Ladies in sweeping Victorian dresses, and men donning distinguished top hats made it easy to picture an era when intellectuals, academics, and some of New England’s most beloved writers perhaps enjoyed the landscape a century-and-a-half ago. Meadow Road was transformed to the 1860s, becoming the setting for a carriage ride through the park with stars Meryl Streep (Aunt March), Florence Pugh (Amy), and Timothèe Chalamet (Laurie)-complete with horse-drawn carriages trotting along the freshly covered dirt road, antique gas lanterns, iron filigree park furniture, and period-costumed actors strolling along the tree-lined path. The book was Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, and last year Sony Pictures transformed a portion of the Arboretum into a Parisian park scene from the novel for their motion picture adaptation. When The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University was established in 1872, it was likely never imagined that an acclaimed literary work of that time would be recreated into a movie set amidst the landscape nearly a century-and-a-half later.

Arnold theater movie times