Prior to 1899, the Ladies Sewing Circle of Waterford carried on a lending library at the Ambrose Knight store, run by Sarah and Carrie Knight. Interest in the library grew and more room was needed for books. The Knight sisters began construction of a stone building, but both died only a few weeks apart in August 1911 during its construction. The building was completed in 1912. On Oct. 1, 1937 a fire destroyed parts of the library and other nearby buildings. In early 1938, the library’s second floor was reconstructed in the new Dutch Colonial style, giving the library a very different look.
Waban is full of eclectic homes from the end of the 19th century, and this example is probably my favorite! The Herbert and Georgia Stetson House was built in 1897 and demonstrates how elements of the Colonial Revival style were incorporated into a less rigid Queen Anne style plan. Herbert was a lumber dealer, and likely used his own product in his home. The mixture of ornament includes Colonial Revival style pedimented dormers, a Palladian motif window, oval windows, and a modillion cornice in combination with bays, oriels, a dramatically overshot gable roof, and a swept dormer reminiscent of the Queen Anne style. Together, the composition is perfection, and really makes you stop and analyze all the details!
In 1895, Waban Village was in the middle of its massive development period, when half of the homes in the neighborhood were built within 10 years. One of the earliest in this neighborhood was this investment property by John E. Parry, a businessman and major developer. This house appears to have been rented at first, but was listed as vacant for some time in the city directories. Eventually it was purchased and has been lovingly maintained to this day. The design is a regional take on the transitional Shingle and Colonial Revival styles, this one with a really unique cross gambrel roof.
Dr. Sarah Marcy Crawford was a graduate of the Woman’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary for Women and Children and long devoted herself to her patients. She eventually settled in the Boston area, working in Roxbury as a physician until she took up a residence in Waban Village of Newton. She worked locally at the New England Hospital for Women and Children and served as a deputy superintendent of the State’s minor wards for the old Massachusetts Board of Charity and was an active member of the Massachusetts Medical Society. She had this eclectic home built for her and her family, but they later relocated to another home in town. The house is a great example of the convergence of architectural styles, common at the end of the 19th century, this one being a blending of Shingle, Queen Anne, and Colonial Revival styles.
Located in downtown Millbury, MA, the town’s local post office stands as a great example of Art Deco and Colonial Revival architecture styles, showing how well different styles can be incorporated into a single, complimentary design. The Millbury Post Office building was constructed in 1940 from plans by Louis Adolph Simon, who served as Supervising Architect in the Office of the Supervising Architect for the U.S. Treasury from 1933 until 1939, when the office was moved to the Public Works Administration / Works Progress Administration. The post office was designed at the tail end of the New Deal programs to help stimulate local economies by building infrastructure and providing jobs to locals. Inside, a mural “An Incident in the King Philip’s War, 1670” was painted by Joe Lasker and installed in 1941 and was “revivified” in 1991.
One of the more architecturally modest and refined Gilded Age summer cottages of Newport sits on one of the most picturesque pieces of land at the southeastern point of Aquidneck Island and is aptly named Land’s End. The cottage was built in 1864, Land’s End was designed by John Hubbard Sturgis for Boston banker, Samuel Gray Ward, his father’s business associate. The home features a refined Italianate style base with a roof comprised of a variation of the Second Empire mansard style called a “turtleback roof”. Land’s End is probably most famous as the residence of Edith Wharton (1862-1937) after she acquired the property in 1889. She worked with Boston designer Ogden Codman, Jr., to experiment with a style of subdued classical interiors and a remodel of the exterior, which was later featured in their book, “The Decoration of Houses”. Wharton was inspired to show what good taste is after the influx of Vanderbilts and other newly moneyed summer residents of Newport. The book focused on how to build and decorate houses with nobility, grace, and timelessness. It would, they hoped, lead its readers out of what Wharton called (pace the Vanderbilts) a “Thermopylae of bad taste” and into an aesthetic Promised Land. Wharton only lived at Land’s End for a decade, when the “stuffiness” of high-society there led her to move to the Berkshires in Massachusetts, where she worked with architect Ogden Codman to design her new home, The Mount. It the monstrous Lippitt Mansion, Breakwater was built at the time, just next door! did not help that Sadly, many of the interiors have been altered since Wharton’s time there, but with more recent interventions, but the book did help shift some of Newports later homes to a more refined, classical taste.
Imagine being a neighbor to The Breakers? This 1880 home at Ochre Point along the iconic Newport Cliff Walk was built for wealthy grocery goods merchant of Philadelphia, Walter H. Lewis. The stunning home was designed by architect Detlef Lienau, who was first trained as a carpenter and cabinetmaker in Berlin before attending architecture schools in Munich and Paris. He eventually settled in New York City and was responsible for some amazing homes and commercial buildings there. His design for Anglesea, a summer cottage for Lewis, was French inspired with Stick style detailing. Stonemasons and woodworkers from Italy, along with American craftsmen, built Anglesea, which was designed to afford views of the sea from every angle. The home was purchased and modified in the Colonial Revival style in 1896 by Frederick Pearson and wife Lesley Ayer Pearson. The couple inherited much of their wealth from Lesley’s father James Cook Ayer, who was the wealthiest patent medicine businessman of his day and inventor of Ayer’s Sasparilla. The home remained in the family and was used for high-society gatherings until it was sold out of the family in 1996. Anglesea was purchased by Alfred Carpionato, a Rhode Island developer, who expanded and renovated Anglesea from 1996-2003, with the assistance of architect Friedrich St. Florian. The building is used for events by the group.
“Seaweed” is a spectacular oceanfront estate situated on Newport’s famed Cliff Walk and overlooking Bailey’s Beach. This home is three-stories with an enormous enclosed porch that offers sweeping views of the Atlantic from all windows. The house consists of 16 rooms including an inviting foyer, nine bedrooms, seven bathrooms, dining room, and living room, all with original fireplaces, flooring, and detail throughout. Views of the sea are from nearly every room. “Seaweed” was originally built and owned by Mr. Henry Howard in 1860-61. It was altered in 1867 by renowned architect George Champlin Mason. Within a decade it was sold to Mr. C. Davis who passed it on to George T. M. Davis. In the 1880’s the property became a rental property owned by Alfred Smith, a real estate agent who lived near the center of town. In the early 1900’s it was purchased by Thomas Dolan of Philadelphia who re-baptized the home “Seaweed” after having architect Horace Trumbauer bring it to its present Colonial Revival style. The name is one of my favorites! What do you think of the name Seaweed for a home?
Collinsville, Connecticut grew in importance and population significantly in the 19th century. The traditional, rural town center of Canton remained pastoral with dairy farms on large agricultural lots. With the population centered around Collinsville, it was decided to erect a new town hall building in Collinsville, which is actually at the far edge of town, but the village where most residents lived. In 1902, this two-story, brick building was constructed just off Main Street. The building is unique for the Colonial Revival design, but with Gothic style lancet windows at the second floor. In the second half of the 20th century, the Town of Canton purchased the larger, three-story brick building adjacent to this building and expanded for additional town offices.
The only estate in Lancaster that can rival the Nathaniel Thayer Estate in size and grandeur is the OTHER Thayer estate, built for Bayard Thayer. Sitting on over 55 acres of forests and gentle rolling fields, Hawthorn Hill is one of the most impressive mansions in Central Massachusetts. The property is so secluded that I had to rely on real estate photos to share! The listings mention that there are over 40 bedrooms and 27 bathrooms… Bayard Thayer (1862-1916) is the grandson of Nathaniel Thayer, Unitarian minister of the First Church of Christ in Lancaster and son of Nathaniel Thayer, a banker. When his brother was willed the family estate (featured previously) after the death of their father, Bayard used the opportunity to build a modern estate high upon a hill in town. The mansion was built in 1903-1904 under the direction of Guy Lowell, a renowned Boston architect of the time. In 1907-1908, Little and Browne were commissioned for landscape alterations and in 1914-15, Ogden Codman Jr. was commissioned to renovate the interiors. Bayard died one year later, and the property remained in the family until around WWII. In 1953, the property was acquired by the Boston Cenacle Society, who added a massive dormitory addition to the building. Recent plans were unveiled to subdivide the land and build house lots on half the estate, which gives me mixed feelings.
Bar Harbor’s first library is believed to have been organized in 1875 by a group of summer residents. This collection of 176 volumes was assembled for the use of Mt. Desert’s permanent residents and made available to them for two nights per week. A small frame library was built in 1877. In 1883, the growing collection was turned into a subscription library with borrowing privileges charged at the rate of $1.00 per family, but the fee was dropped three years later. By the late 19th century, the village’s population boomed, especially in the summer months when wealthy families descended upon the sleepy town every year to take in the cooler climate and sweeping scenery of Mount Desert Island. Acknowledging the need for a more suitable library, Maria Van Antwerp DeWitt Jesup, the widow of Morris K. Jesup (1830-1908), a New York financier and long-time summer resident of Bar Harbor, gifted the town funds to erect a new building as a memorial to her late husband. The Colonial Revival style library was designed by the New York firm of Delano & Aldrich, and exhibits a beautiful centered entrance recessed in a limestone arch.
The marriage of Anna Perkins Pingree to Joseph Peabody in 1866 was a merging of two of the most influential and wealthy families of Salem, Massachusetts. The marriage however did not meet the mark, as the couple eventually had a large falling-out after purchasing a mansion in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood in 1877. In her time away from her estranged husband, Anna became heavily involved in the arts, collecting hundreds of paintings and decorating her homes in Boston, Ipswich, and her new summer cottage in Bar Harbor. In 1896, she had her Bar Harbor cottage built on West Street, a road of substantial summer homes right next to downtown. The Colonial Revival “cottage” sits on the waterfront of Frenchman Bay and has only 12 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms, in 12,500 square feet.
West Street in Bar Harbor was laid out in 1886, and developers laid out house lots on both sides, with larger, more expensive land right on the water. One of the earliest homes built on the street is Greenlawn, constructed in 1887 for William Rice, an industrialist who co-founded Rice & Hutchins, a shoe manufacturing company with main offices in Boston. The architectural firm of Rotch and Tilden, comprised of partners Arthur Rotch and George Thomas Tilden. Both had studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Both had worked at the architectural firm of Ware and Van Brunt, and would be best known for their Gilded age mansions in New England. By 1896, the cottage was owned by William L. Green, which is likely when the cottage’s name “Greenlawn” stuck. The house recently sold for $4.25 Million and the interiors are gorgeous!
Originally an old tavern/inn, this wood-frame building in Newmarket, NH, was built for a member of the Rundlett Family who settled in town from nearby Portsmouth. The old building was known as Rundlett’s Tavern for a number of years, later renamed the Washington House, and eventually Silver’s Hotel by 1870. Under owner Joseph B. Silver, the Federal style building was updated with Victorian-era flair, marketing to visitors of town who had business with the Newmarket Manufacturing Company across the street. After Silver died in 1898, the building was purchased by George H. Willey and renamed the Willey Hotel/Willey House. He oversaw renovations in the 1920s to give it the Colonial Revival appearance we see today. The building is now apartments.
Buildings of New England 