Mount Lebanon Shaker Village

The Shaker Museum and Library, officially known as Shaker Museum | Mount Lebanon, is a museum and research library concerned with the Shakers, a Protestant religious denomination founded in America by Ann Lee and her followers in 1774, and known more formally as the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing. The museum and library collections relate to Shaker life and culture and are based in New Lebanon, New York. Originating in 1950 with the private collections of the museum's founder John S. Williams Sr., the Shaker Museum was accredited in 1972 by the American Alliance of Museums. In 1986 it was named a "Primary Organization" by the New York State Council on the Arts. The museum's administrative offices are located in Old Chatham. Guided tours, exhibitions, and special events take place at the museum's main location - the North Family historic site at Mount Lebanon Shaker Village. Their Visitor Center & Museum Store is located in the Granary, built in 1838 and located at 202 Shaker Road, New Lebanon, NY 12125. In 2004, the Shaker Museum began expanding to the Mount Lebanon Shaker Village in New Lebanon, New York, in an area of historic Shaker buildings located at the site of the former North Family of Shakers, north of Darrow School. Currently, the Museum operates programs and guided tours of the site during the summer-fall season. The North Family's Great Stone Barn, built in 1859 and listed on the World Monuments Fund, is undergoing a large-scale stabilization and restoration through 2014, with Phase 1 being completed in November of that year. In April 2014, the museum expanded its site by acquiring 61 acres of land comprising the historic North Pastures, bringing the total amount of protected land owned by the museum to over 90 acres. The museum exhibits Shaker objects from its collections alongside modern and contemporary artwork, furniture, and photography. Historically, the New Lebanon Shaker Village was the home of Lucy Wright, head of the Shaker ministry 1796–1821, Isaac N. Youngs, who lived there 1807–1865, and Issachar Bates, a notable Shaker missionary who returned from the West and died in 1837. The North Family was particularly known for its advocacy of equal rights for women, the peace movement, and spiritualism. They hosted a national peace convention in August 1905. In addition, the North Family published a number of works from 1870 into the early twentieth century. Elder Frederick W. Evans and his cohort of editors, poets, and authors were responsible for more than a hundred tracts and broadsides which included not only theology but also topics ranging from pacifism to the benefits of sparrows, land limitation, and vegetarianism. Their more important works included: -- The Manifesto (1870-1899). Also known as The Shaker or Shaker and Shakeress. -- Mount Lebanon Cedar Boughs: original poems by the North family of Shakers (Buffalo: Peter Paul Company, 1895). -- White, Anna and Leila S. Taylor. Shakerism: Its Meaning and Message (Columbus, Ohio: 1905).

Darrow School is a co-educational college-preparatory school for boarding and day students in grades 9-12 and PG (post-graduate). It is located in New Lebanon, New York.

Mount Lebanon Shaker Society, also known as New Lebanon Shaker Society, was a communal settlement of Shakers in New Lebanon, New York. The earliest converts began to "gather in" at that location in 1782 and built their first meetinghouse in 1785. The early Shaker Ministry, including Joseph Meacham and Lucy Wright, the architects of Shakers' gender-balanced government, lived there. Isaac N. Youngs, the society's scribe, chronicled the life of this Shaker village for almost half a century. Youngs also designed the schoolhouse built there in 1839. Holy Mount, where Shaker services were held, has a spur ridge which has been called Mount Lebanon. In addition to the Shakers' central Ministry, notable residents at Mount Lebanon's North Family included Elder Frederick W. Evans, known for his public preaching, and his partner, Eldress Antoinette Doolittle, who was succeeded by Anna White, M. Catherine Allen artists Sarah Bates, and Polly Anne Reed. The North Family was also known for publishing a book of poetry, Mount Lebanon Cedar Boughs: original poems by the North family of Shakers, Anna White, ed. (Buffalo: Peter Paul Company, 1895), with a number of poems by Cecilia Devere and Martha Anderson.

Lebanon Springs Union Free School is a historic school building located at New Lebanon in Columbia County, New York. It was built in 1913 and is a rectangular, two story, hipped roof brick building coated in stucco. It sits on a tooled concrete foundation and is topped with a slate roof. Atop the roof is an eight sided louvered belfry. Also on the property are the remains of a railroad trestle over the Wyomanock Creek.It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.

Church of Our Saviour is a historic Episcopal church located at Lebanon Springs in the town of New Lebanon, Columbia County, New York. It was built between 1872 and 1881, and is a simple stone and wooden building in the English Gothic Revival style. It consists of a rectangular nave, rear chancel, side vestibule and small, rear sacristy. The building features a steep slate roof, three stage bell tower, and lancet-arched windows. Also on the property are a contributing rectory (c. 1890) and garage (1934).It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.

Gov. Samuel J. Tilden Monument is a historic funeral monument located in Cemetery of the Evergreens at New Lebanon in Columbia County, New York. It was designed by architect Ernest Flagg (1856-1947) and built in 1895–1896. It contains the remains of New York State Governor Samuel J. Tilden (1814-1886). It consists of a nine and one half ton cut granite sarcophagus on a raised platform of four cut granite steps. The crypt entrance is marked by a cast-bronze gate that provides access to three brick arched crypts.It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2006.

New Lebanon is a town in Columbia County, New York, United States, 24 miles (39 km) southeast of Albany. The population was 2,514 at the 2020 census.The town of New Lebanon is in the northeastern corner of Columbia County. The center of town is at the intersection of U.S. Route 20 and New York State Route 22.

The Shaker Village Work Group was a recreational summer camp and teen educational program that occupied historic Shaker land and buildings in New Lebanon, New York. The property was purchased by founders Jerome (Jerry) and Sybil A. Count from the Mount Lebanon Shaker Village community in 1946, and was opened to its first group of young "villagers" as the Shaker Village Work Camp in 1947. Around 1960, the Work Camp's name was changed to the Shaker Village Work Group. Operating until 1973, the Shaker Village Work Group was noteworthy as a program that gave urban youths the opportunity to learn skilled hands-on work through folk crafts, for its efforts to preserve Shaker architecture and culture, for its role in the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 60s, and for its influence on the 1960s counterculture movement. During its twenty-six year span the Shaker Village Work Group presented a microcosm of American work and political ideals, weaving together the Protestant work ethic and communitarianism of the Shakers, the labor movement's celebration of ordinary working class manual labor, and libertarian ideals of self-sufficiency and self-ownership.

The Abode of the Message is a retreat center in New Lebanon, NY which was founded in 1975 by Vilayat Inayat Khan and a group of his students. The Abode has a long history as a residential community, a centralized location for the Inayati order, a conference and retreat center, and a center of esoteric study. In 2023, its management was transferred to Friends of South Family. The property is located in the eastern heights of the Taconic Mountains in New Lebanon, New York, and includes historic Shaker buildings built between 1834 and 1870.The described intent of the Abode on its founding was stated: to "collectively embody spiritual awakening," through "mutual commitment to practicing...the Sufi teachings," "shared devotion to the ideals of Love, Harmony and Beauty, and to the specific transformational work whereby these ideals are progressively realized," for "mutual dedication and visionary collaboration."

Shaker Mountain, 1,835 feet (559 m), is a prominent peak in the Taconic Mountains of western Massachusetts. The mountain is located in Pittsfield State Forest and is named after the nearby Hancock Shaker Village, a former Shaker religious colony and now a historic site. The summit is wooded and is traversed by the 5 mi (8.0 km) Shaker Trail, a loop trail that begins at the historic site. The mountain is wooded with northern hardwood tree species. Shaker Mountain is located within Hancock, Massachusetts. The Taconic ridgeline continues north from Shaker Mountain as Doll Mountain and west as Holy Mount The mountain drains into Shaker Brook and Lily Brook, thence to the Housatonic River and Long Island Sound.

Elisha Gilbert House is a historic home located at New Lebanon in Columbia County, New York. Built in 1794, the home is a massive, two story frame Federal style residence with a gambrel roof and a five bay facade with a center entrance pavilion and clapboard siding. The attic level once held a Masonic Lodge meeting hall. Also on the property is a family cemetery and 19th century barn.It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.

Hancock Shaker Village is a former Shaker commune in Hancock and Pittsfield, Massachusetts. It emerged in the towns of Hancock, Pittsfield, and Richmond in the 1780s, organized in 1790, and was active until 1960. It was the third of nineteen major Shaker villages established between 1774 and 1836 in New York, New England, Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana. From 1790 until 1893, Hancock was the seat of the Hancock Bishopric, which oversaw two additional Shaker communes in Tyringham, Massachusetts, and Enfield, Connecticut. The village was closed by the Shakers in 1960, and sold to a local group who formed an independent non-profit. This organization now operates the property as an open-air museum. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places and declared a National Historic Landmark District in 1968.