The Round Stone Barn is 200 as Hancock Shaker Village Celebrates
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| The iconic Round Stone Barn at Hancock Shaker Village turns 200 this year. |
PITTSFIELD, Mass. – Hancock Shaker Village shared a bicentennial birthday, inviting the community to take part in the festivities.
On Sunday, Hancock Shaker Village celebrated the 200th birthday of their signature Round Stone Barn, the only circular barn ever built by the Shakers.
"The Round Stone Barn turned 200 this year," Hancock Shaker Village CEO Carrie Holland said. "It was erected in 1826, so we thought we would celebrate with the whole community. We'd do some cupcakes, and then we're lucky to work with Yo-Yo Ma's team to curate some special performances in the Round Stone Barn."
The community was invited to come to the village for free and take part in a wide range of activities including tours, live music from Ida Mae Specker Trio and Tanglewood, demonstrations, and more.
The Round Stone Barn is widely recognized as an architectural icon and agricultural wonder.
The Shakers operated a working dairy farm at Hancock until the 1950s, and the barn was originally a stable for its 52 milk cows, according to the museum's website.
It has ground-level access on all three levels so, wagons could enter on the upper level to deposit hay into the central haymow on the main floor below, then the empty wagons would be driven around the circular barn floor and exit the same door it came in, eliminating the potentially dangerous activity of backing wagons out of a barn, the website said.
The cows stabled on the main floor faced inward toward the haymow for ease of feeding and manure was shoveled through trapdoors to the cellar, where it was stored until needed as fertilizer in the gardens.
"Every time anyone comes into the timber frame, it's the very first thing that they see, and they always say, 'It's just like a photograph,' and it is," Director of Collections Kathleen Lynch said. "It's beautiful. People want to get married in front of it. We did our Christmas the festival of trees in here, and the mechanisms of it are so phenomenal."
Hundreds enjoyed music in the round barn and celebrated with free cupcakes and food trucks while listening on the history the village portrays.
"I think this is one of our most iconic buildings, and a lot of people have their own memories tied to it," Holland said. "We do baby animals here, and so there's personal history. ... But it's also a fantastic opportunity to share a bit about the Shakers, their design techniques and practices, their sort of obsession with making operations efficient, because this is used as a dairy barn, and so they created these three layers to make their operations more efficient."
"So you can talk about their innovation. Of course, they're the longstanding legacy of agriculture here. So it provides us an opportunity to kind of share the Shaker history in this beautiful space, tied to folks who have their own personal memories here as well, and it's such an impressive, beautiful spot. I have such appreciation for what it took to build this 200 years ago, and whenever we can do fun things and throw good parties here, it's a great day.""
Holland helps build momentum for the unveiling of Hancock Shaker Village's new visitor center that is planned to take place next month.
The new facility will include updated galleries, community event spaces, collection storage, and research areas for the museum's collection of over 22,000 Shaker artifacts and ephemera. The renovated building aims to enhance the visitor experience through improved orientation, expanded program offerings, closer access to collection items, and views of the surrounding landscape.
"Part of what we're also celebrating is past, present, future, and the future," Holland said. "We're very excited for expanded programming. We're opening our new visitor center, our Center for Shaker Studies, so that creates a whole new opportunity for our visitor experience, our galleries, our stewardship, and then that relates also to the programming that we can do in the historic village."
Hancock Shaker Village is always celebrating the Shakers that came before them, and Holland invited everyone to come and see it for themselves and take part in the many programs they have for those to enjoy.
"Come and visit, and it doesn't have to be on community day," she said. "There's lots of ways to come to the village. There's all of our library passes and card for culture. There's a million ways that are accessible, and if you see something that catches your eye, come back for a program because there's so many layers of discovery, and we hear it all the time from our visitors, 'I've never been in this building. This is fascinating. I didn't know this about the Shakers.' So just come and give it a go, and you might be surprised with what you will discover."
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