Mission House

Stockbridge, United States

Exterior only

Visible from the street; the inside is private.

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The Mission House at 19 Main Street in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, is a Georgian-style single-family dwelling built between 1741 and 1742 by John Sergeant, the first Christian missionary to the local Mahicans. Erected in the white settlement on the hill above town following Sergeant's marriage in 1739, the house represents a rare surviving example of a colonial mission structure and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1968. Though the house remained with the Sergeant family until the 1870s, it faced an uncertain future during later development. In the 1920s, Mabel Choate, owner of the nearby Naumkeag estate, purchased and relocated the building down into the valley, where she and landscape designer Fletcher Steele undertook restoration, furnished it with eighteenth-century furnishings, and created period gardens. Choate opened the house as a museum in 1930 and subsequently donated it to the Trustees of Reservations, who continue to operate it as a nonprofit museum today.

Architect

John Sergeant

Movement

Georgian architecture

Type: single-family detached home
Heritage: National Register of Historic Places listed place, National Historic Landmark
Place: Stockbridge, United States

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Location

42.28322, -73.31586