A little town in the Catskills with a big reputation as a hub of creativity. Artists of all sorts live, work, and exhibit/ perform in this unique community. A community brim full of galleries, recital halls, stages, restaurants, cafes, wildly unique shops, motels, guest-houses, bed & breakfasts, and performing arts center. This wealth of creativity is set in some of the most beautiful country in the Northeast. The town is famous for lending its name to the Woodstock Festival, which was actually held on a dairy farm almost 60 miles away. The 1903 Byrdcliffe Art Colony is one of the nation’s oldest Arts & Crafts colonies. It brought the first artists to Woodstock to teach and produce furniture, metal works, ceramics, and weaving and established Woodstock’s first painting school. The Woodstock Guild, founded by Byrdcliffe artists in 1939, is now the steward of the 350-acre Byrdcliffe Colony, a multicultural organization which sponsors exhibitions, classes, concerts, dance and theatre events and runs the oldest craft shop in Woodstock, the Fleur de Lis Gallery.
In 1916, utopian philosopher/poet Hervey White built a “music chapel” in the woods. This became the home of the Maverick Music Festival, the longest-running summer chamber music festival in the country. This hand-built concert hall with perfect acoustics, is a multi-starred attraction on the National Register of Historic Places with world-class musicians performing from June to September.