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Bread Loaf Campus – Maple Cottage // c.1900

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Welcome back to the Bread Loaf Campus! For more early history and context of the complex, check out the post on the Bread Loaf Inn. By 1900, owner Joseph Battell’s enterprise exceeded the capacity of the original inn, and cottages were added to accommodate more guests visiting his new permanent home in the mountains of Ripton, Vermont. Located adjacent to the Mansard-roofed Birch Cottage, one of the most visually striking buildings in the campus is Maple Cottage, which reads more porch than cottage, but it’s 100% perfect. It was the last cottage built by Battell for his family and friends to stay at when visiting. They must have loved evenings on the three-floors of porches looking out over the Green Mountains.

“Beech Nut” // 1913

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“Beech Nut” is a stone cottage built at the top of Beech Hill in Rockport in one of the best hiking areas of Mid-Coast Maine. The hut was built in 1913 for owner John Gribbel (1858-1936), a Philadelphia-based industrialist, who had a summer estate, “Weatherend” in Rockport. He hired a Norwegian immigrant named Hans Heisted, an employee of the Olmsted Brothers, to improve the grounds at Weatherend, which included meandering paths, stone walls, and stone structures. Meanwhile, the Gribbels had started acquiring land on Beech Hill in 1909, and eventually accumulated holdings of more than 300 acres. To keep the masons and landscapers busy during the winter, Gribbel and Heisted thought to build a small hut a few miles away on Beech Hill, which would serve as the family picnic and tea shelter. The stone building features a unique sod roof which was typical of Scandinavian houses up until the late 1800s. Once complete, family and friends would visit Beech Nut to enjoy the fresh air and views of the Atlantic from atop the hill for the day. After successive owners, the property began to deteriorate until the 1980s, when developers began to swarm the open space for redevelopment. In 1986, the land around Beech Nut was put under conservation easement and was acquired in 2003 by the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, which then transferred it in 2006 to the Coastal Mountains Land Trust. In 2007, the hut was completely restored and serves as a respite after the uphill climb for visitors.

Rockport Lime Kilns // c.1800

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During the 19th Century, Rockport, Maine, (then named Goose River as a village in Camden) was a major supplier of lime to East Coast markets. These kilns near the harbor converted limestone rock supplied by 15 local quarries into lime used to make mortar & finish plaster. The burned lime was packed into wooden casks and shipped by schooner to cities all down the coast. In 1817, three hundred casks of lime from Rockport were sent to Washington, D.C. for use in the rebuilding of the United States Capitol, which had been damaged by the British during the War of 1812. In 1852, the citizens of Goose River voted to change their village’s name to Rockport for its rocky terrain. In 1891, Rockport split off from Camden, taking its industry and lucrative harbor with it. A disastrous fire destroyed many of the lime kilns here in 1907, which occurred about the time that cement began to replace lime in building construction. After a few years the kilns were shuttered and remained here as fossils of industry ever since. Local residents in the 1970s gathered together and advocated for the preservation of these significant local structures and gathered funds to stabilize the kilns.

Temple Ohabei Shalom // 1927

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The congregation of Ohabei Shalom is the oldest jewish congregation in the greater Boston area and the second oldest in New England. It was formed in 1843 and was the first formal congregation in Boston. After a smaller space, they purchased the former South Congregational Unitarian Church on Union Park Street in the South End of Boston. The congregation split over ideological differences and the decision was made for one half of the congregation to build a new temple in Brookline, where many of the members began to move to. Land on Beacon Street, just west of the Longwood section of Brookline was purchased in 1921, and it would be four years until a temple center (now the hebrew school) was built in 1925. The larger temple was built just after on the corner of Beacon and Kent streets in Brookline from plans by Clarence Blackall, a noted architect in the area. With its lively use of polychromatic masonry and Byzantine ornament, all surmounted by a great copper dome, the congregation boasts the most architecturally outstanding synagogue in the Boston region and it has been maintained well for the almost 100 years since it was built.

School Building


St. Philip the Apostle Church // 1937

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In 1921, the Catholic Diocese of Hartford purchased a Federal style farmhouse with 135-acres of land in Ashford, Connecticut, with the intention of establishing a new parish in the area. The Diocese assigned Father William J. Dunn, a Connecticut native and son of Irish Immigrants, to this daunting task. Since they had no church building at the time, Father Dunn partitioned off a section of his own home to serve as a chapel for about 100 worshipers, until the purpose-built St. Philip the Apostle Church was constructed in the 1930s. Father Dunn convinced summer resident Paul Chalfin to design the new building. Chalfin was not an architect, but he was an architectural designer whose best known building is the Villa Vizcaya in Miami, Florida. Chalfin was openly gay, and his hiring by the Catholic Church to design one of its churches in the 1930s is noteworthy. There were certainly several Irish immigrants and people of Irish descent in the congregation, but many parishioners came from small villages in Slovakia. The dome is a typical feature of churches in those villages and Chalfin included it in his design as a tribute to them. Due to material and construction costs during the Great Depression, members of the church largely built the church themselves with rocks acquired from stone walls and farms nearby. The church was completed in 1937.

Old Brant Point Lighthouse // 1856

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Located nearby the present Brant Point Lighthouse on Nantucket, the old lighthouse remains as a significant piece of island history preserved. In the 1740s, Nantucket’s whaling industry was growing fast, so at a town meeting in 1746, it was determined that a lighthouse at Brant Point was to be built, to mark the point around which all vessels passed as they entered the island’s inner harbor. On or near this site, nine lighthouses stood, guiding ships into and out of the harbor. This brick tower and attached keeper’s house were constructed in 1856. The tower itself was brick, topped by sandstone, which supported the lantern. The cast-iron lantern had twelve windows. A circular iron staircase led to the lantern, situated forty-seven feet above the ground. By the 1850s, Nantucket faced a sudden decline after the invention of kerosene, cut the need for whale oil and a growing sandbar blocked the harbor. The shifting sands would eventually require a new lighthouse built nearby, the present 1901 wooden lighthouse. The 1856 tower was retained ever since and is an important historical artifact for Nantucket’s maritime history.

Brant Point Lighthouse // 1901

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The Brant Point Lighthouse located on Nantucket Island was first established in 1746 to guide ships to the main harbor. At a town meeting at Nantucket on January 24, 1746, the sea captains of the island spoke out for a lighthouse and the sum of 200 pounds was voted, the wood 1746 lighthouse tower burned in 1758. It was replaced eight more times until 1901, when the present lighthouse was erected. While small, the lighthouse oozes charm and remains active and automated since 1965.

Second Church of Christ, Scientist, Roxbury // 1915

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Breaking ground in 1915, this early Modern church building must have turned heads when it was being built in Roxbury! In October, 1907, a fine lot of land with a house on it, at the corner of Elm Hill Avenue and Howland Street, was purchased for eighteen thousand dollars by a group of Christian Science followers. In October, 1911, a building committee of five was elected by the church, and by the summer of 1914 the building fund had made such satisfactory growth that ground was broken and work for the new structure begun in September. The congregation hired the illustrious architectural firm of Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge to design the edifice of classic and imposing design. Constructed of gray tapestry brick with limestone trimmings, the auditorium seated upwards of one thousand members, under the dome roof. Today, the building is occupied by Grace Church of All Nations.

Lowney Chocolate Factory // 1903

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The Lowney Chocolate Factory is a historic industrial complex in Mansfield, Massachusetts and was established there after town officials took advantage of rail access provided by the Boston and Providence Railroad and enticed businesses to establish themselves in Mansfield. The Walter M. Lowney Company was a chocolate and candy business founded in Boston in the early 1880s by Walter M. Lowney, who started his business by manufacturing chocolate bonbons. The company built offices and factories in Boston, Montreal and here in Mansfield, where they would ship out boxed sweets to stores all over the country. The Mansfield factory was designed by the architectural and engineering firm of Dean & Main in 1903. The firm was
comprised of partners Francis W. Dean and Charles T. Main, who had offices in Boston and specialized in mill design and engineering from 1893 to 1907, originally designing Lowney’s Boston factory in the North End. A later fieldstone addition was added in 1910 and housed the company’s office and shipping facilities. After Walter Lowney died in 1921, the Walter M. Lowney Company continued to operate under the ownership of Lowney’s wife. In the 1930s the factory property was wholly purchased by the Rexall Drug Company, who renamed the Lowney company, United Chocolate Refiners. The Mansfield factory was later owned by Nabisco to make chocolate for oreo cookies for a number of years until it again changed hands. The factory had been largely empty since 2010 until it was recently converted to mixed-income housing (the best kind of redevelopment)! Who doesn’t love a happy ending?

Dorchester Pottery Works // 1896

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Founded in 1895 by George Henderson, the Dorchester Pottery Works successfully produced commercial and industrial stoneware for many years and its building is a significant piece of Dorchester’s industrial heritage. Located in the Harrison Square/Clam Point area of Dorchester, the building began as a two-story wood-frame industrial structure for the young company. It saw immediate success and Henderson oversaw the construction of a large, brick addition which housed an enormous beehive kiln 28-feet in diameter of his own design made of bricks. Here he could fire pottery and other clay goods from his modern facility. Besides clay pots, tableware, and jugs, the company became known for the production of foot warmers, which became known as the ‘Porcelain Pig’ or ‘Piggy’. Foot warmers were widely used in the days before central heating. These clay vessels would be filled with hot water and placed under bedding for overnight warmth. The company made foot warmers until 1939. The company saw dwindling sales after WWII, and eventually closed in 1979. The structures began to decay and the towering smokestack and brick structure was open to the elements. The local neighborhood advocated for its preservation, listing it on the National Register of Historic Places and protecting it as a City of Boston Landmark. After decades of neglect, Bay Cove Human Services acquired the property in 2001 and renovated the building for its own use, keeping the kiln room and the kiln itself intact for community exhibitions. Today, it provides an important historic survivor of Dorchester’s industrial past.

Red Chalet // 1891

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Philadelphia-based architect Lindley Johnson was hired as the official company architect by the Gouldsboro Land Improvement Company’s Grindstone Neck summer colony. As a result, he became the chief tastemaker for the bucolic neighborhood of summer cottages, chapels, and an inn (since demolished). Johnson would design a majority of the cottages in the Shingle style, taking cues from the natural topography and rugged coastlines, but he did deviate from that style a couple times; most notably for his own cottage, “Red Chalet”. While no longer red, the cottage stands out as an extremely rare example of a Swiss Chalet, with its sloping gable roof with wide eaves, exposed stickwork and oversized brackets, decorative carving, and shiplap siding.

Egg Rock Lighthouse // 1875

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The Egg Rock Lighthouse sits in the middle of the Mt. Desert Narrows of Frenchman Bay between Bar Harbor and Winter Harbor. The lighthouse was constructed in 1875 to assist the already built Winter Harbor Lighthouse a short distance away, to provide guidance for the increased ferry traffic to Bar Harbor, which was quickly becoming a prominent summer colony. The architecturally unique lighthouse is comprised of a square tower projecting through the center of the square lighthouse keeper’s house, its unlike anything I have seen before. The station was automated by the United States Coast Guard in 1976, at which time its ancillary structures except the fog station were torn down. The light continues to be managed by the Coast Guard, and is not open to the public; the island and buildings are owned by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.

Winter Harbor Lighthouse // 1856

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Built in 1857, Winter Harbor Light is one of Maine’s enchanting historic lighthouses dotting the rugged coastline. The lighthouse was built by the United States government to aid navigation for the local fishing fleet, an important piece of the local economy there. The light tower, built in 1856, is a round brick structure topped by an original octagonal lantern house with an iron walkway and railing around it. A brick single-story workroom projects from the tower. The keeper’s house is a two-story wood-frame structure, which was built in 1876 (along with the ell) to replace the original keeper’s house. The light was decommissioned in 1934 and sold into private hands, but in its seventy-six years of service, nine keepers and their families lived on the island. It remains a visual landmark on its small island in Mt. Desert Narrows on the drive along the Schoodic Peninsula in Acadia National Park (Winter Harbor side). What are your favorite lighthouses in Maine?

St. Sergius Chapel // 1932

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Formerly known as “Churaevka,” the community known today as Russian Village in Southbury, Connecticut, was established in 1925 as an artistic community for Russians who fled to America after the Russian Revolution of 1917. The village was created by two Russian writers, Count Ilya Tolstoy, the son of Leo Tolstoy (the author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina), and the famous Siberian novelist George Grebenstchikoff. Although Tolstoy was first to discover the area while visiting his translator in Southbury, it was Grebenstchikoff who dreamed of establishing a cultural center and planned to create a rural community of cottages where Russian writers, artists, musicians and scientists could live and flourish statestide. The village was named after a mythical Siberian village mentioned in the works of Grebenstchikoff and the centerpiece is this chapel, St. Sergius Chapel, which was built in 1932-33 from plans by Nicholas Roerich. The small square-plan chapel was likely built of stone gathered from the neighborhood.

Adin Wheeler House // 1790

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The Adin Wheeler House is significant as a rare house form found in this part of New England. Located in Southbury, Connecticut, the property includes the main house, a barn, and the wheelwright shop, a barn-like structure. The house is a 1-1/2-story Cape style wood-frame structure, with a front porch across the front that is sheltered by a bell-cast extension of the main roof. This type of porch roof is uncommon in Connecticut, being reminiscent of Dutch rather than English construction methods. The dwelling was built for Adin Wheeler, who owned the millworks on the nearby falls with business partner Enos Candee, a business partner (and brother-in-law) whose house also stands nearby. Theodore Wheeler, Adin’s great-grandson, built the wheelwright shop in the late 19th century, as well as the major addition to the house, which served as a tap room and public meeting space. The property is a well-preserved collection of 18th and 19th century structures.