Yaddo occupies a 400-acre estate in Saratoga Springs, an artists' community built to let people work without interruption. Its stated mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment. On March 11, 2013, Yaddo was designated a National Historic Landmark.
The place offers residencies to artists working in choreography, film, literature, musical composition, painting, performance art, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and video. Over the years, people who have worked here have gone on to win remarkable honors: 82 Pulitzer Prizes, 34 MacArthur Fellowships, 70 National Book Awards, 24 National Book Critics Circle Awards, 108 Rome Prizes, 49 Whiting Writers' Awards, a Nobel Prize (Saul Bellow, who won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976), and at least one Man Booker Prize (Alan Hollinghurst, 2004), among countless other honors. The estate was purchased in 1881 by the financier Spencer Trask and his wife, the writer Katrina Trask; the first mansion burned down in 1891 and the Trasks then built the current house.
Notice the house the Trasks built after 1891, set amid these broad grounds.