Naumkeag
While visiting the Berkshires, Marty and I made our way to one of the most memorable homes in Stockbridge, the remarkable estate known as Naumkeag.
Set high on a hill, the house is a mix of brick, stone and shingle, and along with its rounded turret, gives it a European feel. Naumkeag is a product of the American Gilded Age, built in 186 as a summer home for Joseph Hodges Choate and his family.
The name “Naumkeag” comes from the Native American term associates with the Naumkeag people and has been interpreted to mean “the place of fishing”. By choosing this name, the Choate family connected their Berkshire retreat to an earlier time of Massachusetts history.
Choate was a prominent New York lawyer, a respected public figure, and later served as the United States Ambassador to Great Britain. He argued cases before the Supreme Court and moved in political and intellectual circles.
Here in the Berkshires, he created a retreat where his family could spend their summers surrounded by beauty. Each room reflects a family that valued culture, conversation, and the quieter pleasures of life away from the city.
What sets Naumkeag apart are the gardens. Choate’s daughter, Mabel, transformed the property into something extraordinary. For over 30 years, she shaped these gardens into an artistic landscape.
As Marty and I walked the grounds, it was clear how intentional everything felt. This was a place that was imagined, shaped and cared for over time. Each path, every turn, invites you to notice.
When Mabel Choate passed away, she bequeathed the entire estate, house, furnishings, and gardens, to the Trustees of Reservations, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting historic and natural places across Massachusetts.
Read More From Nancy
The Stanwood House
Standing at 323 Washington Street in Wellesley Hills, the Stanwood House has been part of this neighborhood for more than a century. Today it is the home of the Wellesley Historical Society and the Wellesley History & Exhibit Center, but the building began as both the family home and medical office of one of Wellesley’s longtime physicians. […]
Fruitlands Farmhouse
The farmhouse at Fruitlands is a house that we visited often. When my daughters were volunteering at the Orchard House in Concord, the farmhouse at Fruitlands helped fill in another part of the story of the Alcott Family. It was here that Bronson Alcot attempted to create and intentional community based on transcendentalist ideals. In […]
The Samuel Lincoln House
This house on North Street in Hingham marks the beginning of President Abraham Lincoln’s family story in America. The historical marker beside it identifies the property purchased in 1649 by Samuel Lincoln, the president’s fourth great-grandfather. Samuel Lincoln was born in England in 1622 and came to Massachusetts while still a teenager. Known as “Samuel […]
