The Arts Colony That Built American Theater

Drive up Overlook Mountain Road in Woodstock and you'll pass weathered clapboard buildings nestled among maples and hemlocks. They're still there after more than a century — the heart of Byrdcliffe, the artists' colony founded in 1902 that became the birthplace of modern American theater.

The Vision: Art Out of the City

Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead, heir to a fortune and a disciple of the Arts and Crafts movement, inherited a 1,000-acre parcel of land in the Catskills from his father. In 1902, he partnered with artist Hervey White and potter Jane Byrd — whose name gave the colony its own — to build a community where artists could live and create outside the commercial pressures of New York City.

By 1903, the colony included a crafts building, a theater, a pottery, a darkroom, and dozens of small artist cottages. Whitehead brought in master craftsmen who built furniture, produced handwoven textiles, printed books by hand, and — most consequentially — put on theatrical performances that broke every convention of the time.

The Maverick Theater That Changed Everything

The Byrdcliffe theater program, eventually called the Maverick Concerts and later the Maverick Theater, became the incubator for what historians now recognize as modern American theater. Unlike the commercial Broadway of the era, Byrdcliffe performances embraced experimental staging, original American plays, and non-professional casts from the colony itself.

The colony attracted figures who would shape 20th-century American culture: novelist Theodore Dreiser, journalist Hutchins Hapgood, anarchist Emma Goldman (who lectured from the Maverick stage), and sculptors, painters, and writers who came for summers that stretched into permanent residencies. The colony's pottery — Byrdcliffe Pottery — produced some of the finest Arts and Crafts ceramics in the country, and examples are now held in major museum collections.

What's Here Today

Byrdcliffe's 15 surviving historic buildings are owned by the Byrdcliffe Guild, a cooperative community of artists and writers who maintain the legacy. The Maverick Concerts summer series — the oldest continuously running chamber music festival in the United States — still performs in the original 1908 concert hall, a rustic timber-frame space with no air conditioning and acoustics that musicians call transcendent.

The colony's grounds are open to visitors on guided walks, typically offered in summer and fall. The Maverick Concert series runs from June through August each year, with chamber music concerts on Saturday and Sunday evenings.

Plan Your Visit

• Guided tours: Offered seasonally through the Byrdcliffe Guild — check Byrdcliffe.org for dates
• Maverick Concerts season: June through August, Saturday and Sunday evenings at 5:00 PM
• Location: Off Route 28, follow signs for Maverick Concert Hall on Maverick Road, Woodstock
• Tip: The concert hall has no air conditioning — it's part of the charm. Bring a blanket.