Hancock Shaker Village

A few miles northwest of here, on the road toward the New York border, stands Hancock Shaker Village, one of the best preserved communities of a remarkable religious sect. The Shakers, formally the United Society of Believers, were known for celibacy, communal living, equality of the sexes, hard work, and ecstatic worship that gave them their nickname. This village took shape in the seventeen eighties and was formally organized in seventeen ninety, the third of nineteen major Shaker communities founded across the country.

The Believers called it the City of Peace, and at its height several hundred members lived and worked here. Their genius was practical. Shaker design prized simplicity and function, and their furniture and inventions are admired to this day.

The village's most famous building is the Round Stone Barn, built in eighteen twenty six, an ingenious circular structure that let a single worker feed a whole ring of cattle from a central floor, with clever ventilation to keep the stored hay from overheating and catching fire. The Hancock community endured until nineteen sixty, when the last members departed. The property was preserved and became an open air museum, and in nineteen sixty eight it was named a National Historic Landmark.

Today its plain, beautiful buildings offer a window into a vanished American way of life.