Sights in New England
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Shelburne Museum
On a 45-acre estate, 7 miles south of Burlington in Shelburne, this museum boasts a stellar collection of American folk art, New England architecture and, well, just about everything. The wildly eclectic collection ranges from an early American sawmill to the Lake Champlain side-wheeler steamship Ticonderoga. How's that for lawn decor?
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Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Factory
Get the inside scoop, where tours and a moo-vie about the hippie founders are topped off with a taste tease of the latest flavor.
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Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum
After years of anticipation and restoration, the Tea Party Ships are moored at the reconstructed Griffin's Wharf, alongside a shiny new museum dedicated to the revolution's most catalytic event. Interactive exhibits allows visitors to meet re-enactors in period costume, explore the ships, learn about contemporary popular perceptions through multimedia presentations and even participate in the protest.
At the time of opening in 2012, visitors can board the fully-rigged Eleanor and the whaler Beaver to experience life aboard an 18th-century vessel. (The Dartmouth is expected to be built later.) Would-be rebels can throw crates of tea into the harbor, in solidarity with…
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Copp’s Hill Burying Ground
The city’s second-oldest cemetery – dating to 1660 – is the final resting place for an estimated 10,000 souls. It is named for William Copp, who originally owned this land. While the oldest graves belong to Copp's children, there are several other noteworthy residents.
Near the Charter St gate you'll find the graves of the Mather family – Increase, Cotton and Samuel – all of whom were politically powerful religious leaders in the colonial community. Front and center is the grave of Daniel Malcolm, whose headstone commemorates his rebel activism. British soldiers apparently took offense at this claim and used the headstone for target practice. The small plot of…
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Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology
The centerpiece of the Peabody is the impressive Hall of the North American Indian, which traces how native peoples responded to the arrival of Europeans from the 15th to the 18th centuries. Other exhibits examine indigenous cultures throughout the Americas, including a fantastic comparison of cave paintings and murals of the Awatovi (New Mexico), the Maya (Guatemala) and the Moche (Peru).
Founded in 1866, the Peabody Museum is one of the world’s oldest museums devoted to anthropology. The price of admission includes entry to the neighboring Harvard Museum of Natural History.
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Old City Hall
This monumental French Second Empire building occupies a historic spot. Out front, a plaque commemorates the site of the first public school, Boston Latin, founded in 1635 and still operational in Fenway. The hopscotch sidewalk mosaic, City Carpet, marks the spot where Benjamin Franklin, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Bulfinch were educated.
Statues of Benjamin Franklin, founding father, and Josiah Quincy, second mayor of Boston, stand inside the courtyard. They are accompanied by a life-sized replica of a donkey, symbol of the Democratic Party. (‘Why the donkey?’ you wonder. Read the plaque to find out.) Two bronze footprints ‘stand in opposition.’
The…
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Fairbanks Museum of Natural Science
In 1891, when Franklin Fairbanks’ collection of stuffed animals and cultural artifacts from across the globe grew too large for his home, he built the Fairbanks Museum of Natural Science. This massive stone building with a 30ft-high barrel-vaulted ceiling still displays more than half of Franklin’s original collection. Over 3000 preserved animals in glass cases can be seen, including a 1200lb moose shot in Nova Scotia in 1898, an American bison from 1902 and a Bengal tiger. There are planetarium shows at 1:30pm ($3 per person), and also in July and August at 11am.
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Shelburne Farms
- Burlington, USA
- Sights › Farm
You can get a taste of Vermont farm life at this classic 1400-acre farm laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted, America's premier 19th-century landscape architect. Try your hand at milking a cow, feed the chickens, or hike the extensive nature trails through pastures and along Lake Champlain.
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MassArt
This is the country’s first and only four-year independent public art college. It is one of the country's oldest art schools and – as such – was the first to grant an art degree. Originally the Massachusetts Normal Art School, the institution was part of a plan by civic leaders to promote fine arts and technology, in an attempt to ensure the state's continued economic growth.
Other parts of this plan included establishing the Museum of Fine Arts (founded in 1870) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1860).
Nowadays, there's always some thought-provoking or sense-stimulating exhibits to see at MassArt. In the South Building, the Bakalar and Paine galleries…
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Walden Pond
Thoreau took the naturalist beliefs of Transcendentalism out of the realm of theory and into practice when he left the comforts of town and built a rustic cabin at Walden Pond. Now a state park, the glacial pond is surrounded by acres of forest preserved by the nonprofit Walden Woods project.
The site of Thoreau’s cabin is on the northeast side, marked by a cairn and signs. Parking costs $5.
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Libby Museum
At the age of 40, Dr Henry Forrest Libby, a local dentist, began collecting things. In 1912 he built a home for his collections, which later became the eccentric little Libby Museum. Starting with butterflies and moths, the amateur naturalist built up a private natural history collection. Other collections followed, including Abenaki relics and early-American farm and home implements. It lies 3 miles north of Wolfeboro.
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Popham Beach State Park
The 6-mile long, sandy Popham Beach State Park is one of the prettiest in the state, with views onto offshore islands and the Kennebec and Morse Rivers framing either end. Lifeguards are on hand, but the surf is strong, with undertows and riptides. It’s located off ME 209, about 14 miles south of Bath.
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Jasper Beach
Don't miss Jasper Beach, a bizarre mile-long beach consisting entirely of polished red jasper stones. As the waves wash in, the rocks slide against one another, creating a rather haunting song. It's one of two such beaches in the world (the other is in Japan). To reach it, head down Machias Rd toward the village of Starboard.
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Harvard Museum of Natural History
This esteemed institution is famed for its botanical galleries, featuring more than 3000 lifelike pieces of handblown glass flowers and plants. At the intersection of art and science, the collection of intricately crafted flora is truly amazing. The zoological galleries house an unbelievable number of stuffed animals and reassembled skeletons, as well as an impressive fossil collection.
The mineralogical and geological galleries contain sparkling gemstones from all over the world, including some found right here in New England. The museum sponsors loads of special programs for kids, so it’s worth checking the website when planning your visit. The price of admission…
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ECHO Lake Aquarium & Science Center
On the waterfront, ECHO will delight youngsters with its aquatic habitats wriggling with creatures and hands-on interactive exhibits illuminating Lake Champlain's ecological wonders.
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1712 Ebenezer Clough House
Behind the Paul Revere Mall in the North End. Ebenezer Clough, a Sons of Liberty member who participated in the Boston Tea Party, was a mason who worked on the adjacent Old North Church.
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York’s Wild Kingdom
If you have children, you may want to visit York’s Wild Kingdom, the state’s largest zoo.
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Peabody Museum of Natural History
Wannabe paleontologists will be thrilled by the dinosaurs here.
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Mystic Seaport
America's maritime history springs to life as costumed interpreters ply their trades at this sprawling re-created 19th-century seaport village. You can scurry aboard several historic sailing vessels, including the Charles W Morgan (built in 1841), the last surviving wooden whaling ship in the world. If you want to experience a little voyage yourself, the Sabino, a 1908 steamboat, departs hourly ($5.50) on jaunts up the Mystic River.
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Old Sturbridge Village
During the first half of the 20th century, brothers Albert and J Cheney Wells lived in Southbridge and carried on a very successful optics business. They were enthusiastic collectors of antiques – so enthusiastic that by the end of WWII their collections left no free space in their homes. The brothers bought 200 acres of forest and meadow in Sturbridge and began to move old buildings from the region to this land. Old Sturbridge Village opened in 1946, creating a mythic version of a New England town from around the 1830s, with 40 restored structures filled with the Wells’ antiques. Rather than labeling the exhibits, this museum has ‘interpreters’ – people who dress in…
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Coolidge Homestead
The 30th president of the USA was born in Plymouth, Vermont, and attended Amherst College in Massachusetts. He opened a law practice in 1898, in Northampton, Maine, and then ran for local office. Following election, Coolidge served as state senator, lieutenant governor and governor of Massachusetts. Elected vice-president on the Warren Harding ticket in 1920, he assumed the presidency upon Harding’s death in 1923. Vice-president Coolidge was visiting his boyhood home in Plymouth when word came of Harding’s death. His father, the local justice of the peace, administered the presidential oath of office by kerosene lamp at 2:47am on August 3, 1923. Known for his simple,…
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Bread & Puppet Museum
Rolling though the Northeast Kingdom, it’s easy to become jaded at the sight of yet another barn. One in Glover definitely warrants a detour – not for its livestock but for the cosmological universe of the Bread & Puppet Museum, lurking within. Formed in New York City by German artist Peter Shumann in 1963, the Bread & Puppet Theater is a collective-in-training that presents carnivalesque pageants, circuses, and battles of Good and Evil with gaudy masks and life-size (even gigantic) puppets. The street theater of its early performances gave voice to local rent strikes and anti–Vietnam War protests as well as an epic parade down Fifth Ave in the early eighties to…
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King’s Chapel & Burying Ground
Bostonians were not pleased when the original Anglican church was erected on this site in 1688. (Remember, it was the Anglicans – the Church of England – whom the Puritans were fleeing.) The granite chapel standing today was built in 1754. If the church seems to be missing something, it is: funds ran out before a spire could be added. The church houses the largest bell ever made by Paul Revere, as well as a historic organ. Note the prestigious Governor’s pew, once occupied by George Washington, who came to hear a concert. Request a brochure to take a self-guided tour of the church’s architectural and historical highlights. After the revolution, King’s Chapel became the…
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Rough Point
Once called the 'richest little girl in the world,' Doris Duke (1912–1993) was just 13 years old when she inherited this English manor estate from her father. Duke had a passion for travel and art collecting; Rough Point houses many of her holdings, from Ming dynasty ceramics to Renoir paintings. The grounds are equally impressive.
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Harvard Yard
Founded in 1636 to educate men for the ministry, Harvard is America’s oldest college. (No other college came along until 1693.) The original Ivy League school has eight graduates who went on to be US presidents, not to mention dozens of Nobel laureates and Pulitzer Prize winners. It educates 6500 undergraduates and about 12,000 graduates yearly in 10 professional schools.
The geographic heart of Harvard University – where red-brick buildings and leaf-covered paths exude academia – is Harvard Yard (through Anderson Gates from Mass Ave). The focal point of the yard is the John Harvard statue, where every Harvard hopeful has a photo taken (and touches the statue’s shiny…
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