SHAKER MUSEUM AND LIBRARY
Mount Lebanon Project
Preserving an American Icon
Adapting the North Family Site at Mount Lebanon
for the New Home of the Shaker Museum and Library
<>In 2001 the Shaker Museum and Library received a Save the America's
Treasure grant to create a Master Plan for preserving and adapting the
ten buildings and thirty acres of the North Family Site at Mount
Lebanon, including the North Family Great Stone Barn-the largest stone
barn in America, as the new home for the Museum and its collection.
Since eighty percent of the collection originated at Mount Lebanon,
this project reunites America's most comprehensive Shaker collection
with America's most historically significant Shaker site.
The Shaker Museum and Library acquired the site in 2004 and is in the
first Phase of building renovations.About Mount
Lebanon Shaker Village
Once the spiritual
and
physical center of the Christian sect known as the Shakers, Mount
Lebanon
Shaker Village was at its height in 1860, home to some 600 believers
who lived
in more than 120 buildings spread over more than 6,000 acres. At
Mount Lebanon, the Shakers’ religious
beliefs and organizing tenets helped create a unique theology and
social order
based upon a range of ideals, including celibate communal living, new
theories
about the hierarchy and composition of the traditional family, and the
rethinking of both industrial and agricultural production and
distribution. The Shakers’ aesthetic
principles that defined the group’s distinct material culture—including
objects, furnishings, architecture, and entire villages—were developed
and
first used at Mount Lebanon.
Mount Lebanon’s last
Shakers
were relocated from there to nearby Hancock Shaker Village in
1947.
Seventy-two acres and approximately 40
original Shaker buildings were declared a National Historic Landmark
District
in 1965. The site has also been recognized by Save America's
Treasures and The World Monuments Fund.
