Our History
Founding
In 1973 Norma Millay Ellis, an artist and the sister of Edna St. Vincent Millay (who preferred to be called Vincent from a young age), founded the Millay Colony for the Arts as an artist residency, inviting her friends and others to come live and work in a small building on the Steepletop estate. In 1976, Norma donated the Barn (constructed from a Sears Roebuck kit decades before) to the Colony to make space for additional Artists-in-Residence. Renovated to accommodate four residents with a private studio and bedroom for each, the Barn is a special place, where gifted residents dive deep into their process — an essential to create exceptional work— inspired by both the history and the quiet tranquility of the setting.
Norma’s dedication to providing the gift of time and space to artists, writers and composers — she died in 1986 at the age of 92 — along with her sister’s genius inform the enduring mission and vision of Millay Arts to this day.
In the mid-1990's, Board and staff worked with a team of six artists with a range of disabilities to design an environmentally-friendly building using the principles of universal access. The Main House features ADA-accessible bedrooms/studios/bathrooms/kitchen and shared living spaces that comfortably accommodate a range of physical abilities.
As Millay Arts approaches its 50th anniversary in 2023, we are delighted to have hosted thousands of composers, visual artists, poets and writers to Steepletop, as we know Vincent and Norma would be as well.
Vincent & Norma
Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine on February 22, 1892. Raised by a single mother along with her two sisters, she preferred to be called Vincent from a young age. She published her first poem, Renascence, at age twenty and her first book Renascence and Other Poems in 1917. Upon graduating from Vassar, she moved to NYC's Greenwich Village and immediately became a fixture on the literary scene.
Vincent and her sister Norma soon joined the Provincetown Theatre Group, and in 1918, she directed and took the lead in her own play, The Princess Marries the Page. In the next several years, openly bisexual and gender-nonconforming, she explored sexuality and feminism in her poems and attracted a series of high-profile male and female lovers. Experiencing a meteoric rise in fame and popularity, she travelled around the country to colleges and universities giving poetry readings attended by frenzied fans (much like the rock stars today). By 1923, she was one of the first women recognized for literary achievement and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
At the same time, Vincent married the Dutch merchant Eugen Boissevain. Their "open marriage" was a source of both controversy and admiration. In the mid-1920's, they purchased a 635-acre blueberry farm in Austerlitz, a country hamlet in Columbia County, a few hours drive from NYC. Vincent told her mother she had found "a piece of heaven" and named the property "Steepletop" after the Steeplebush plant that blossomed in the fields.
Progressive
Vincent was also a fierce activist against WWI, giving voice to those she felt were silenced. In 1927, she was arrested for protesting the (then proposed) execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Edmund Wilson, the influential literary critic and writer, defined Vincent as "a spokesman for the human spirit."
In 1951, Norma Millay Ellis and her husband, the painter Charles Ellis, came to live at Steepletop, where they continued Vincent's legacy and founded the Millay Colony for the Arts. Forging partnerships with longtime friends, Norma was instrumental in building the organization's endowment as well as initiating funding partnerships that last to this day, including the Roscoe Lee Browne Foundation that annually funds a poet of color.
Vincent lived, worked and hosted legendary gatherings (clothes of any sort were banned from the pool) from 1925 until her death in accidental death from a fall in 1950.