Ever since that famous landing at Plymouth Rock, New England has been at the forefront of social change in America. While best known for pilgrims and patriots, the region has also been the stomping ground for radical reformers, literary rebels, seekers of utopia, and much more.
The legacy of these forward thinkers lives on in a wealth of restored villages, historic districts and other landmarks that add depth and inspi-ration to meeting programs. Whether it’s conversing with an interpreter portraying a 17th century farmer or learning to cook with fresh herbs in the Shaker style, New England is a place where the past comes alive through three-dimensional experiences.
Pioneer Spirit
Perhaps no story in American history is more celebrated than the arrival of religious “pilgrims” in the New World and the hardships they faced in settling the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Fortunately, that fabled era is illustrated in a vivid, historically accurate way at Plimoth Plantation on a spectacular setting overlooking Cape Cod Bay in Plymouth, Mass.
Depicting life in the fledgling colony just seven years after the Mayflower arrival, Plimoth’s 1627 English Village is a re-creation of a small farming town of timber-framed houses and gardens. Visitors can wander the village at their own pace, interacting with costumed role players who have taken on the names, viewpoints and histories of those who actually inhabited the town.
Other points of interest include the Mayflower II, a replica of the type of 17th century sailing vessel that made the famous voyage, and the Crafts Center, where artisans create the furnishings, clothing and other items used in the English Village.
Plimoth Plantation also offers a full gamut of dining and meeting areas for groups. They include Gainsborough Hall, a dining room with fireplaces, chandeliers and seating for up to 220 people, as well as two theaters, several conference rooms, and an outdoor picnic pavilion accommodating up to 400 people. Customized menus can feature dishes such as corn pudding, boiled lobster, maple-glazed venison, and other items that would have been typical fare in 17th century Plymouth.
“We can also provide enhancements for group events, including professional speakers who can give presentations on 17th century horticulture and food preparation or on Wamponoag [local Native American] culture,” says Janet Young, group sales associate. “We can bring in a costumed interpreter to show what clothing was like in the 17th century.”
Just how far life progressed during the next century is portrayed at the Old Historic Deerfield National Historic Landmark, a 1,000-acre site in the western Massachusetts town of Deerfield. After surviving a notorious massacre in 1704, where French and Native American forces killed dozens of settlers and took many others captive, Deerfield grew into a prosperous colonial town.
Today visitors to Historic Deerfield can explore 13 meticulously preserved museum houses, most dating from the 18th century, and view exhibits at the Flynt Center of Early New England Life. Banquet space and meeting facilities for up to 150 people are available at the Deerfield Inn.
Another evocative colonial-era site is Mount Hope Farm, a saltwater farm overlooking Narragansett Bay in Bristol, R.I., where ponds, fields, woods, and handcrafted stone walls are spread over 200 acres. The estate was first acquired by a judge in 1677 and is the site where King Phillip, a Wampanoag chief, lost his life during a battle with colonists.
Today the grounds are available for a wide variety of outdoor corporate and social events, while several indoor spaces host meetings, banquets and executive retreats. The historic Governor Bradford House and the North Pasture Guest House both offer sleeping rooms, elegant dining rooms and meeting areas, while The Barn, which is climate-controlled for year-round gatherings and features a fireplace and catering kitchen, accommodates up to 140 people for receptions and plenary sessions.
Revolutionary Fervor
“Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes,” the famous rallying cry of the Battle of Bunker Hill, is a statement that comes alive at the new Bunker Hill Museum, which opened in June across the street from the Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown, Mass. The pivotal battle of the American Revolution is depicted through exhibits and a dramatic circular painting known as a cyclorama. Group tours can be arranged at the museum, which, along with the monument, is part of Boston National Historic Park.
Another key Revolutionary site, the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum, currently closed due to fire damage, is undergoing a major makeover and expansion and will reopen in fall 2008 at its same site on Boston Harbor. Commemorating the famous act of rebellion in which colonists in Mohawk garb demolished 342 crates of British tea and hurled them into sea, the museum will be doubled in size and offer a variety of video presentations, living history programs and memorabilia telling the story of the Boston Tea Party.
The site, which will also feature two additional tall ships, will provide significantly more indoor and outdoor space for receptions and other events—enough to accommodate up to 500 people. The new Boston Tea Room food service area will be available exclusively for group functions during evening hours.
Activists and Visionaries
In the 19th century, New England was fertile ground for social reformers, political activists, novelists, poets, and philosophers. In particular, New England was at the forefront of the anti-slavery movement in the decades prior to the Civil War.
This part of regional history is illustrated by Boston’s new Abolitionist Trail, which includes eight points of interest on a walking route from Beacon Hill to the Boston Public Library. Its starting point, the Museum of African American History, includes the African Meeting House and the Abel Smith School, two of the most important gathering places for the leading abolitionists of the day.
With a $4.5 million restoration completed last spring, the African Meeting House, the first black church built in Boston, is available for catered events and offers a variety of function spaces. Groups can meet in the same rooms where Frederick Douglas recruited black soldiers to fight in the Civil War and where William Lloyd Garrison launched the New England Anti-Slavery Society.
In Hartford, Conn., the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, home of the author who wrote the famous anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, offers three historic buildings housing artifacts, manuscripts, letters, and photographs focusing on such hot-button 19th century issues as women’s suffrage and abolition. Visitors can tour the estate, which includes a carriage house, two houses and grounds landscaped with Victoria-era gardens.
Right next door to the Stowe Center is the home of an even more iconic American author and original thinker, the Mark Twain House & Museum. Built in 1873, the chalet-style mansion, featuring towers and deep porches, not only showcases Twain’s years there, but is a marvel of innovation with its early plumbing and heating systems.
Added to the property in 2003, a museum wing presents a look at Twain’s often tumultuous life as well as the period in which he lived. The museum also offers a cafe where lunches for up to 60 people can be arranged.
Another important 19th century literary figure, Nathaniel Hawthorne, is the focus of the House of the Seven Gables, a seaside complex of colonial-era gardens and museum houses in Salem, Mass. The main attraction is the House of the Seven Gables, the inspiration for Hawthorne’s novel of the same name. Built in 1668, the slightly spooky structure is the oldest surviving wooden mansion in New England and is filled with intriguing architectural details, including a secret staircase.
Other historic buildings on the site include the Nathaniel Hawthorne Birthplace, a modest 18th century home moved to the site from its original location several blocks away, and the Hooper-Hathaway House, a charming rustic house dating from 1682 that is available for small catered events for 30 people or less.
The grounds at House of the Seven Gables are landscaped with colorful gardens planted with herbs and flowers popular in colonial times. They also feature the Seaside Lawn, a scenic location for receptions, picnics and clambakes for up to 200 people.
Heavenly Villages
No hippie commune of the 1960s was any more radical in concept than Fruitlands, which was established as a “new Eden” in 1843 by Transcendentalist philosopher Bronson Alcott, with some support from friends such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The utopian experiment, which shunned the consumption of any animal products or use of animals to work the land, lasted only a few months before Alcott and his family, including daughter Louisa May, returned half-starved to their home in Concord, Mass.
But while Fruitlands failed as a community, it lives on as a fascinating outdoor museum complex in Harvard, Mass., about 20 miles west of Boston. Along with touring the Fruitlands Farmhouse and Gallery, visitors can hike on woodland trails and explore museums devoted to Native Americans, Shakers and regional New England artists. Fruitlands offers several indoor and outdoor areas for catered receptions and other events.
Far more successful than the Alcotts at sustainable living, the Shakers flourished as an industrious and innovative religious sect from the late 18th to early 20th centuries, establishing self-contained communities in New England, New York, Ohio, and Kentucky that were known for their fine produce, furniture, baskets, and other items. The Shakers challenged almost every mainstream American ideal of the time, embracing a life of celibacy, community ownership, pacifism, equality of the sexes, and simple living.
Although just one active community remains, the Shakers’ highly prized craftsmanship and unique culture can be enjoyed at several museum villages throughout the Northeast. Among the most group-friendly is Canterbury Shaker Village in Canterbury, N.H., where over two dozen historic structures are surrounded by 700 acres of woodlands, meadows and ponds.
“We can do both general and customized tours for groups, including those for people with a particular interest in Shaker furniture or textiles,” says Education Manager Betsy Baron. “We can also arrange for specialized workshops such as culinary or woodworking.”
The Shaker Table, the village’s main dining facility, offers several function areas for groups of up to 60 people. The Garden Barn and North Shop are suitable for picnic lunches and presentations, while several scenic outdoor spaces, which can include tents, accommodate large groups. The 1837 Chapel, part of the historic Dwelling House, is an atmospheric venue for seminars and audiovisual presentations.
In the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts, bucolic Hancock Shaker Village is known for its massive round barn surrounded by acres of herb, vegetable and flower gardens. Along with general tours of the historic buildings and grounds, groups can participate in specialized activities with costumed guides. Among them is the Shaker Dinner and Song Tour, which offers a two-hour walking tour that emphasizes the themes of community, farming, innovation, and technology before concluding with a four-course dinner accompanied by a traditional music program in the Community Hall.
Hancock Shaker Village is also a source for pillow gifts and other mementos, says Spokesperson Stephanie French.
“Shaker boxes are especially popular gifts, but we also do a lot with heirloom seed packages, hand-crafted soaps, books on Shaker cooking, and prints,” she says. “The possibilities are endless.”
Although not a site for catered events, the Sabbath Day Lake Shaker Village in Sabbath Day Lake, Maine, offers visitors the chance to tour the only remaining active Shaker community. Six of the existing 18 structures in the village are open to the public, encompassing 27 exhibit rooms presenting over 200 years of Shaker history.
Americana Celebrated
The driving passion of Electra Havemeyer Webb, a pioneering collector of American folk art, was to preserve and showcase an American aesthetic and way of life that was rapidly vanishing. In 1947 her dream was realized with the founding of the Shelburne Museum in Sherburne, Vt.
To create the museum, Webb bought and relocated 18th and 19th century structures from all over New York and New England to house her astonishing collection of folk art sculpture, quilts, hat boxes, carriages, duck decoys, daily household items, Impressionist paintings, and much more. The structures, which are surrounded by landscaped grounds to create a village-like setting, include a one-room schoolhouse, houses, barns, a lighthouse, a jail, a general store, a covered bridge, and a steamboat that once plied the waters of nearby Lake Champlain.
During evening hours, all or some of the museum’s 39 historic buildings are available for special events that can combine a dinner or reception with special tours of various exhibits. The museum grounds can accommodate large-scale events with tents.
“A really popular venue for receptions and dinners is the steamboat Ticonderoga, which sits on a sea of grass and holds up to 250 people,” says Sam Ankerson, spokesperson for the museum. “There’s even an 1871 lighthouse positioned next to it that adds to the ambiance.”
Located two miles from the museum and overlooking Lake Champlain, the Brick House, the former home of Electra Havermeyer Webb, is an elegant setting for receptions. The Colonial Revival mansion accommodates up to 220 guests.
For More Info
Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum www.bostonteapartyship.com
Bunker Hill Museum 617.242.5642
www.nps.gov/bost
Canterbury Shaker Village 603.783.9511
www.shakers.org
Fruitlands 978.456.3924
www.fruitlands.org
Hancock Shaker Village 413.443.0188
www.hancockshakervillage.org
Harriet Beecher Stowe Center 850.522.9258
www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org
Historic Deerfield 413.775.7214
www.historic-deerfield.org
House of the Seven Gables 978.744.0991
www.7gables.org
Mark Twain House & Museum 860.247.0998
www.marktwainhouse.org
Mount Hope Farm 401.254.1745
www.mounthopefarm.com
Museum of African American History 617.725.0022
www.afroammuseum.org
Plimoth Plantation 508.746.1622
www.plimoth.org
Sabbath Day Lake Shaker Village 207.926.4597
www.shaker.lib.me.us
Shelburne Museum 802.985.3346
www.shelburnemuseum.org
