Thu, May 22
|Harvard
Fruitlands Museums Tour
Fruitlands Museums and Farmhouse Historic District, Harvard, MA. Lunch on your own at the Museum Cafe. Bus departures from Durham (8:30am) and Newington (8:45pm)
Time & Location
May 22, 2025, 8:30 AM – 4:00 PM
Harvard, 102 Prospect Hill Rd, Harvard, MA 01451, USA
About the Event
Today you’ll explore a bygone Transcendentalist community (1840’s) whose pastoral landscape houses wideranging collections of art and artifacts. The museum includes the Fruitlands farmhouse which has been restored to appear as it did in the 1840’s; a museum about Shaker life; an art gallery with 19th century landscape paintings, vernacular American portraits, and other rotating exhibitions; as well as a museum of Native American history. A note of interest: the original community was joined by people interested in self-sufficiency, using no hard labor and growing all food themselves. The community ultimately failed because of the difficulty of growing crops. Fruitland was also the former home of Louisa May Alcott. In 2023 visitors to the property voted to name it one of the ten best history museums in the U.S.
Approximate time of return: Newington 4:00PM and Durham 4:15PM
Cost: $63.00 per person
Handicap Accessibility: The museum and grounds are handicap accessible.
Tour Coordinator: Judith Simpson (617) 872-2073