Time Travel

Every Tuesday and Thursday at the Norman Rockwell Museum, we offer our visitors the opportunity to travel through time, going back about 150 years (you can't beat the deal, either--free with museum admission). Maybe that's overselling it a little bit, because to be perfectly honest (and corny) your "time machine" is a nifty combo of your imagination to picture the stories we tell and your feet to carry you around the museum grounds. It's not exactly Back to the Future (we don't have a Delorean in the garage), but did I mention it's free?

To be clear, either I or one of my bosses gives a historic property tour, talking about the museum building (a 1993 design by Robert A.M. Stern), sculptures by Norman Rockwell's youngest son Peter that are on the grounds, and the historic Linwood House (c. 1859) which now houses our administrative offices but was once the Berkshire cottage of prestigious New York lawyer Charles Butler.

Visitors on this tour always have a lot of questions. It's understandable, because though the history of this place is truly fascinating, it doesn't have very much to do with Norman Rockwell. He never lived here, and though his studio is on the grounds today, it was moved here from downtown Stockbridge after Rockwell died, so he never did paint on this green hillside with mountains in the background. That said, the story of Charles Butler, his law partners, and their quaint little cottages in the Berkshires (they're really mansions--Linwood houses has 16 rooms and 14 fireplaces) is definitely intriguing.

I'll share some anecdotes about Butler and the history tour in coming weeks, but today I have questions on the brain, in particular one that I got on Tuesday during the tour. We always talk about Butler Road, which Charles Butler had built so he could easily travel from the train station in town to his house a mile away. The only (tiny) problem was that the Housatonic River was in his way. His solution was to build Butler Bridge over it, which still stands as a pedestrian walkway. One of our visitors understandably asked me how to get there and what it was like, to which I had one of those sputtering intern moments: "uh, uh, I think, I'm pretty sure..." The sad truth? I'd never gone down to see it with my own eyes!

When I went back to the offices and told my boss, we hopped on the golf cart and she drove me down to see Butler Bridge myself. It's so beautiful! You'll find it less than a ten-minute walk from the Rockwell Studio down a mown pathway. Standing on the middle of the bridge it's quiet and peaceful, and the views of the Housatonic really can't be beat. Plus, now when anyone asks me a question (well, this question), I won't have to have an intern answer!