Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival

Jacob's Pillow is a dance festival campus set on a hilltop in Becket, Massachusetts, with views toward the Berkshire Hills. The complex includes theaters, studios, dancers' cabins, converted houses and barns, spread across about 150 acres of woodland and former farmland. Two late eighteenth century Federal-style farmhouses anchor the site, and the nineteenth century barns served as models for later construction. Buildings from the 1930s onward, including a fieldstone dining room, small cabins and the 1942 Ted Shawn Theatre, follow a Craftsman and barn-like vocabulary of wood and local stone. A boulder behind the Stephen Carter House gave the place its name. The property was designated a National Historic Landmark for its association with the history of American dance. Letters of support describe the festival as a leading presenting organization in the field, operating in the same location for seventy years, and it also houses archives for the festival and its school. The Stephen Carter House is the year-round headquarters.