Travelrific® Travel Journal
Picture postcards in prose.™ Check out the blogroll on the front page for official merchandise and other resources!Archive for massachusetts
A Designer’s Dream House
By Linda Tancs
Overlooking Gloucester Harbor, the Sleeper-McCann House is a National Historic Landmark located in East Gloucester, Massachusetts. Also known as Beauport, it was the summer home of one of America’s first professional interior designers, Henry Davis Sleeper. After Sleeper’s death, Beauport was purchased by the McCann family, who preserved the home much as Sleeper had left it. Thanks to their preservation, you’ll find Sleeper’s lifetime collection of curiosities, colored glass, folk art, china and more among 40 visually evocative rooms entirely distinguishable from each other. House tours take place every half hour between May and October.
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Shaker Village
By Linda Tancs
Emerging from a split with the Quakers in England in the mid-1700s, the Shakers were a Protestant Christian sect that established communities in the United States. Their practices and heritage are preserved at Hancock Shaker Village, a living history museum in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. Located in Pittsfield, the National Landmark is the largest Shaker museum in the eastern United States. It features 20 historic buildings, extensive gardens and an impressive collection of Shaker artifacts. The village is open from April through December although guided tours are available for groups year-round by advance reservation.
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A Revolutionary Experience in Boston
By Linda Tancs
Historical interpreters, interactive exhibits, full-scale replica 18th-century sailing vessels and historic artifacts are just some of what you’ll experience at the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum. The journey begins with an actor portraying Samuel Adams, who will inform you of the events leading to the Boston Tea Party, an act of defiance that escalated tensions with Great Britain, leading to the American Revolution. You’ll find replicas of the Beaver and Eleanor, where you can participate in throwing “tea” into the same body of water where it all took place over two centuries ago. The Robinson Tea Chest is the only known surviving tea chest from the event, which is proudly displayed at the museum. Open daily, reservations are required for timed admission.
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The Old Manse
By Linda Tancs
The Old Manse is a Georgian clapboard house built in 1770 on the banks of the Concord River in Concord, Massachusetts. Constructed for patriot minister William Emerson, the upstairs overlooks North Bridge, where the Battles of Lexington and Concord (marking the beginning of the American Revolutionary War) took place. Later, the home was a source of literary inspiration for writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Advance booking is recommended for a tour of the home. The grounds are accessible for free year round.
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Cape Cod’s Oldest Town
By Linda Tancs
Founded in 1637, Sandwich, Massachusetts, is Cape Cod’s oldest town. The historical assets of this coastal haven include the Town Hall Square, 1847 First Church, the 1654 mill (that still grinds corn) and the boardwalk. The town might be better known, though, for the vital role it played in American glass production in the 1800s. You can learn all about that at the Sandwich Glass Museum, which features a wide range of rare glass, including Victorian-era glass manufactured by the now defunct local Boston & Sandwich Glass Factory.
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Art Without Boundaries
By Linda Tancs
The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art is a museum in a converted Arnold Print Works factory building complex located in North Adams, Massachusetts. Listed in the National Historic Register, 25 of the site’s current 26 buildings were constructed by the late 19th century by the factory, once one of the world’s leading producers of printed textiles. The venue boasts an elaborate system of interlocking courtyards and passageways rich with historical association. The vast campus allows the presentation of art without boundaries, featuring an array of music, sculpture, dance, film, painting, photography and theater as well as works that defy classification. The facility celebrated its 25th anniversary earlier this year.
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A Bewitching Place in Massachusetts
By Linda Tancs
Salem, Massachusetts, is famous for its witch trials in 1692, during which many locals were executed for allegedly practicing witchcraft. The Salem Witch Museum explores those unfortunate events and chronicles the history of witchcraft through the ages. In nearby Danvers the Witchcraft Victims’ Memorial is the first such memorial to honor all of the witchcraft victims and is located across the street from the site of the original Salem Village Meeting House where many of the witch examinations took place.
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Mayflower Redux
By Linda Tancs
Mayflower was an English sailing ship that transported a group of English families, known today as the Pilgrims, from England to the New World in 1620. Their journey to Plymouth Harbor, Massachusetts, is commemorated there with a full-scale replica of the historic vessel, Mayflower II. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, she’s both a floating classroom and working vessel. Nearby is Plymouth Rock, the legendary site of disembarkation and arguably the most visited rock in New England, housed under a memorial colonnade.
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Plymouth Colony Comes to Life
By Linda Tancs
Plimoth Patuxet is a complex of living history museums in Plymouth, Massachusetts, recreating the original settlement of the Plymouth Colony established in the 17th century by the English colonists who became known as pilgrims. The site features timber-framed houses furnished with reproductions of the types of objects that the pilgrims owned, aromatic kitchen gardens, and livestock, together with actors in period clothing. The complex also features an interpretive homesite of the Patuxet (a Native American band of the Wampanoag tribal confederation) with a replica of a wetu (house) and demonstrations of cooking and canoe production.
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Seven Gables in Salem
By Linda Tancs
Named for its gables, The House of the Seven Gables is a 1668 colonial mansion in Salem, Massachusetts. Designated a National Historic Landmark District in 2007, The House of the Seven Gables is best known today as the setting of world-renowned American author Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1851 novel. The seaside mansion was built for Captain John Turner I, the head of one of the most successful maritime families in the colonies. Built in the Jacobean/Post Medieval style, it’s one of the largest timber-framed mansions in North America still on its original foundation. In addition to the house and its grounds, the historic campus includes colonial revival gardens and several historic buildings.
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