Williamstown is a college town. Up in the Northwest corner of Massachusetts, where New York meets Vermont, Williams College is consistently ranked as the best liberal arts college in the country — and it’s a standing joke among students and faculty that no one (but alums) has ever heard of it.
Maple trees turn along the Hoosic River.
The town around it is a quiet country place, and it touches many parts of the world. Nationally acclaimed ctors and musicians perform at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in the summer — in plays that often go on to New York. The Clark Art Institute brings in global contemporary artists alongside its Impressionists.
And around the corner you can sample cheeses at Cricket Creek Farm or hike the Appalachian Trail. In Hopkins Forest in the sugaring season, the forest manager will be up at the sap house, stoking the wood stove under the boiler. He may offer a taste of maple syrup, still hot.
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Images is a non-profit community movie theater in Williamstown, and one of the few remaining single-screen, independent theaters still running in this country. It shows new films every week, with organic pop corn and real butter.
READ MOREOn these stages, actors and writers can take risks. A new musical can ache for a Polish woman who escapes Russia, between a World War and a revolution, and comes to Paris with little but a skill with paint and determination to rebuild.
READ MOREDuck egg tacos with hot sausage and greens? Baklava and fresh moussaka? The Williamstown Farmers Market brings Farmers, food producers, artists and artisans to Spring Street from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Saturday from May to October.
READ MOREA college hangout and an anchor on Spring Street for decades, Tunnel City roasts its own coffee and has a loyal following — it roasts its own blends locally in the renovated Norad Mill in North Adams.
READ MOREYou can sit on the terrace on a summer night with Rodin and Renoir behind you and look out over the reflecting pool to cows in the pasture at The Clark Art Institute.
READ MOREAt the top of Mount Greylock you can stand on the highest point in Massachusetts, 3,491 feet above sea level, with a lighthouse at your shoulder and a 1930s WPA lodge.
READ MORENature and Modern art mingle at Field Farm in Williamstown. The Trustees of Reservations maintains the outoor sculpture garden and trails— open to the public from sunrise to sunset all year — and runs the house as a Bed and Breakfast, and they will open the Folly for art tours occasionally through the summer and fall.
READ MOREAn unobtrusive trailhead on Chestnut Street in Williamstown heads gently up hill toward the ridge, through hardwood forest.
READ MOREUphill from the Hoosic River, a trail climbs up gradually to the top of the ridge and an open stretch of rock with a wide view over Williamstown and North Adams.
READ MOREOn the border of Williamstown and Vermont, trails cross a high meadow and 180 acres of forests and fields and wetlands, with a wide view across the valley.
READ MOREWilliamstown has grown with Williams College, from a quiet farming community to a center of the arts. They were founded together, and their relationship is often complex. The college gives the town an energy.
READ MOREWilliams College renovated a brick-and-column theatre into the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance, a 21st-century performance space, with four stages and high-end sound and video. In the fall and spring, national and international performers appear here along with student groups, and in summer it is the home of the Williamstown Theatre Festival.
READ MOREWilliams College is named the top liberal arts college in the country, out in the Berkshire hills with an art museum, theater and music, talks and trails — and a spirit of making its own fun.
READ MOREWalk through the park and cross the bridge over Hemlock Brook, and you’ll see a kind of courtyard in old New England forms. The buildings run together in red barn and clapboard and stone. And they are all new. The Williams Inn opened in its Spring Street incarnation in summer […]
READ MOREWilliams College preserves the Hopkins Memorial Forest, 2600 acres in Massachusetts, New York and Vermont, bordering on Williamstown Rural Lands and the Taconic Crest Trail.
READ MOREContra and square dancing is a living New England tradition, as casual as dancing barefoot in the kitchen on a summer night. The North Berkshire Community Dance holds a monthly dance on second Saturdays at the Williamstown Community Preschool, with live music.
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