Architectural Survey New England

Dixmont Town House // c.1836

Buildings of New England2 Comments

Dixmont, a small rural town in central Maine was originally originally a land grant by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (of which Maine was then a part) to Bowdoin College, which sold the first settlers their land for profit to build on their campus. As a result, the town was originally called “Collegetown”, which was obviously short-lived. Dr. Elijah Dix (1747-1809) of Boston, who never lived there but took an interest in its settlement, encouraged others to settle there, and when the town was officially incorporated in 1807, it named itself after Dix, as Dixmont. A “malignant fever” broke out among the settlers in the early years, also killing Elijah Dix while in Dixmont on a trip there in 1809, he was buried in the Dixmont Corner Cemetery. Elijah was the grandfather of reformer and nurse Dorothea Dix. The early settlers had this Town House built in the center of the township around 1836 as a vernacular structure. The building (like many early town houses) was used for both secular and religious purposes. This small structure is one of the oldest surviving town houses in the state and served as the town government center until 1952 when it hosted its last town meeting. It was restored in the early 2000s and looks great!

Gouldsboro Townhouse // 1884

Buildings of New EnglandLeave a comment

Welcome to Gouldsboro, Maine! The town is a charming community made up of many small fishing villages and neighborhoods dotting the rugged Maine coastline. Land in what was then part of Massachusetts, was given to Colonel Nathan Jones, Francis Shaw and Robert Gould in 1764 by the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Francis Shaw and Robert Gould were both merchants from Boston. Francis Shaw had worked hard to develop Gouldsboro, and reportedly died broke because of it, and his son Robert Gould Shaw returned to his parents’ native Boston. Development in the area was slow and never really took-off due to the distance from Boston, but fishing, mills, and villages were built and remain to this day. Now, much of the area is home to summer residents flocking to the area from urban areas. This building was Gouldsboro’s second townhouse. It was constructed in 1884, soon after the first townhouse burned a year prior. The structure was used for town meetings and elections until 1983. It is now owned by the Gouldsboro Historical Society. It is a late, vernacular example of a Greek Revival townhouse.

St. Sergius Chapel // 1932

Buildings of New EnglandLeave a comment

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.

E. B. White House // 1795

Buildings of New England6 Comments

The coast of Maine has long been a refuge for those looking for an easier way of life and access to natural splendor. One of the more well-known residents of Maine was author E.B. White, who lived on this farm in Maine for 48 years. The estate sits on 44-acres and was built in 1795 for William Holden by Captain Richard Allen, a local housewright. The property was purchased by E. B. White in 1933 as a summer residence, but it became a full-time home where he and his wife, New Yorker editor Katharine Angell, raised sheep, geese, chickens, pigs, even spiders all with a historic barn and tire swing. Sound familiar? It is from this house that he wrote the iconic children’s book, Charlotte’s Web (and Stuart Little) among others. White was a private person, and despite his internationally famous books, he did not advertise the location of his home while he was alive. In 1977, he convinced an interviewer to report that “he lives in ‘a New England coastal town’, somewhere between Nova Scotia and Cuba“. Katharine died in 1977, and E. B. in 1985. The property was inherited by their son, who summered there for years. The most recent owners, Robert and Mary Gallant of South Carolina, who have summered there for the past 30 years and preserved the house immaculately, selling it a few years ago.

Vincent’s Pharmacy and Waterbury Masonic Hall // 1834

Buildings of New England2 Comments

While of different scale, these two brick buildings on Main Street in Waterbury, Vermont compliment each other very well. Vincent’s Pharmacy, the smaller building, was built in 1834 in the Federal and Greek Revival styles by Dan Carpenter, early lawyer and judge, to house a pharmacy business that he ran with his son, William. Next door, dating from approximately the same year as the pharmacy, the larger structure housed Waterbury’s first Masonic hall in 1860’s and in successive years a hardware business. The former Masonic hall is now home to The Reservoir, a great local restaurant that I grabbed lunch in while visiting the town.

Sarah and John Tillinghast House // 1904

Buildings of New EnglandLeave a comment

This stately yellow brick Colonial Revival sits on the edge of the College Hill neighborhood of Providence, and I couldn’t help but to take a few photos! This residence was completed in 1904 for Sarah and John Tillinghast in the later years of John’s life (he died less than two years of moving into this home). The house exhibits a large semi-circular portico with balustrade above, the portico is flanked and surmounted by Palladian windows with elliptical reveals. The house was recently proposed to serve as a suboxone clinic, but that was shut down by neighbors. It appears to be divided into residential units now.

Joshua Parker Farmhouse // 1850

Buildings of New EnglandLeave a comment

This house in Cavendish was constructed in 1850 by Joshua Parker and is an outstanding example of a gothicized snecked ashlar house. The house is in the Cape form and largely exhibits a more traditional cottage layout, but with the steep gable dormer, giving the home a distinctive Gothic feeling. The 1850 home replaced a late 18th century farmhouse, but in the iconic snecked ashlar construction. The farm grew over the subsequent decades, including a c.1900 snecked ashlar barn (not pictured), which is probably the last building of “Snecked Ashlar” construction erected in the State of Vermont.