Museums & Collections | October 16, 2018

Stevens-Coolidge Place winter activities

Winterlights and scavenger hunts at the historic Stevens-Coolidge Place

by Nell Porter-Brown

From The November-December 2018 Issue

**Snowy grounds at sunset** | Photograph courtesy of the Trustees

The Stevens-Coolidge Place, an estate in North Andover, Massachusetts, is hosting Winterlights (November 29-December 31), and a New Year’s Resolution Scavenger Hunt (December 22-January 6). Visitors can stroll the artfully illuminated mansion and grounds while enjoying music, guided tours, and wintry activities organized by the property’s steward, the Trustees of Reservations. (Farther west, in Stockbridge, the Trustees are also running Winterlights events at Naumkeag.)This former summer home of Helen and John Gardner Coolidge, A.B. 1884 (a descendant of Thomas Jefferson, and nephew of art patron Isabella Stewart Gardner) sits amid bountiful gardens; the roses may be long gone, but there are choice evergreens, a serpentine wall, the skeletal beauty of an old orchard—and that scavenger hunt. Look inside the estate’s “Little Free Library” for a list of 15 resolutions prompting searches for natural objects and signs of wildlife. Fun for any age, or an intergenerational team, the hunt fosters external (and internal) exploration befitting a long New England winter.

Published in the November-December 2018 print issue under the headline “Winter’s Bright Spots,” in the Harvard Squared section.

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