Living in The Berkshires

The Berkshires, Massachusetts's westernmost region, packs an internationally recognized concentration of arts and cultural institutions into a compact, mountainous geography genuinely distinct from the Pioneer Valley's river-corridor identity just to its east. Pittsfield, the county seat, carries an honest General Electric-decline story (a workforce once exceeding 13,000, now fewer than 700) alongside a genuine downtown arts-district revival; North Adams tells a similar two-sided story, Sprague Electric's 1985 closure set against MASS MoCA's 1999 opening as one of the largest contemporary-art centers in the country. Lenox (Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home since 1937), Stockbridge (the Norman Rockwell Museum's world's-largest collection of his original art), Great Barrington (the Southern Berkshires' commercial hub, Smithsonian's #1 best small town in 2012), and Williamstown (Williams College, founded 1793, and the Clark Art Institute) each anchor a genuinely distinct cultural identity of their own. Housing in Pittsfield and North Adams runs substantially below the state average with elevated tax rates, while Lenox's, Great Barrington's, Stockbridge's, and Williamstown's smaller, tourism-and-second-home-driven markets carry real premiums tied to cultural demand -- and this region's higher elevation produces the heaviest snowfall of any Massachusetts region in this dataset.

Explore The Berkshires in depth

• Cost of Living & Housing in The Berkshires
• Best Places to Live in The Berkshires
• Moving to The Berkshires
• Climate & Lifestyle in The Berkshires

Places we've researched in The Berkshires

• Pittsfield -- Berkshire County
• Great Barrington -- Berkshire County
• Lenox -- Berkshire County
• Stockbridge -- Berkshire County
• North Adams -- Berkshire County
• Williamstown -- Berkshire County