Recommended upcoming New England tours

Nantucket Christmas Stroll Annual Holiday House Tour (Nantucket, MA) Friday, November 30, 2007 4:00-7:00 pm (Call for ticket info 508.228.7285 ext. 1168); Architectural Walking Tour, Saturday, December 1, 2007 9:30-11:00 am and 1:00-2:00 pm (Call for reservations 508.228.1387)

21^st Annual Friends of Nashua Symphony Holiday House Tour (Nashua, NH) Saturday and Sunday, December 1 and 2, 2007 12:00 pm-4:00pm

Plymouth Holiday House Tour (Plymouth, MA) Saturday and Sunday, December 1 and 2, 2007 11:00 am-4:30 pm

Christmas in Salem (Salem, MA) Saturday, December 1, 2007 10:00 am-4:00 pm and Sunday, December 2, 2007 11:30 am-4:30 pm

Stockbridge Holiday House Tour (Stockbridge, MA) Saturday, December 1, 2007 11:00 am-4:00 pm

Newburyport Holiday House Tour (Newburyport, MA) Saturday, December 8, 2007 10:00 am

Essex Holiday House Tour (Essex, CT) Saturday, December 8, 2007 10:00 am-4:00 pm

Bristol Home for the Holiday house tour (Bristol, RI) Saturday and Sunday, December 8 and 9, 2007 12:00 pm-5:00 pm

Woodstock Holiday House Tour (Woodstock, VT) Saturday, December 8, 2007 10:00 am-4:00pm

Stratford Historic Holiday House Tour and Boutique (Stratford, CT) Sunday, December 9, 2007 12:00 pm

Imagine disassembling an antique house of roughly 5000 square feet in southeastern China’s Anhui province, shipping it to the eastern United States, then preserving and reassembling it in Salem, Massachusetts. Sound unlikely? Well, that’s how Yin Yu Tang, the Chinese house at Salem’s Peabody Essex Museum, got here. The Yin Yu Tang that you tour today in Salem stood originally for two-hundred years in the rural village of Huang Cun in the Huizhou region where it housed a merchant’s family for generations.

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This 1938 Modernist landmark home designed by Walter Gropius
view of front (of Bauhaus fame) for his family in Lincoln, Massachusetts is surprising. In its time it was lauded by architectural critics and academia as hot, cutting-edge design. Today, well, touring the house reminds me of discovering at your twentieth high school reunion that the cool guys who were so intimidating, vigorous, and full of bluster as teenagers are now tired, balding, and completely benign.

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With an impressive array of 20 buildings of various function, shape, and size, the Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, Massachusetts is a slice of Shaker heaven -- architectural heaven that is. I have a natural affinity for antiques; I grew up in an early 1800’s colonial with an old dilapidated barn out back. Yet I think the spare, simple forms of these Shaker gems speak to those with Modernist upbringings as well. The Shakers espoused a purity of self and spirit that manifested itself in a purity of form and function, free of unnecessary ornament or complication.

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Consider These Additional Upcoming New England House Museum/Tours and Related Diversions 

The Glass House by Philip Johnson (New Canaan, CT) opening to the public in July, 2007 www.philipjohnsonglasshouse.org

Brimfield Antique and Flea Market Shows (Brimfield, MA) July 10-15, 2007 www.brimfield.com

Nantucket Garden Club Annual House Tour (and gardens too!) (Nantucket, MA) August, 2007 www.nantucket.org/gardenclub