Manchester: outlets, Hildene & the Equinox

A resort town for two centuries

Manchester has been welcoming summer visitors since the early 1800s, when wealthy families from New York and Boston began escaping the heat for the cool air of the Battenkill Valley. That long history of hospitality shows: this is a town with grand hotels, marble sidewalks, an unusual density of good restaurants and a level of polish rare in rural Vermont.

It sits in a broad valley between two ranges — the dark, jagged Taconics to the west, topped by Mount Equinox at 3,848 feet, and the rolling forested Green Mountains to the east. That geography gives Manchester a more open, expansive feel than Vermont’s narrower canyon towns, and it explains why the summer people came.

The town splits neatly in two. Manchester Village, up the hill to the south, is the genteel half: marble slab sidewalks quarried locally, white-columned historic hotels, churches and quiet tree-lined avenues. Manchester Center, at the northern crossroads where Routes 7A, 11 and 30 meet, is the commercial half: designer outlets in restored 19th-century timber buildings, independent shops, galleries and the region’s best browsing.

Hildene, the Lincoln family home

Perched on a promontory overlooking the Battenkill Valley two miles south of the village, Hildene was built in 1905 by Robert Todd Lincoln — the only child of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln to reach adulthood, a corporate lawyer, US Secretary of War and later president of the Pullman Company.

The 24-room Georgian Revival mansion remains furnished with original Lincoln family belongings, which is what sets it apart from most historic house museums. Among them: one of Abraham Lincoln’s stovepipe hats, family furniture, and a 1908 Aeolian pipe organ with 1,000 pipes that is still played for visitors. Descendants lived here until 1975, so the collection was never dispersed.

The 412-acre grounds hold as much as the house. The formal garden, designed by Robert’s daughter Jessie in 1907 as a French parterre laid out in the pattern of a stained-glass window, peaks with about a thousand peonies in June. The estate also has a restored 1903 Pullman car, Sunbeam, exhibited on the grounds with an unflinching account of the Pullman porters' labour history and the 1894 strike. A working goat dairy produces cheese on site and is open to visitors, and twelve miles of walking trails and a floating wetland boardwalk run down toward the river.

Allow three hours minimum. It is open year-round, with the trails groomed for cross-country skiing in winter.

The Equinox and Manchester Village

Established in 1769 as Marsh Tavern, the Equinox is the grand resort at the heart of Manchester Village — a long white-columned facade with green shutters running along Route 7A. It has hosted four US presidents, including Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Taft and Benjamin Harrison, as well as Mary Todd Lincoln, whose visits first drew her son Robert to the valley.

Today it offers an 18-hole championship golf course, a full spa, an off-road driving school in the hills behind, and a British-style falconry school where you can fly a Harris hawk on the grounds. The Marsh Tavern dining room still occupies the original 1769 building, serving regional game, roasted trout and craft ales.

Around it, Manchester Village is a compact conservation district worth a slow walk: marble sidewalks cut from local quarries, the 1871 First Congregational Church, the Burr and Burton Academy campus dating to 1829, and the Southern Vermont Arts Center on 100 hillside acres above town, with galleries, a sculpture park and a summer concert series.

The Kimpton Taconic Hotel, also in the village, is the upscale boutique alternative — a modern rebuild of a historic property with mountain views and a good restaurant.

Shopping: outlets, books and Orvis

Manchester Center is the best shopping in Vermont, and it manages it without looking like a mall. The designer outlets — Armani, Brooks Brothers, Ralph Lauren, Vineyard Vines, Kate Spade and dozens more — occupy restored historic timber buildings and low-slung clapboard complexes connected by marble walkways, so the whole district reads as a village rather than a plaza. Note that Vermont does charge 6 percent sales tax on clothing, unlike New Hampshire, so the discounts come from the outlets themselves.

Northshire Bookstore is the town’s cultural anchor and one of the most celebrated independent bookshops in America: three floors, floor-to-ceiling shelves, a dedicated children’s level, a cafe, and a staff-recommendation culture that has made it a destination in its own right. Allow an hour, and expect to leave with more than you planned.

The Orvis flagship store is the other pilgrimage. Charles F. Orvis founded the company in Manchester in 1856, making it America’s oldest mail-order retailer and the birthplace of the modern fly-fishing industry. The store has casting ponds where you can try a rod before buying, a fly-fishing school, and dogs everywhere. Next door, the American Museum of Fly Fishing holds the rods of Hemingway, Eisenhower and Babe Ruth, and the largest collection of angling artifacts in the world.

Mount Equinox and the Batten Kill

Mount Equinox dominates the western horizon at 3,848 feet, the highest peak in the Taconic Range and one of the most prominent summits in New England.

The Skyline Drive is a 5.2-mile private paved toll road climbing from Route 7A through hairpin turns and grades reaching 12 percent, with scenic turnouts over the valley on the way up. At the summit, the Saint Bruno Viewing Center explains the mountain’s unusual ownership: the Carthusian monks of the Charterhouse of the Transfiguration, a silent contemplative order whose monastery sits on the mountain’s flank, own most of it and maintain it as conservation land. On a clear day the view reaches the Green Mountains, the Adirondacks, the Berkshires and the White Mountains. The road runs roughly May through October.

On foot, the Burr and Burton Trail climbs the eastern flank directly from behind the academy campus in the village — about three miles and 2,800 feet of gain, steep and unrelenting, to the summit ridge. East of town, the 18,100-acre Lye Brook Wilderness holds Lye Brook Falls, a 125-foot cascade reached by a 4.6-mile round trip on an old logging railroad grade.

And the Batten Kill, the river running through the valley, is one of the most famous trout streams in America — clear, spring-fed, technical, and the reason Orvis is here. It has designated catch-and-release sections, and licences are sold at the Orvis store. Its lower stretches through Arlington are gentle Class I water for canoeing and tubing.

Eating, seasons and day trips

What to do with the rest of your time.

The Silver Fork — internationally inspired cooking in a restored historic theatre; the best dinner in town.

Ye Olde Tavern — an authentic 1790 tavern with candlelit rooms and cranberry fritters.

Up for Breakfast — a cosy second-floor diner famous for sourdough pancakes and hashes; expect a queue.

Dorset, 10 minutes north — marble sidewalks, the Dorset Inn of 1796 and the 1785 marble quarry, now a swimming hole.

Arlington, 15 minutes south — Norman Rockwell’s village, the West Arlington covered bridge and Batten Kill paddling.

Bennington, 30 minutes south — the Battle Monument, Robert Frost’s grave and the Grandma Moses collection.

Stratton and Bromley, 20 to 30 minutes east — the ski areas that make Manchester a winter base as well as a summer one.

Practical information and where to stay

Manchester sits on US Route 7 and the parallel scenic Route 7A in southwest Vermont, about two and a half hours south of Burlington, three and a half north of New York City and three from Boston, with Albany’s airport about an hour and a quarter away. A car is essential to move between the Village, the Center, Hildene and Equinox.

Mid-September to mid-October is peak, with foliage on Route 7A and the Skyline Drive among the best in the state — book months ahead. Winter turns Manchester into a base for Stratton and Bromley, with the Skyline Drive closed. Spring is quiet and cheap; summer brings the gardens, the river and the arts centre’s concerts.

Lodging spans everything. The Equinox Golf Resort & Spa runs 380 to 750 a night and the Kimpton Taconic is the boutique equivalent. Mid-range inns — the Manchester View on its hillside with valley views and fireplaces, the Inn at Manchester in a restored 1880s house with a pub — run 180 to 290. And roadside value options such as Aspen at Manchester and the Palmer House Resort, with tennis courts and golf access, start around 115. Compare live prices in the search below, with free cancellation on most rooms.

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