris House & Studio
Built on 46 acres next to the Tanglewood property in the early 1940s, this Bauhaus-influenced house was the home of abstract artists Suzy Frelinghuysen and George L. K. Morris. Their chosen style was Cubism, which they pursued long after it had been abandoned by better-known…Lenox & Tanglewood - Historic Site
Hancock Shaker Village
The serenity of the setting, among low hills and meadows, and the carefully considered placement of the buildings and their relationships with each other, are the essence of Shaker philosophy, "Order is Heaven's law." Twenty restored buildings make up the village, which explores the…Pittsfield - Museum
MASS MoCA
A lot of excitement and anticipation surrounded this ambitious project, the conversion of an empty 27-building textile factory into a center for the arts. Even before its official opening, it had hosted performances by David Byrne, Patti Smith, and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.…North Adams - Historic Site
Mission House
The Rev. John Sergeant had the most benevolent, if paternalistic, of intentions: He sought to build a house among the members of the Housatonic tribe, hoping to convert them to "civilized" (that is, English) ways through proximity to his godly self and his small band of settlers. The…Stockbridge - Historic Site
Naumkeag
In 1886, Stanford White designed this 26-room summer house for Joseph Hodge Choate, who served as U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James. The client dubbed it Naumkeag, a Native American name for a pond in Salem, Massachusetts, his childhood home (Choate thought the word meant…Stockbridge - Museum
Norman Rockwell Museum
This striking building opened in 1993, at a cost of $4.4 million, to house the works of Stockbridge's favorite son. The illustrator used both his neighbors and the town where he lived to tell stories about an America now rapidly fading from memory. Most of Rockwell's paintings…Stockbridge - Historic Site
Santarella
With no obligatory historic homes or museums to see in Lee, visitors often make the short excursion to a fairy-tale structure called Santarella, known by most as the "Gingerbread House." Conical turrets top towers, while the shingled roof rolls like waves on the ocean. It served as a…Lee/Becket - Museum
The Clark
Within these walls are canvases by Renoir (34 of them), Degas, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Pissarro, and Corot, their predecessor. Look for Turner's splendid seascape, Rockets and Blue Lights. Also on display is the famed Degas sculpture "Little Dancer", a signature work of the…Williamstown - Historic Site
The Mount, Edith Wharton Restoration
Wharton, who won a Pulitzer for her novel The Age of Innocence, was singularly equipped to write that deftly detailed examination of the upper classes of the Gilded Age and the first decades of the 20th century. She was born into that stratum of society in 1862 and traveled in the…Lenox & Tanglewood - Historic home/museum
Ventfort Hall
The painstaking renovation of this Gilded Age mansion is almost complete and visitors are welcomed to view to this mpressive “cottage”. The Elizabethan Revival manse was originally constructed at the behest of a sister of J. P. Morgan in 1893. One of its most striking features is the… - Museum
Williams College Museum of Art
The second leg of Williamstown's two prominent art repositories exists in large part thanks to the college's collection of almost 400 paintings by the American modernists Maurice and Charles Prendergast. The museum also has works by Gris, Léger, Whistler, Picasso, Warhol, and Hopper.…Williamstown
The Berkshires Shopping
Sheffield
Antiquing -- Sheffield lays justifiable claim to the title of "Antiques Capital of the Berkshires" -- no small feat, given what seems to be an effort by half the population of the Berkshires to sell collectibles, oddities, and true antiques to the other half. These are canny, knowledgeable dealers who know exactly what they have, so expect high quality and few bargains.
Darr Antiques and Interiors, 34 S. Main St. (tel. 413/229-7773), specializes in 18th- and 19th-century English and American furniture. Farther north along Route 7, Dovetail Antiques, 440 Sheffield Plain (tel. 413/229-2628), features American clocks. Continuing along Route 7, on the left at the edge of town, is Susan Silver (tel. 413/229-8169), with meticulously restored 18th- and 19th-century English library furniture (desks, reading stands) and French accessories.
There are at least two dozen other dealers along this route. Most of them stock the free directory of the Berkshire County Antiques Dealers Association, which lists member dealers from Sheffield to Cheshire and across the border in Connecticut and New York. Look, too, for the pamphlet called The Antique Hunter's Guide to Route 7.
Great Barrington
Head straight for Railroad Street, the town's best shopping strip. Start on the corner with Main Street, at T. P. Saddle Blanket & Trading Co. (tel. 413/528-6500). An unlikely emporium that looks as if it was lifted whole from the Rockies, it's packed with boots, hats, Indian jewelry, blankets, and jars of salsa.
Mistral's, 6 Railroad St. (tel. 413/528-1618), stocks Gallic tableware, linens, fancy foods, and furniture. Church Street Trading Company, 4 Railroad St. (tel. 413/528-6120), defies easy categorization, with walking sticks, dog collars, and candles all on display. Primary wares are sturdily stylish North Country sweaters, shirts, and pants.
The Chef's Shop, 31 Railroad St. (tel. 413/528-0135), features a bounty of gadgets and cookbooks, as well as cooking classes. Across the street, La Pace, 313 Main St. (tel. 413/528-1888), is an upmarket housewares store with an Italian tilt.
Stay on Route 7, going north of the center, and you'll pass a large mall with an anchoring Kmart. In that unlikely location is one of the best bookstores in the area: The Bookloft, Barrington Plaza (tel. 413/528-1521; www.thebookloft.com).
Lenox & Tanglewood
The Bookstore, 11 Housatonic St. (tel. 413/637-3390; www.bookstoreinlenox.com), with author signings and poetry readings, helps fill a yawning gap in the Berkshires, which are curiously short on comprehensive bookstores. Those in pursuit of art and antiques, on the other hand, cannot easily exhaust the possibilities. For fashion-forward clothing for men and women, much of it Italian-made, check in at Casablanca, 21 Housatonic St. (tel. 413/637-2680). L.L.Bean, it isn't. Out on Route 7, heading toward Pittsfield, serious cooks should watch for Different Drummer's Kitchen, 374 Pittsfield Rd. (tel. 413/637-0606; www.differentdrummerskitchen.com).
Williamstown
In the small downtown shopping district, Library Antiques, 70 Spring St. (tel. 413/458-3436; www.libraryantiques.com), is filled with a wealth of English chess sets, African carvings, Peruvian alpaca sweaters, Polish stoneware, and antique American fishing lures and creels. Open daily. Farther south on Route 7, Saddleback Antiques, 1395 Cold Spring Rd. (tel. 413/458-5852), features country, wicker, and Victorian furniture, and is open every day except Wednesday.
The Berkshires Nightlife
Great Barrington
A grand downtown cinema, the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, 14 Castle St. (tel. 413/644-9040; www.mahaiwe.org), has been restored to some of its century-old glory, and it stages a surprising variety of music, dance, and drama. The Aston Magna Festival features classical music performed on period instruments. Concerts are held at irregular intervals throughout the year at St. James Church, Main Street and Taconic Avenue (tel. 800/875-7156 or 413/528-3595; www.astonmagna.org).
Live jazz is often presented at the Castle Street Cafe, and the Union Bar & Grill brings in DJs weekends. Club Helsinki, 284 Main St. (tel. 413/528-3394; www.clubhelsinkiweb.com), is a more regular music venue, with as many as 6 nights a week of rock, pop, bluegrass, reggae, and other forms throughout the year; Norah Jones has played there several times. The Triplex Cinema, 70 Railroad St. (tel. 413/528-8886), shows a mixed bag of independent and foreign flicks as well as major studio releases.
Pittsfield
Pittsfield on Stage -- The Berkshire Opera Company, 297 North St. (tel. 413/442-9955; www.berkshireopera.org), stages its June productions at the Mahaiwe Theatre in Great Barrington, and its July and August productions of both established and new operas at the Koussevitzky Arts Center of Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield. That venue is also employed by the Albany Berkshire Ballet, 116 Fenn St. (tel. 413/445-5382; www.berkshireballet.org), with up to 14 performances of two ballets from early July to mid-August.
Williamstown
The Williams College Department of Music sponsors diverse concerts and recitals. Call its Concertline (tel. 413/597-3146) for information on upcoming events. In addition, the Clark Art Institute hosts frequent classical-music events.
- Performing Arts Venue
Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival
In 1933, modern dance pioneers Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis decided to put on a show in the barn, and so was Jacob's Pillow born. After decades of advance and retreat and evolution, Jacob's Pillow is now to dance what Tanglewood is to classical music. Once a regular summer venue for…Lee/Becket - Performing Arts Venue
Shakespeare & Company
The repertory company had long used buildings and amphitheaters on the grounds of The Mount to stage its May-to-December season of plays by the Bard, works by Chekhov and George Bernard Shaw, and efforts by new American and English playwrights. After increasingly bitter conflict with…Lenox & Tanglewood - Performing Arts Venue
Tanglewood Music Festival
Lenox is filled with music every summer, and the undisputed headliner is the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO). Concerts are given at the famous Tanglewood estate, usually beginning in July and ending the weekend before Labor Day. The estate is on West Street (actually between…Lenox & Tanglewood Williamstown Theatre Festival
Stargazing doesn't always involve the night sky in the Berkshires. Some head, instead, to the Williamstown Theatre Festival where Bradley Cooper, Gwyneth Paltrow, S. Epatha Merkson and many other famous actors take the stage regularly. They come here not just because there are few…Williamstown
