The Armstrong Memorial Building is the first purpose-built library building serving the town of Windham, New Hampshire, and is an eclectic example of late 19th century architecture combining elements of the Shingle and Craftsman styles. Built in 1899, it was the town’s first purpose-built library building, a role it played until 1997, when a new library was built elsewhere in town. The building is constructed of random laid fieldstone with a broad hipped roof with corbeled eaves and a shingled gabled entrance. Local architect, William Weare Dinsmoor, furnished plans for the building which has long been one of the beloved structures in Windham. Its namesake, George Washington Armstrong (1836-1901), funded the building for the town but it is unclear who it memorializes. After the new Nesmith Library was built in 1997, the building has been repurposed into a museum detailing the town’s history.
Located in the bucolic town of Princeton, Massachusetts, Goodnow Farm sits at the heart of a landscape that has been farmed for more than two and a half centuries. The farm and road take their name from the Goodnow family who owned the land here for well over 100 years. The farmhouse, which dates to around 1786, was built for Edward Goodnow (1742-1798) and his wife Lois, who married in 1770. Edward was a corporal during the Revolution, serving both at the Lexington alarm on April 19, 1775, and at Dorchester Heights in 1776, before settling in Princeton to spend his remaining years on the farm. The property was inherited by his son, Edward and later by his son, William B. Goodnow (1815-1904), the brother of Edward Augustus Goodnow, a merchant who made his fortune in Worcester and donated the Town Hall and Library to his birthplace. After nearly 150 years of Goodnow family ownership, in 1917 the old farm was sold to industrialist, Charles T. Crocker, Jr. of Fitchburg and became a gentleman’s farm. Crocker used the farm as a summer retreat from the city and hired staff to maintain the working farm aesthetic, though Charles Crocker did not actually do much or any of the agricultural laboring himself. Investing in the old farm to maintain the rural charm, Crocker added this large cow barn and attached dairy house. The shingled barn is roughtly 80 by 36 feet, with its long, west side built into the slope of the hillside. The barn was a state-of-the-art farm building for its day, with its high gambrel roof supported on closely spaced rafters of dimensioned lumber sheltering a single soaring space built for the moving and storage of massive amounts of hay. After the death of his father, in 1956, Mr. Crocker’s son, Charles T. Crocker, III, gave the main part of the farm, in two parcels totaling 636 acres, to the Massachusetts Audubon Society, to be preserved in perpetuity as a wildlife sanctuary. He made an additional gift of 118 acres in 1963. Over the subsequent decades, other parcels were acquired and the site has been operated as the Wachusett Meadow Wildlife Sanctuary, covering roughly 1,100 acres of the oldest farmland in Princeton, with twelve miles of public walking trails and historic stone walls. In the 1960s, the barn interior was altered to provide classroom, storage and exhibition space for Mass Audubon, with housing for the working farm’s sheep in the barn next door.
Susan Minns (1839-1938), one of the first women to graduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a trained biologist and collector, and benefactor to many scientific and environmental causes in her home state, purchased four acres of farmland in Princeton, Massachusetts in 1910 to build her country house. Ms. Minns lived on Louisburg Square in Beacon Hill, but would ultimately fall in love with living near nature in Central Massachusetts and established Princeton as her year-round residence. Built in 1912, Minns’ house is said to have been inspired by her many travels to England and was designed after an old publishing house she saw there. The long and low “cottage” of stone and wood has always been covered at its roof with red asphalt shingles. While in Princeton, Susan spend much of her inheritance to acquire large amounts of land in town, including two farms and 140 acres around Little Wachusett Mountain, a picturesque drumlin covered in forest. In 1926, Miss Minns donated the entirety of Little Wachusett to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as a wildlife sanctuary, which for 100 years, has been managed by the State as the Minns Wildlife Sanctuary. Susan Minns’ legacy lives on, not only in the form of her rustic Princeton home, but for her generosity and foresight to preserve important open space for the benefit of all.
A major loss to the architectural heritage of the small town of Princeton, Massachusetts, is the demolition of its old Center School in 2026. Originally built in 1906, the school was funded by the community a year prior when additional money was set aside to build the school of stone and wood, rather than the traditional brick in many other communities. The school was designed by the Worcester-based architectural firm of Barker & Nourse, who designed the building in an expression of the Shingle style, with a rustic rubblestone entry base and entrances set within arched openings, and continuous shingle siding above. The design was intentional and highlighted the small community’s history and standing as a premier summer destination with its proximity to Mount Wachusett. The Center School housed grades 1-12 until the mid 1950’s, and after just elementary and junior high. When a new school was built in 1991, the old Center School closed, but was long maintained by the town and occupied by the town Council on Aging, private studios, the Princeton Historical Society, and the Princeton Arts Society. The shortsighted decision to demolish the handsome and well-built structure was made, and the site will now be home to a Public Safety building, housing the police and fire departments, which in my opinion could have been built in front of this building or elsewhere.
Augustus Nickerson (1860-1928) was a Boston-based accountant and avid cyclist of the Boston Bicycle Club and secretary of the League of American Wheelmen. Nickerson seemingly built this home in Marion around 1885 as a summertime retreat from the stresses of city living, but rented it to other Boston families for supplemental income. The property was sold in 1905 to Martha and Matthew Buckman (1832-1910), President of the University of Vermont 39 years from 1871 to 1910, overseeing dramatic growth for the University, which was one of the first eastern schools to admit women. This Marion home was his summer retreat while classes were out. While the architect is not currently known, it is clearly the work of a well-educated architect of the time, and likely the work of either William Gibbons Preston or Charles Allerton Coolidge, two Boston-based architects who summered in Marion and designed many Shingle style homes there. The home exhibits strong horizontal massing with an elongated sloped roof and is covered with weathered wood shingle sheathing, characteristic of the Shingle Style.
The H. R. Reed House (also known as the President Grover Cleveland Summer Home) is located on the iconic Water Street in Marion, Massachusetts, and is one of the town’s finest Shingle-style summer cottages. The shingled “cottage” was built in 1886 to a design by architect James T. Kelley, reportedly incorporating an earlier 1840s structure that Reed previously had enlarged years prior. Henry R. Reed was an agent for the Revere Sugar Refinery in Boston and was well-connected locally. He hosted President Grover Cleveland at the cottage during summer visits, earning the home its enduring nickname as Cleveland’s Marion “summer White House,” with the president renting the property for the 1890 and 1891 seasons, between his two terms as President. President Cleveland and his wife, Frances, apparently loved summering in Marion so much, that they named their third child Marion. Architecturally, the house presents a two-story, shingle-clad form beneath a gambrel roof, fronted by a broad porch on columns and with three gambrel dormers at the roof. Behind the house, a Shingle style carriage house remains and to the side, a pool is enclosed by a shingled wall. Reed, who died in 1905, did not long enjoy his Marion property, but his widow and daughters continued to spend their summers there until the mid-20th century. Since then, the property has sold a few times and current owners are undertaking a large renovation to this significant residence, which has been individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
This historic summer cottage on Water Street represents one of the more sophisticated examples of the Shingle Style in Marion, Massachusetts, and is evocative of the type of houses built for the wealthy in the late 19th and early 20th century as their summer retreats. The “cottage” was built around 1898 as a summer residence for George Peabody Hamlin (1867-1935) and wife, Mary Farnsworth Tappan, of Boston. George P. Hamlin was a successful coal merchant who’s family business became part of the Metropolitan Coal Company in the late 1890s. George P. Hamlin was treasurer of the company until his retirement in 1927, when he turned to commercial real estate and worked in that field until his death. It is likely that for his summer residence, Hamlin hired Boston architect and Marion summer resident, William Gibbons Preston, who also designed a house for George’s brother further up Water Street. After Hamlin’s death in the 1930s, the Marion cottage was purchased by Ms. Katherine Hobart Ames Spalding (1874-1949), the daughter of Oakes Angier Ames (1829-1899) and granddaughter of Oakes Ames (1804-1873), a Massachusetts Congressman and leading figure in the development of the Transcontinental Railroad, who was one of the wealthiest men in America. Katherine Ames married Philip Leffingwell Spalding (1871-1938), President of the New England Telephone & Telegraph Company. The shingled cottage with its rubblestone base, remains one of the best-preserved in Marion and a landmark of the style.
One of the many beautiful late 19th century shingled “cottages” overlooking Sippican Harbor in Marion, Massachusetts, Point Rock Cottage stands out not only for its siting on the waterfront, but also for its preservation. As any good summer cottage must have a name, Point Rock Cottage derives its name from its location overlooking the rocky coast and Sippican Harbor on the tip of the village. The Shingle style cottage was built for David W. Lewis (1833-1915) of Boston, who purchased the land in 1893 and had the house built soon after. Lewis began his career in the retail shoe business in Vermont until he enlisted in the Union Army in 1862, serving in the 9th Vermont Volunteer Regiment. Lewis rose to the rank of major and saw action in several major campaigns of the war. After the war, David Lewis married Elizabeth T. Willett and they moved to Hyde Park in Boston where he shifted professions and became a dealer in building materials, which he saw immediate success as many Boston areas saw development in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The architect is not presently known, but it is probable that the cottage was designed by William Gibbons Preston or Charles Allerton Coolidge, both Boston architects who designed many of Marion’s summer homes and both of whom summered in Marion themselves. Architecturally, the residence is a blending of Shingle and Arts and Crafts styles with the low-pitched roof and continuous shingled cottage encircled by a one-story integrated porch supported by wood shingle clad rectangular posts with a Chinese-fret work railing.
One of the finest cottages in the coastal community of Marion, Massachusetts, is found tucked away behind the larger Shingled mansions overlooking the harbor; and while smaller in stature, it packs an architectural punch! This is the Rev. John C. Brooks cottage, constructed c.1891 as a blend of Shingle and the emerging Arts & Crafts styles in a bungalow form. The cottage, designed by Boston architect and summer resident of Marion, William Gibbons Preston, was built as a summer residence for Revered John Cotton Brooks (1849-1907) who descended on his father’s side from the New England Puritan clergymen, John Cotton and Cotton Mather. Like many in his family, Rev. John C. Brooks joined the ministry in the Episcopal Church and was the rector of Christ Church in Springfield from 1878 until his death in 1907. He was also the younger brother of famed preacher and theologian, Phillips Brooks (1835-1893), rector of Trinity Church Boston, Episcopal bishop of Massachusetts, and a frequent visitor to Marion, which likely inspired him to build his own summer residence here. John Brooks was additionally a colleague of Reverend Percy Browne, for whom their friend and Trinity Church architect, Henry Hobson Richardson, designed the first Shingle Style house in Marion. After Reverend Brooks died in Paris in 1907, the family sold the property to David Rice (1856-1932), the brother of noted Boston architect Arthur W. Rice, who too summered in Marion at this cottage. While somewhat altered, the cottage stands out architecturally for its varied shingle types, an integrated porch spanning the façade supported by paired square posts and a shingled knee wall, and paired gable dormers linked by a blind shed-roofed dormer which is faced with a panel with applied rectangular fretwork.
This Shingle style home in Marion was designed for Reverend William Percy Browne (1838-1901), who was educated at Kenyon College in Ohio alongside John Cotton Brooks, the youngest brother of Phillips Brooks, who would become the Rector of Boston’s Trinity Church and briefly Bishop of Massachusetts. Brooks would hire H.H. Richardson to design Trinity Church in Boston in the early 1870s. From this connection and being members of the St. Botolph Club of Boston, Reverend William Percy Browne and H.H. Richardson began a working relationship designing Browne’s summer cottage in Marion. The legend is that at the club, Browne bet Richardson that he could not design a small house for $2,500. Browne lost. This modest house was completed in 1882 and represented an early, significant example of a Shingle style home in Massachusetts. Browne died in 1901 and the house was sold to Sidney Hosmer, a Boston electrical engineer. Under his ownership, the home was expanded and altered, likely from plans by Charles Allerton Coolidge, Boston architect who summered in Marion. The cottage was eventually purchased by Tabor Academy, who in 2019, pulled a demolition permit for the house. Architects and historians quickly rallied and advocated for the preservation of the cottage, saving it from the wrecking ball, for now. The cottage remains vacant and no definitive plans as of 2026 have been unveiled to sell the property or restore it.
One of the most interesting houses in Marion, Massachusetts, is the Frederick Cutler Cottage, at the corner of Water and Lewis streets which was split in the 1970s to create two homes. The Cutler Cottage was originally built around 1903 for Frederick Barker Cutler (1861-1946), partner in the firm of Stetson, Cutler & Company in Boston, a building materials company who sold everything from long lumber and shingles to lime. For his summer cottage in Marion, Cutler hired noted Boston architect Herbert Langford Warren, founding principal of Warren, Smith & Biscoe, to furnish plans for the Arts and Crafts style dwelling of shingles, stone and brick. In the 1970s, the owner separated the house into two detached dwellings and moved them to separate lots. Both parts of the Cutler Cottage have since been renovated and further expanded, but retain much of their original qualities.
Benjamin E. Waters (1863-1962) was a local businessman and real estate developer in Marion by the end of the 19th century. He acquired a large property not far from the beach, in the middle of a high-class residential enclave and developed the property, running a small dirt path through the middle, known today as Pie Alley. He built three large Shingle style homes between 1890-1895 and appears to have rented them out to wealthy residents. This residence, the largest, features a broad gambrel roof with saltbox slope towards the rear, dormers, and a wrap-around porch facing Buzzards Bay. The house is entirely clad in cedar shingles, a common sight in this part of town. The home remained part of the larger parcel and was rented out until after WWII, when it was purchased by Holmes M. Dyer (1913-1997), a sales executive for the Acushnet Company of New Bedford. The architect of the home is not widely known, but it is probably the work of William Gibbons Preston or Charles Allerton Coolidge, both prominent Boston architects who summered in Marion and designed many of the Shingle style cottages here in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
At the tip of Converse Point, a peninsula in Marion, Massachusetts, jutting into Buzzards Bay, a once great estate was built at the turn of the 20th century as the community saw many wealthy summer cottages built. One of these owners was Harry Elisha Converse (1863-1920), who purchased land here in 1898 and razed earlier cottages to build The Moorings Estate. Harry E. Converse was President of the Converse Rubber Company, which produced winterized rubber-soled shoes and boots and later shifted to make footwear for the military, and is today known simply as Converse, the internationally known footwear and apparel company. In 1902, Converse hired architect, Tristam Griffin to design his new summer “cottage”, the Moorings, which was said to be the largest residence in Buzzards Bay at the time and rivaled the size of many area hotels. Part of the estate included a carriage house, cottages for family and friends, and this building, which was constructed as a bell tower and observatory near the entrance of the property that provided sweeping views of the grounds and surrounding coast. The 40-foot tower was designed in the Shingle style like the main house and featured a one-ton bell at the top. It was eventually connected to electricity and later provided a fire alarm for the entire estate. After the death of Harry E. Converse in 1920, the property was conveyed to three of his children, who subdivided the property which became too much to maintain as a summer home. The former observatory was acquired by Parker Converse and later converted into a residence, by him or his son, Courtland Converse. The unique structure is a lasting remnant of what was once the largest estate in this part of Massachusetts.
When an architect designs a house for their own use, you know it is going to be special. This is the Charles A. Coolidge Cottage in East Marion, on the South Shore of Massachusetts. American architect, Charles Allerton Coolidge (1858-1936), was born in Boston as a member of a Brahmin family. He graduated from Harvard College in 1877 and studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, later entering the office of the well-known firm of Ware & Van Brunt. He later joined the firm of renowned architect Henry Hobson Richardson in 1883 and soon after the death of Richardson in 1886, he formed a partnership with George Shepley and Charles Rutan, two other Richardson architects. Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge went on to become one of the most prominent architecture firms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, performing major residential and institutional work in Boston and across the United States. Charles Coolidge married Julia Shepley of St. Louis, sister of his business partner, in 1889, and the couple would begin planning their summer retreat in the coastal community of Marion. The couple purchased a site already containing a residence and lived there before building this cottage around 1903 in the fashionable Shingle style. The over the years, various out-buildings were constructed on the site for his children’s cottages and other various uses. The property remains part of the Coolidge Family and is a private residence. The Coolidge Cottage is entirely clad in shingles, a hallmark of the Shingle style of architecture, and features broad gambrel roof forms and sweeping porches supported by shingled columns. Photo is courtesy of Lynn Smiledge.
Completed in 1885 in the small coastal village of Marion, Massachusetts, the Marion Congregational Chapel was one of the last major gifts from Elizabeth Pitcher Taber (1791–1888), the wealthy widow whose patronage shaped the town’s entire civic landscape. Ms. Taber in her later years had already funded Marion’s library, founded Tabor Academy, and built its academy hall before purchasing a vacant lot on Main Street to build this chapel for her church, the First Congregational Church of Marion. Built in 1885, the chapel is designed in the texturally rich Shingle Style that was then sweeping New England’s coastal towns by the late 19th century with its continuous wood-shingle siding and gabled massing gave it a warmer, more approachable character than the town’s earlier Greek Revival and Italianate landmarks. The chapel stands out for its rubblestone entry tower and the trio of polygonal bays on the primary facade. For its first several years it doubled as Marion’s only real venue for public lectures and amateur theater, an arrangement that reportedly so dismayed Taber over the poor quality of the “worldly theatricals” staged there that she went on to fund a dedicated Music Hall, designed by architect William Gibbons Preston nearby. Given the fact Ms. Taber so-often utilized Preston as architect for her gifts to Marion (and as he was a summer resident here), it is probable that he too designed this Shingle style chapel. The Congregational Chapel stands today as a smaller, later addition to Marion’s Congregational history, which stretches back to the town’s original 1799 meetinghouse (now the Marion General Store) and the Greek Revival church built across the street in 1841 which is still home to the First Congregational Church of Marion.
