Originally 196 x 50 feet, the Shakers' 1859 great stone barn was the largest stone barn constructed in US agricultural history. The interior wooden structure, along with three wings attached to the south wall, burned in 1972.

In 1774, the prophetess Ann Lee and her hardy band of religious miscreants fled persecution in England for the freedom of upstate New York. There, the Shakers began to preach and convert people to their unusual religion, the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing. Named for the physical manifestation of their religious fervor, Mother Ann Lee - who claimed to be the female version of the second coming of Christ - the Shakers were a celibate communal society that was one of the most industrious communes the world has ever seen.

Shaker villages were organized by village elders into self-sufficient families of 30 to 100 sisters and brethren. Each family would be responsible for a diverse set of tasks, such as farming, woodworking, dairy, or construction, which they would barter with amongst themselves and surrounding communities. They embraced both capitalism and technology wholeheartedly, using first water-driven and later steam-driven tools as they established a number of successful industries. These included a seed business, an herb and pharmaceutical business, a baked bean delivery service, and, of course, those famous chairs.

The community established in 1787 at Mount Lebanon in Columbia County would become the epicenter of the Shaker religion; there, the Central Ministry presided over the religion's general expansion. (At the of pinnacle of its success, there were 19 Shaker communities from Maine to Kentucky, numbering over 6,000 adherents.) Mount Lebanon, designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965, was a sprawling, 6,000-acre, 100-building village organized into eight communal families. But even as their religion became synonymous with the many crafts that they perfected, especially their simple but exquisitely crafted furniture and boxes, their membership went into a steep decline by the beginning of the 20th century. The last Shakers left the North Family site at Mount Lebanon in 1947. Today, there are five elderly Shakers that live on Sabbathday Lake in Maine. The majority of the Mount Lebanon site in its stunning Berkshire setting is currently occupied by the Darrow School, a private boarding high school that leases the buildings in return for the stewardship of them. It is here that the ruins of the Great Stone Barn - once the largest in the United States, before it burned in a catastrophic fire in 1972 - sit in decay, as its remaining four walls are propped up by huge stabilizing beams added in 1984.

wash room of the north family wash house

What Ann Lee probably didn't realize when she started her religion is that it would result in a cottage industry (there is a Shaker Historical Trail) that supports the thousands of people who are preserving the many buildings and artifacts from this fascinating chapter in American history and reproducing many of the Shaker crafts and products. Jerry Grant is the Librarian and Historian at the Shaker Museum in Old Chatham, New York. A tall man with thick graying hair and a bushy beard, he has been involved with the Shaker experience as both a craftsman and a curator since 1976. He showed me around the many barns on the property of museum founder John S. Williams that house the 38,000-piece collection of objects, artifacts, manuscripts, and tools. He also gave me a very thorough lesson about Shaker reality. Commenting on the reasons for the decline of the Shakers, Grant said, "It's a demanding life, I think way beyond celibacy, which is probably not a minor issue, but not the major one either. I think that giving up all your individual rights to a communal group and to someone else's authority is not something that is easy to do."