The Swansea Town Hall in Swansea, Massachusetts, is one of the most unusual and architecturally eclectic town hall buildings in New England, and was a gift to the community from a wealthy resident. Built in 1891 from plans by Boston architect, James Merrill Brown, the building is constructed of randomly laid rubblestone with brownstone trim with a massive pyrammidal slate roof and offset turret and tower containing a historic clock. The building was the gift of benefactors, Frank Shaw Stevens and Elizabeth Case Stevens, who lived down the street in the town’s largest mansion. The Stevens’ donated the building with the stipulation that the building was to be available to every and any religious society desiring to hold funeral services there and to also provide space for a public library. The town obliged. The space was outgrown and the Stevens’ would later donate the town’s public library next door and a church, that also held funeral services for the community. The building has been home to the Town Hall since 1891.
This unique two-story house on Main Street in Swansea, Massachusetts, is said to date to about 1734 but for the most part, its appearance dates to 100 years later. It is possible this was once a one-story, brick house, but by 1836, the property was owned by Samuel Sherman Hull (1788-1862) and Sarah Waite Hull (1799-1863) who married in 1835. It was during their ownership, that the house was expanded and “modernized” in the Greek Revival style in the 1830s or 1840s, when the wooden upper floor was added with elaborate central entrance with sidelights and pilasters at the corners and entry. The property was farmed by Mr. Hull and by the end of the 19th century, was owned by Mrs. Caroline A. Chace. It is possible that the brick floor operated as a store with a residence above but now is a single-family home.
Built in 1855, the Birch-Stevens Mansion of Swansea, Massachusetts, is a grand Italianate style residence distinguished by its low hipped roof with belvedere, broad overhanging eaves with brackets, paired arched windows, and expansive wrap-around porch, all of a scale not commonly found in such a small community. The residence was built for James Birch and overseen by his new bride, Julia Chace. Before construction on the home, James Birch (1828-1857), not a wealthy man, worked as a stagecoach driver in Providence. His bride-to-be desired a large mansion in her native Swansea, equipped with servants and all the finer things of life. Since this dream was not attainable in his present circumstances, Birch, an enterprising 21 year old, decided to join the Gold Rush in California to make his fortune. In California, James became a stagecoach line entrepreneur and founder of the California Stage Company, the largest stage line in California in the 1850s. James made a fortune and returned to his wife in Swansea bringing money for her to begin constructing their grand mansion. James left again, this time establishing the San Antonio -San Diego Mail Line, the first transcontinental mail route in the United States. In 1857, while heading home, James sailed from San Francisco to Panama, took a train across the Isthmus, and sailed for New York on the steamer SS Central America. During the voyage, his ship was struck by a hurricane and later sunk. Many survivors clung to pieces of the ship’s wreckage for days with many dying to exposure or were swept away to their deaths, like James. He was just 28 years old. Back in Swansea, Julia was heartbroken but remarried her late-husband’s business partner, Frank Shaw Stevens, an equally successful businessman. Julia died in 1871, and Frank married a younger Elizabeth Case. The couple resided in this mansion for decades and donated substantially to their community, including funding the Town Hall, Public Library, Episcopal Church, and local public schools. In her will, Elizabeth Case Stevens bequeathed the large mansion in 1837 to the Frank S. Stevens Home for Boys which began as a boy’s orphanage. The organization remains to this day with an expanded mission, and maintain the sprawling estate and its various outbuildings, including the historic stable and farm structures.
Arguably the most beautiful building in Mansfield, Massachusetts is the Soldier’s Memorial Library in the center of town. Constructed in 1901, the Soldiers’ Memorial Library is a well-preserved example of 19th century High Victorian architecture with Shingle style elements, designed by the prominent Boston architectural firm of Peabody & Stearns. In as early as 1896, the idea of constructing a building as a memorial to the soldiers who died in the Civil War had prominent local members of the community. In 1898, a relatively new resident in town, Mrs. Elizabeth Noble, donated a parcel of land for the building with the stipulation that the first floor was to be used as a library and the second floor as an “audience room”, banquet room, and kitchen for the use of the G.A.R. The architects created one of their most significant civic buildings with an interesting juxtaposition of Gothic elements with Shingle style details. The Gothic lancet window and door surround blends surprisingly well with the use of rubblestone on the first story with buttresses and shingle siding above which give the building a fortress-like appearance.
This charming Federal period dwelling in Mansfield, Massachusetts, was built around 1830 by Solomon Pratt and his brother-in-law, Elkanah Bates as a boarding house for the workers at their nearby cotton mill. The duplex was historically split down the middle with a unit on each side, accessed by the shared center stairhall. Local lore states that the Irish immigrant families who lived in this property reported that there were “supernatural” noises in the house, which frightened the occupants, they would tell friends it was “thundering in the castle”, giving the property the nickname, Thunder Castle.
Tucked away on a side street in Mansfield, I was pleasantly surprised to stumble upon this charming example of a Craftsman bungalow, a style and form not too common in New England. The style, synonymous with the western United States’ population growth in the early 20th century, never took off the same way here as Yankee homeowners and builders often stayed true to the Colonial Revival style (even today). This building is said to date from the early 1800s and was built as a Federal style cape. It was owned by a Margaret Lane in the late 19th century. By the 1930s, the house was significantly altered with a full-length porch supported by tapered shingled columns atop fieldstone bases and new dormers at the roof with flared eaves. The building has been home to a local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). What a charmer!
Welcome to Mansfield, Massachusetts! Located in the southeastern part of the state, this very suburban town is often overlooked in terms of architecture, but there are definitely some great buildings to discover. This is the Orthodox Congregational Church of Mansfield, an 1839 edifice at the town’s South Common. The congregation was established in the 1730s and followed strict Congregationalist beliefs, which were at odds with the growing tide of Unitarianism which was becoming a dominant belief in the Commonwealth by the early 1800s. The differences came to a head when the Anti-Slavery Riot of 1836 occured. Factions of local pro- and anti-slavery residents fought when Charles C. Burleigh, Secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society, was invited, with the consent of the parish committee, to lecture in the meeting-house. This difference of theological taste as well as a difference of opinion on the idea of slavery led, in 1838, to the forming of a new society, the Orthodox Congregational Society, who built this church soon-after. While the split-off congregationalists were “behind the times”, among the separatists were Hermon Hall and Deacon Otis Allen, secretary and president of the Mansfield Anti-Slavery Society. This church was completed in 1839, and was altered and enlarged in the 1850s and 1870s.
Buildings of New England 