Put Yourself in the Picture

BY JOE BILLS

aving slipped in right before closing time, I don’t have long to admire the artwork in front of me. But as I pick out one detail after another, comparing it in my mind to the street I had been strolling not an hour before, I’m drawn in just as so many before me have been.

Norman Rockwell’s famed Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas (Home for Christmas) hangs in a place of prominence at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Since its first appearance, in the December 1967 issue of McCall’s magazine, the painting has taken a central place in the pantheon of Rockwell Americana, often reprinted and even annually restaged by the proud residents of Stockbridge.

What has brought me to this picturesque hamlet in the Berkshires is not the museum (though it is absolutely worth the trip), but an unusual opportunity: to actually step into the Main Street of Rockwell’s Stockbridge and make it one’s home.

Kyle Haver, whose family has owned the building since 1981, has

Leonard Bernstein, Herbie Hancock, Mel Brooks, or Merce Cunningham. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward visited, as did Eugene Ionesco, Janis Joplin, and Yo-Yo Ma. Alice Brock, whose eponymous next-door restaurant was made famous by Arlo Guthrie, would occasionally walk over with some of her acclaimed borscht.

One of Haver’s favorite celebrity memories is of the time his grandmother was perplexed by the lack of interest for an old pump organ she had at the shop. The pianist Van Cliburn was in town for a Tanglewood performance, and Sossner invited him to take a look at the organ. “He sat down and played for 20 minutes,” Haver recalls. “By the time he was done, not only was the store full of people, but four offers had been made on the organ.”

The floor plan of the 8,770-squarefoot building, which as part of the historic Main Street district is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places, hasn’t changed much over the years. There are two retail spaces out front, currently occupied by a real estate agent and a modern reincarnation of Seven Arts, whose vintage records and funky gifts stand in for Sossner’s antiques. A retail space in the rear of the building recently welcomed a wool shop.

Shortly after Braman moved out of the second-floor living space, it was rented to a tenant who stayed for 25 years. It has giant windows and great bones, though it is overdue for a facelift. A glimpse of the decorative tin ceiling behind a drop ceiling from the 1960s hints at its once and future grandeur.

Perhaps the building’s biggest surprise is to be found on the third floor, originally designed to serve as the town’s Masonic hall. Its large central room, where acupuncturist Lonny Jarrett has been teaching classes for 35 years, features a domed acoustic ceil- ing. A word quietly spoken at one end carries perfectly throughout.

“It is going to be an ideal fit for someone,” Haver says of 44 Main Street. “Maintaining history and tradition and community always took priority over money for my grandmother. We don’t really want the corporate world moving in. For us, this is a building of memories. We’re looking for someone whose vision for the future respects and reflects the best of Stockbridge.”

The building is listed at $1,795,000. For information, contact William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty at 413528-4192 or go to williampitt.com.

To learn more about Stockbridge’s Norman Rockwell Museum , which houses the largest and most significant collection of Rockwell art in the world, go to nrm.org.