Naumkeag
5 Prospect Hill Rd, Stockbridge, MA
Stockbridge, MA
A Gilded Age summer cottage whose hillside gardens, crowned by a curving flight of blue-and-white steps, are among the most beloved designed landscapes in America.
Naumkeag is a Gilded Age summer estate in the Berkshires whose gardens have become far more famous than the house itself. Built as a country cottage for a wealthy New York family, its hillside was transformed over decades into a sequence of garden rooms, culminating in the celebrated Blue Steps, a curving flight of steps and fountains flanked by white birches that is one of the most photographed designed landscapes in the country.
The house is a rambling shingled mansion, preserved with its original furnishings, art, and collections, but the magic is outdoors. Over some thirty years, the owner and her landscape architect built a garden that reads like a series of surprises, each terrace and enclosure with its own character, all set against the rolling green backdrop of the southern Berkshire hills.
What Guests Love
- The famous Blue Steps, a curving flight of fountains and white birches down the hillside
- A sequence of distinct garden rooms unfolding across the terraced grounds
- The preserved Gilded Age cottage filled with its original furnishings and art
- Sweeping views over the Berkshire hills from the gardens and porches
Worth Knowing
- The gardens are the main draw, so allow time to wander the full hillside
- It is cared for by The Trustees, a Massachusetts land and heritage organization
- Spring and summer bring the gardens into full bloom; fall adds Berkshire foliage
- The hillside paths involve some steps and slopes, so wear comfortable shoes
Details
Stockbridge, MA
Learn about Naumkeag
A Berkshire cottage of the Gilded Age
In the late 19th century, the Berkshires became a fashionable summer retreat for wealthy families from New York and Boston, who built grand country houses they modestly called cottages. Naumkeag was one of these, built for Joseph Choate, a prominent lawyer and diplomat, and his family, a shingled mansion set on a hillside above Stockbridge with long views over the hills.
The house survives with much of its original character intact, filled with the furniture, art, ceramics, and family collections the Choates gathered, so it reads as a lived-in home rather than a stripped museum. It offers a window into the summer world of the Gilded Age elite, but its lasting fame would come from what the family did with the land around it in the generation that followed.
The gardens of Fletcher Steele
Naumkeag's gardens are the life's work of a remarkable partnership. Beginning in the 1920s, Mabel Choate, the family's daughter, worked with the landscape architect Fletcher Steele over some thirty years to transform the grounds into a series of designed garden rooms. Steele blended classical ideas with a bold, modern sensibility, and Naumkeag became his masterpiece and one of the landmark American gardens of the 20th century.
Each part of the hillside has its own character: a Chinese-inspired garden with a moon gate, formal terraces, a rose garden, an evergreen walk, and carefully framed views out to the hills. Rather than a single grand vista, the design leads you from one enclosed surprise to the next, a stroll full of turns and discoveries down the slope.
The Blue Steps
The most famous feature is the Blue Steps, a curving cascade of stairs built into the hillside to help Mabel Choate get down to her cutting garden. Steele turned a practical problem into a work of art: four flights of steps curve around pools and fountains painted a cool blue, flanked by graceful white-barked birches and railed in Art Deco ironwork.
The effect is unforgettable, the pale trunks of the birches rising alongside the blue-tinted fountains as the steps wind down the slope. The Blue Steps have appeared in countless photographs and are studied by garden designers as a small masterpiece of form and imagination. Seeing them in person, especially with the birches in leaf, is the highlight of a visit.
Stockbridge and the Berkshires
Naumkeag overlooks Stockbridge, a village so archetypal of small-town New England that the artist Norman Rockwell, who lived here, painted its Main Street. The town and the surrounding hills are dense with culture, from the Norman Rockwell Museum and the summer music of Tanglewood to gardens, theaters, and historic homes across the southern Berkshires.
This is the homeland of the Mohican people, and the town's name recalls that heritage; their descendants form the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, a federally recognized nation with deep roots here. Spring and summer bring the gardens into full bloom, while autumn wraps the estate in Berkshire foliage, making Naumkeag a rewarding stop in any warm season.
Closest Boutels
The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.
Things to Do Near Stockbridge
Stockbridge
About 1 mile south
A classic Berkshire village with a historic Main Street painted by Norman Rockwell and a famous old inn.
Norman Rockwell Museum
About 3 miles west
The largest collection of the illustrator's original work, set on a hillside campus outside Stockbridge.
Tanglewood
About 6 miles north
The summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, with concerts on the lawn in the Lenox hills.
The Mount
About 7 miles north
The Lenox estate and gardens of the writer Edith Wharton, who designed the house and grounds herself.