Tyringham Shaker Settlement Historic District

Along Jerusalem Road on the slope of Sky Hill in Tyringham, a string of brick and wooden buildings, stone dams and foundations marks the site of Massachusetts' fourth Shaker community. The Shakers lived here from 1792 until 1874, organized into Church, North and South families. The Church Family core includes the ca. 1800 Dormitory, the Elders Dwelling of 1823, the Cobbler Shop, a Workshop and the Great Barn, mostly vernacular buildings showing the shift from Federal to Greek Revival styles. Outlying clusters were built around water power: dry-laid stone dams, mill foundations at Shaker Pond, and the remains of the multipurpose Red Shop. The community's meetinghouse and seed house were moved elsewhere in the 1900s. The district was listed for its architecture, social history, religion, planning and archaeology. Its landscape and ruins show how a farming and manufacturing society worked until its dwindling membership closed the settlement, the first major Shaker society to do so.