For sale: Stockbridge Victorian in Norman Rockwell painting

The three-bedroom, two-bath building comes with stained-glass windows and overwhelmingly charming curb appeal.

The building appeared in Norman Rockwell's "Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas." Wayne Tremblay

By Madeline Bilis -- Boston.com correspondent

October 23, 2019

Homeowners across New England have Norman Rockwell paintings hanging on their walls. For house hunters in Stockbridge, though, there’s the opportunity not only to display a Rockwell original, but to live inside one of his works.

This three-story Victorian for sale on Stockbridge’s Main Street is more than picture-perfect — it appears as the antique shop in Rockwell’s “Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas,” a wintry scene depicting the quaint Western Massachusetts village. For the first time since Rockwell painted the street in 1967, this iconic building is on the market.

44 Main St. is currently home to a real estate office and 7 Arts Gift Shop, but the structure is widely known from the painting as “the antique shop.” Built in 1870 next to Stockbridge’s general store, it now comprises three retail spaces, a second-floor office or residence, and a rentable third floor. The three-bedroom, two-bathroom building totals 8,770 square feet, and comes with stained-glass windows and overwhelmingly charming curb appeal.

Today, Stockbridge’s Main Street, which is also home to landmarks like the historic Red Lion Inn, looks quite similar to the one in Rockwell’s painting. And every year at Christmastime, the town closes the street to traffic to reenact the painting, parking vintage cars along the sidewalk.

“To say the property is iconic would be an understatement,” said Steven Weisz, one of the property’s listing agents. “You can buy posters, lamps, and Christmas ornaments with the likeness of the building.”

According to Weisz, Rockwell once had a studio two doors down from the antique shop. He was known to take breaks and stroll Main Street, sometimes stopping in the antique shop to visit its then-owner, Harriet Sossner.

Weisz and Maggie Merelle of William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty have listed the property for $1,795,000.

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