Fruitlands Museum

Fruitlands Museums Historic District
Fruitlands Museum
Fruitlands Museum is located in Massachusetts
Fruitlands Museum
Fruitlands Museum is located in the United States
Fruitlands Museum
LocationHarvard, Massachusetts
Coordinates42°29′37″N 71°36′47″W / 42.49361°N 71.61306°W / 42.49361; -71.61306
Area210 acres (85 ha)
Built1910
Architectural styleShingle Style, Bungalow/Craftsman
NRHP reference No.97000439[1]
Added to NRHPMay 23, 1997
Sculpture and woodlands

Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, Massachusetts, is a museum about multiple visions of America on the site of the short-lived utopian community, Fruitlands. The museum includes the Fruitlands farmhouse (a National Historic Landmark), a museum about Shaker life, an art gallery with 19th-century landscape paintings, vernacular American portraits, and other changing exhibitions, and a museum of Native American history. In 2023, readers of USA Today voted to name Fruitlands as one of the ten best history museums in the United States.[2]

Visitors can tour the farmhouse, which has been restored to appear as it did during the 1840s, and exhibits about Transcendentalism and the Alcott family. Fruitlands offers a diverse schedule of contemporary exhibits, lectures, outdoor concerts and easy walking trails. There is also a museum store and restaurant. The properties are overseen by The Trustees of Reservations.

  1. ^ "National Register Information System – (#97000439)". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. April 15, 2008.
  2. ^ "Learn from the past: 10 best history museums in the US". USA Today. 24 February 2023. Retrieved 15 June 2023.