Marblehead is known for its Colonial-era architecture, so its always fun to find a stellar Queen Anne house in town! In 1884, Jacob M. Cropley, a shoe manufacturer, built one of Marblehead’s finest victorian residences on a hill overlooking the harbor. Cropley ran shoe and leather mills in Massachusetts and Wolfeboro, NH, making great money. The house was located on a prominent site on Pleasant Street, and was purchased by the U.S. Government in 1904 about the time that Cropley and his family moved to Boston. The house was purchased by David Lefevour, a grocer, who moved it back on the lot, saving the house from the wrecking ball. On the former house site, a post office was built by the U.S. Government.
The earliest of Wilton New Hampshire’s summer “cottages” is Moors Manor Cottage, a turn-of-the-century mansion set on former farmland with views of the mountains in the distance! While Wilton never compared to Newport or Bar Harbor as the major summer resort towns for the wealthy, the upper-middle class would sometimes build summer homes in their familial towns where they would escape the hustle-and-bustle of city life. Luckily, this home has been very well-preserved inside and out (but I wish that big fence was gone it really obscures the beauty of the house).
When you look up Queen Anne architecture on Google, this house in Wilton, NH should pop up! The Frederick Colony House was built around 1885 for the mill-owner who built a large cotton mill (last post) in town at the same time. Frederick Colony (1850-1925) was from a prominent textile and cotton mill-owning family based in Massachusetts and Keene, New Hampshire. Colony purchased land along the Souhegan River and built a new mill, there to make his own fortune, and that he did! The Frederick Colony House remains as one of the best-preserved homes in Wilton, and recently sold. Those interiors!
The coming of the railroad to Wilton, New Hampshire was largely due to the rapid increase in the number of mills and factories built in and around the East Village along the river beginning in the early 19th century. This increase was the impetus to Wilton business leaders of the time to petition the state for a charter to form the Wilton Railroad Company which was granted in 1844. The first official run of a wood-burning steam engine from Nashua City Station to the newly constructed Wilton Station occurred on Dec. 1, 1851. The small, wood-frame station was deemed obsolete, and replaced by 1860 with a more substantial structure. In this time, the town prospered, and the local mills cranked out everything from worsted yarn to wooden boxes and furniture. After thirty years of use, however, this second station began to show its age; the tin roof was rusting and it leaked. In 1888, a derrick on a wrecker train caught the side of the building and heavily damaged it, requiring the demolition of the station. By 1892, it was replaced by this new brick station. Between the World Wars, automobile use dominated the American transportation landscape, shifting demands from rail to road. In the late 40’s, a restaurant opened in part of the building, operating until the early-to-mid 50’s. The station was closed when passenger service finally ended and the building, undergoing “adaptive re-use”, into a medical center. It operated for some time as a scenic, heritage railroad stop from 2003-2006.
Welcome to Wilton, New Hampshire! With a population less than 4,000, the tiny New England town sure packs a lot of old buildings into its borders. The town was first part of a township chartered as “Salem-Canada” in 1735, by Colonial Governor Jonathan Belcher of Massachusetts, which then claimed this area. The land here was granted to soldiers from Salem, Massachusetts, who had served in 1690 under Sir William Phips in the war against Canada. “Salem-Canada” was one of the towns on the state’s border intended to provide protection against attack from native tribes. In 1762, residents of the town petitioned New Hampshire Governor Benning Wentworth to incorporate the town as Wilton, likely named after Wilton, England. The town prospered as a sleepy farming town, largely concentrated around Wilton Center. By the 1860s, the village of East Wilton developed around the Souhegan River, with mills and businesses centered there. The town decided to relocate their town hall “closer to the action”. Land was acquired on a triangular piece of land in the center of the village, which was recently cleared by the destruction of Whiting House, a hotel that formerly occupied the site. The architectural firm of Merrill & Cutler of Lowell, MA, were hired to design the building, which blends Richardsonian Romanesque and Queen Anne styles perfectly on the difficult site, opening in 1885. Silent movies were first shown in the auditorium in 1912 and by the 1930s, the auditorium was used most often as a movie theater. A large part of the building has since been occupied as a theater for the community.
While Everett’s population had remained small compared to nearby towns throughout much of the nineteenth century, its close proximity to Boston resulted in dramatic population growth between 1885 and 1915. During this late industrial period Everett’s population was one of the fastest growing in the state, doubling between 1870 and 1880, nearly tripling from 1880 to 1890 and doubling again between 1890-1900. The City of Everett immediately went about erecting a new schoolhouse to educate its youth. Architects Loring & Phipps were retained to prepare plans for the new high school. Ground was broken in August 1892 and the building was dedicated just over a year later in September 1893. The school was opened to 175 students on Monday, October 2, 1892 with a capacity of 550 students (as it was realized that the city would continue to grow). The building is high-style Queen Anne with red brick and mortar and light sandstone trimming. In 1905, the capacity of the high school was nearly doubled by the construction of an addition on the west end of the original building. Even doubling the size of the school did not prove adequate as the building was outgrown less than a decade later. From this, the Second Everett High School was built a block away. The First Everett High School is now known as the Whitney Lorenti House, a low income, elderly housing complex.
Built in 1850, likely as a late-Greek Revival or Italianate style home, this property on Main Street in Ridgefield was completely “modernized” in the 1880s in the Queen Anne style popular at the time. The home was originally built for Francis Asbury Rockwell (1818-1881), a tin-smith, wine-maker and inventor who married Mary Lee Everest, who also had deep roots in the community and was a daughter of a local Revolutionary War captain. The couple built a home on Main Street and raised their children there until Francis and Mary died in 1881 and 1883 respectively. The family home was inherited by their eldest son, Charles Lee Rockwell, who became the director of the First National Bank in town. Charles updated the house to give it the Queen Anne Victorian flair we see today.
The First Congregational Church was first established in Ridgefield, Connecticut just four years after the establishment of the town. Civic leaders in October 1712 successfully petitioned the Connecticut General Assembly for permission to levy a tax for “the settling and maintaining of the ministry in the said Town of Ridgefield.” Rev. Thomas Hauley, the first minister, also served as town clerk and school teacher. The first meeting house, on the town green, opened for worship in 1726. Plans for a new meeting house were drawn up in 1771 to fit a growing population, but construction was not complete until 1800. The second church was built in a more traditional style with a steeple. With a shift in the towns demographic from rural homeowners to ritzy exurb to New York City, a more suitable church was required by the end of the 19th century. Josiah Cleaveland Cady, one of the many great New York architects at the time was hired to design a new church suitable for the wealthy New Yorkers who summered in town to consider a neighbor, and he did not disappoint! The building blends many styles from Queen Anne, to Victorian Gothic, to Romanesque Revival in a way that isn’t clunky as in some other versions.
Buildings of New England 