The Ruins at Sassafras Museum: A Venue Wrapped In Shaker Chic
The Ruins at Sassafras Museum in New Lebanon, New York is a fascinating commingling of history, intentions and functions. A venue for events, weddings, the arts, and historic tours, the former home of the Shaker Second Family Settlement built in 1787 has been restored and reimagined into one of the most interesting new places to visit in the region. The site’s effervescent co-owner Carol Reichert, will be more than happy to give you a tour of the historic grounds.
Party in the ruins
Neighboring the Shaker Museum’s Historic Mount Lebanon Site, the Darrow School, and The Abode of The Message (a Sufi retreat on a former Shaker site), the Ruins property once homed 67 Shakers. It's centered around a large stone building, which was originally built as the “brethren’s workshop" for labors like seed packing. Now it’s a grand retreat that sleeps 10 (the entire property can host 18) and adeptly blends the expert craftsmanship of Shaker construction with other high design and a Moroccan aesthetic. The combination of styles interacts quite elegantly, and speaks to Reichert’s desire to honor the history of the Shakers while allowing the space to tell new stories.
“The design style that I've used in the chair factory, and in here, I call it Shaker-Moroccan because that whole Moroccan vibe got into my bones,” says Reichert, who runs the place with husband Jerome Shereda. “It’s ‘creative restoration’ because it's trying to be accurate as much as we can be, but also interpreting a modern day aesthetic.”
Next to the house, the museum and the event hall are located in what is believed to be the last remaining Shaker chair factory. The massive building was actually raised two feet off the ground to repair the foundation during restoration. The interior is a humungous open space of big wood beams and tall windows facing the mountains. Downstairs, a North African-inspired bar room and lounge has been built into the textured stone and broken brick of the old foundation.
Hello, Ruins
When Reichert and Shereda first bought the place in February of 2020 — moving from their previous historic reno in Newton, Massachusetts — the property was woefully overgrown. As they beat back the brush, “ruins” they had not known existed revealed themselves. First the couple tidied up the exposed foundation of the former women’s living quarters in the front yard, in which a subsequent owner had built a large smoke house. The current owners have turned that smokehouse into the property’s quirkiest seasonal guest room.
The Chair Factory while lifted in August of this year
“When we moved here, I didn't know anything about this area.” Reichert says. “I started learning about the Shakers, and I was just blown away by how forward thinking they were. They weren't like some other utopian religious organizations where they shun technology. They embraced it. We have an underground water system here that the Shakers used to water their animals and their crops, and remnants of that are still here. I just got really excited about who these people were and I thought, you know what, we need to open this property to the public because nobody's ever seen our place.”
As they cleared more thickets they found the foundation of the Sisters’ Workshop, where the women of the community toiled. They have now landscaped the lawn in that space into a quilted pattern to honor the women’s work. Further into the overgrowth they unearthed the much larger stone foundations of two big barns. These ruins have now taken on new life as a stage.
“I originally thought, I'd love to have flamenco dance performances,” Reichert says. “It's hard to find performance space, and so in the beginning, I thought, oh, we'll just make this place a place where people can perform, and offer it to artists. And in fact, we have done that. Last summer, we had two Shakespeare performances in the ruins. We had a chamber music concert in the ruins, which we offered free to the public. That was kind of a dream for us.”
Reichert says she hopes to increase the site’s use as a performance venue in the future. A dancer her whole life, she says the chair factory and the outdoor spaces create compelling backdrops for movement.
The Shakers farmed sassafras for use in their medical concoctions, which inspired the name for the site, before the owners found the ruins. So as strange a name as The Ruins at Sassafras Museum may seem at first, Reichert says it actually came about organically.
Found objects include Shaker tools, glass medicine bottles and other significant pieces, now on display as part of the museum experience. Reichert is still making new discoveries here, most recently locating previously unknown burial markers at the historic cemetery down a trail into the woods. Reichert has been in contact with one of the two remaining Shakers in Maine about them and has invited him to come visit the property and evaluate the find. She says they regularly consult with Shaker Museum curator Jerry Grant on new finds.
The Sexiest Shaker Museum Site
Though she says she knew next to nothing about the Shakers before buying the property, Reichert, who spent her career as the owner of a medical publishing company, has been a fast study. Leading the museum tours herself, Reichert makes learning about the chaste Shakers a lively time. With the renovations and restyling – the brass embellishments, candles tucked into stone wall nooks, and hidden seating areas to sneak off to — the Ruins at Sassafras is intriguing, mysterious, and easily the sexiest Shaker museum site you’ll ever find.
“The Shakers were so good at citing properties in the most beautiful way,” Reichert adds. “It’s breathtaking. Their whole thing was, ‘how do we create heaven on earth?’ So part of it was, well, you have to be in a beautiful place that's connected to nature, and that will elevate you and your behavior and your goodness. I don't know if that's happened to us, but I hope so.”
Yes, it is technically a museum, but it is as a venue that The Ruins excels. Is it the most faithful representation of the Shaker’s legacy? Clearly not – but the care, effort and millions of dollars Reichert and Shereda put into saving the property has made it an unparalleled location for any event, especially for weddings. Currently the site is allowed 12 weddings a year by local code and they are already booked solid for 2024. They are actively lobbying the town to increase the number.
Shaker history aficionados may bristle at some of the changes that have been made to the site. But while the Shakers may have left a lasting legacy in the quality of the objects they made, their presence on earth was destined to be finite. Their devout celibacy left them no agency over the future of the things they left behind. It could be seen as blessing, then, that anyone with the resources to restore this place found it and took on the challenge at all. Now, those interested in Shaker history have options. You can still go walk among Shaker ghosts in the traditional way at the New Lebanon historic site or the Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield. But now, you can also have a wholly different experience at The Ruins, where Shaker design history exists in conversation with other artistic styles, ideas, and the joyful activities of the living.
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