Marble House Project

Calling all parent artists: Marble House Project is bringing back its family-friendly residency to support artists juggling creative work with the responsibilities of parenting.

Accepted artists are welcome to bring a spouse or partner and their children; each family is provided with housing, studio space, and shared meals within a communal setting. Children (ages 4–14) participate in weekday programming from 9am–3pm, including art- and ecology-based activities alongside other enriching, hands-on experiences like organized field trips to local farms and attractions. Residents and their families are invited to get their hands dirty engaging in all aspects of MHP’s agriculture program, gaining insight into sustainability and food production (though this is not required).

If both parents are applying as artists, each must submit a separate application so studio space can be properly allocated, unless applying as a collaborative team.

Application deadline: May 17, 2026, apply via link in bio. Please share with artists in your community who might be a good fit.

The Italianate gardens at MHP extend the vision of the Federal-style estate house into the landscape of the Green Mountains. Commissioned by financier and writer Edwin Lefevre after he fell in love with Italian gardens while serving as an ambassador in Europe, the property followed the trend of many other 20th century estates to integrate landscape, architecture, and infrastructure as one immersive environment.

The grounds were designed by Charles Downing Lay, a key figure of the Country Place Era and an early advocate for integrating public access to green space. Lay conceived the gardens as a formal Italianate composition, built from local marble and aligned with the era’s fascination with European estate design.

What makes this site exceptional is how ornamental and functional designs were integrated: the estate functioned as a self-contained environment, complete with its own early electrical plant and carefully engineered water flow.

The gardens are part of the historic Manley-Lefevre House, a 100-acre property that reflects multiple layers of Vermont history, from marble quarrying to Gilded Age leisure culture. What remains is a rare example of how landscape architecture once operated at the scale of total world-building: aesthetic, ecological, and infrastructural at once.