house history

George and Effie Mead House // 1911

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Prominently sited upon a hill on a dead-end street in West Acton, Massachusetts, this Craftsman Bungalow is a very elaborate and well-preserved example of the style. The house was built in 1911 for George Varnum Mead (1861-1940) and his wife Effie Wright Mead (1860-1926) as their summer home when they weren’t living in Somerville. Mr. Mead was born in West Acton to Varnum Balfour Mead, who operated the A. O. W. Mead Company, a produce marketing business in Acton and Boston. Varnum’s brother built an elaborate Second Empire style mansion in town which was featured on here yesterday. George Mead followed his father’s footsteps and worked in the family business, which was in operation starting in the 1840s. The A. O. W. Mead Company gathered produce from farmers all over West Acton, kept the produce in cold storage facilities erected by the family, and sent it to Boston for sale at Quincy Market until George’s death in 1940. The Craftsman style house has a fieldstone base, low, overhanging flared gable roof, and is sheathed in shingle siding. Characteristic features include the multiple dormers, exposed rafter tails, grouped windows, and the large fieldstone chimney.

Enoch Fuller Octagon // c.1850

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Oh the Octagon! The very rare Octagon house was a unique house style briefly popular in the 1850s in the United States and Canada. The style can generally be traced to the influence of one man, amateur architect and phrenologist Orson Squire Fowler. In his book, The Octagon House: A Home for All of 1848 (and reprinted with more photos in 1853), Fowler advocated for the shape’s benefits for buildings in that the octagon allowed for additional living space, received more natural light, was easier to heat, and remained cooler in the summer. These benefits all derive from the geometry of an octagon: the shape encloses space efficiently, minimizing external surface area and consequently heat loss and gain, building costs etc. Some were convinced and built Octagon houses, but the style and its brief period of popularity, died by the 1860s. This example in Stoneham, Massachusetts was built around 1850 for and by Enoch Fuller, a close personal friend of P. T. Barnum, founder of the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Fuller visited Barnum’s octagonal home in Bridgeport, Connecticut and he decided to construct an octagon house in Stoneham. The home was owned by Col. Gerrry Trowbridge not long after completion. The home was built with a fireplace in every room, a spiral, “flying” staircase, and a sweeping veranda.

Barncastle // 1884

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Barncastle, located in the Town of Blue Hill, Maine, is an elaborate and distinctive house. Designed by George A. Clough and built in 1884, the building is a sprawling complex in the Shingle style with additional eccentric details. As Blue Hill and other coastal communities of Down East Maine saw popularity as summer colonies of wealthy city-dwellers flocking to the rugged coastline, many new residents either built new “cottages” or renovated older (often ancestral) homes. Effie Hinckley Ober (1843-1927) who was born in town, married Virgil P. Kline, personal attorney to John D. Rockefeller, and for thirty years worked as attorney for the Standard Oil Co. of Ohio. Effie founded the Boston Ideal Opera Company in 1879 and traveled with the group extensively, retiring in 1885, upon that time, she would move into Barncastle for summers (then named “Ideal Lodge” after her opera company). In 1884, before her retirement, Effie hired her childhood friend, architect George A. Clough, who was born in Blue Hill and worked in Boston, to completely redesign her ancestral home. Clough’s design engulfed a smaller Cape Cod-style house owned by Effie’s mother Mary Peters Hinckley Ober Atherton, a descendant of early Blue Hill settlers, creating an absolutely elegant Shingle-style summer cottage. The house is highly visible on a main street, but what many do not see is the arch-and-turret link between kitchen wing and carriage barn. “Barncastle” is now home to an elegant inn and restaurant!

Clough-Hinckley House // 1832

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This charming Federal style cape in Blue Hill Maine was built in 1832 by Moses P. Clough, a sea captain seemingly as a wedding gift to his new bride of that year, Sally Prince. He resided in the home off-and-on between excursions and trips at sea until his untimely death at sea in 1836 of bilious fever, possibly caused by malaria. After his death, his widow Sally, remarried and moved to Cherryfield, Maine. The old family home was sold to Bushrod W. Hinckley, an attorney who was involved in the town affairs. Today, the old Clough-Hinckley home is known as Arborvine, a great restaurant known for using local, farm-to-table ingredients. The home is excellently preserved by the owners, down to the leaded glass fanlight and sidelights at the entrance. Swoon!

The Dome Home // 2003

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This past weekend, I was lucky enough to stay at one of the most unique Airbnb’s in New England, the Dome Home in idyllic Kennebunkport, Maine! The house itself was hand-built in 2003 by trained architect and sculptor Daphne Pulsifer with her husband Daniel Bates, on 43-acres of forest just miles from the iconic Maine beaches. Inside, the house features numerous custom touches designed and built by the original owners, including light fixtures, floor tiling, hand-built oak doors, wall tiling, woodwork — much of it claimed from the property itself. The Dome Home is completely sustainable with solar panels providing all the power needed, making the property completely off-the-grid. The original owners sold the property in 2022 to the new owners who have lovingly updated the spaces, keeping the charm and unique qualities of the Dome. If you are ever in Kennebunkport and are looking for a unique, off-the-grid stay with all of the amenities of modern living, definitely check out the Dome!

Richard E. Edwards House // 1981

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The Colonial era has had a grip on New England residential design since the 1700s, with each subsequent “revival” showcasing the character-defining features in bold new ways. With this house on College Hill in Providence, Rhode Island, the architect, Friedrich St. Florian, blended traditional Colonial Revival residential design with the flair and quirkiness that comes with the Post-Modern style, popular in the 1980s. The house is five bays wide at the facade with a central projecting bay at the entrance. Post-Modernism takes architectural precedence and turns it on its head, with quirky takes on features and larger proportions. The Edwards House exhibits decorative stone lintels, a Classically inspired entry with pilasters, and a very large cupola at the roof. What do you think of this house? I feel it works well for the neighborhood as it is contextual to the surrounding Colonial-era and Colonial Revival style residences while clearly being of the late 20th century.

Henry Samuel Sprague House // 1902

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Colonial Revival houses just exude New England charm! This house in Providence’s East Side/College Hill neighborhood was built at the turn of the 20th century in 1902 for Henry Samuel Sprague, a Providence grain dealer, for $15,000. Mr. Sprague clearly did well for himself financially as he could afford a house lot on one of the city’s most beloved streets, Prospect Street. The large mansion has many architectural details which stand out including contrasting brick and shingle on the first and second floors, a massive projecting portico covering a prominent entry, bold fluted pilasters at the center bay, and three pedimented dormers at the slate roof. Inside, this old house has some amazing woodwork and details too!

Henry Thatcher Fowler House // 1903

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Henry Thatcher Fowler (1867-1948) was born in Fishkill, New York, on March 4, 1867. He graduated from Yale in 1890 and received his Ph.D., also at Yale, in 1896. After stints teaching at Yale, Norwich Academy, and Knox College, Professor Fowler came to Brown and was hired as Professor of Biblical Literature and History; he was chairman of that department until 1932. Soon after arriving to Providence to accept his professorship at Brown, Henry and wife, Harriett, hired the local architectural firm of Martin & Hall to design a new home for them a few blocks away from his work. The house blends Tudor and Shingle styles with the ogee entrance at the porch, flared shingled overhangs on each floor, and a prominent gable facing the street.

Sarah and John Tillinghast House // 1904

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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.

Oliver Walker House // c.1809

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The Oliver Walker House in Kennebunkport Village is one of the better examples that shows how overlapping architectural styles can work really well on an old house (when done right)! The original house was constructed around 1809 for Oliver Walker (1788-1851), a sea captain who later accepted the call and became a deacon for the South Congregational Church in Kennebunkport. Walker died in 1851 and the Federal style property was inherited by his only surviving child, daughter Susan, who had married Portland native, Captain John Lowell Little. Under their ownership, the traditionally designed Federal house was modernized with fashionable Italianate style modifications of the decorative brackets and an enclosed round arched window in the side gable. A later Colonial Revival projecting vestibule adds to the complex, yet pleasing design. I have a feeling the interiors of this house are just as spectacular as the exterior.

Asa Hutchins House // 1795

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The village of Kennebunkport in Maine is a well-preserved enclave of Federal period houses built at the heyday of shipbuilding and maritime trade in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Many sea captains and shipbuilders erected stately homes in the village, with high-quality design and woodworking inside and out. This Federal period home was built for Asa Hutchins (1769-1860) a blacksmith who was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and settled in Kennebunkport in the late 1700s. The house exhibits a central chimney a feature more common in Colonial-era homes, with a five bay facade and projecting entrance.

Robert Palmer Jr. House // 1907

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Robert Palmer Jr. (1856-1914) was born in Groton, Connecticut as the son of Robert Sr., a prominent businessman and Deacon in Noank’s seaside village (his house was featured previously). Robert Sr. established the Palmer shipyard, which became the largest business enterprise in Noank. Jr. would later join his father’s business and did well for himself financially, eventually marrying and building this Neo-Classical mansion on Church Street in town. The company, under Sr. and Jr.’s leadership, built many seafaring vessels that were internationally renowned until the company closed in 1914 after the death of Robert Jr. This house is unique in town for the monumental two-story portico, Palladian windows at the first floor, and a projecting entry vestibule.

Moses Latham House // c.1845

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Noank is a charming seaside village within the town of Groton that is centered on a peninsula at the mouth of the Mystic River where it spills out into the Long Island Sound. Historically, the area was known as Nauyang (meaning “point of land”) and was a summer camping ground of the Pequot people, but they were driven out in 1655 following the Pequot War. White settlement was slow here until the mid-19th century, when the shipbuilding and fishing economy took off here. As a result, houses, stores, churches and industries were built, and an entire village was formed. Most extant homes here were constructed starting in the 1840s as the village (and nearby Mystic) saw economic growth from the maritime trades. This house, the Moses Latham House, was constructed for Mr. Latham in about 1845. The house is Greek Revival in style with flush-board siding, a fan light in the gable which reads as a pediment, and a simple portico supported by fluted Doric columns.

Woods-Gerry House // 1860

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There are always those houses that just stop you in your tracks… For my last post (for the time being) on Providence, I wanted to share this significant property, known as the Woods-Gerry House, perched atop College Hill. Owner Marshall Woods, who married into the Brown family and was active in the affairs of Brown University. Locally he was also involved on the building committee for St. Stephen’s Church where he was a factor in selecting renowned architect Richard Upjohn to design the church. He must have liked Upjohn so much (or got a good deal) that he hired Richard Upjohn to design his new home on Prospect Street. The exterior of the three-story brick building stands out amongst the other Italianate mansions built in the same decade nearby, but is elevated design-wise with a bowed centerpiece on its east elevation with the handsome new front entrance renovated in 1931 by then-owner, Senator Peter Gerry, who was a great-grandson of Elbridge Gerry, the fifth Vice President of the United States (who had given his name to the term gerrymandering). Today, this significant building is owned by the Rhode Island School of Design and houses the Woods Gerry Gallery. The grounds are also very well designed.

Rose and Howard K. Hilton House // 1900

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Tudor Revivals may just be my favorite style of house. The interesting roof forms and gables, the use of stone, brick or stucco, and the presence of garrisoning and half-timbering in designs are always so charming. This enchanting Tudor Revival home in Providence, Rhode Island, was built in 1900 by local architect Howard K. Hilton (1867-1909) as his personal residence with wife Rose. He first worked in the office of H. W. Colwell and continued his training under Ellis Jackson joining him in partnership (Jackson & Hilton) and under the firm name was identified with the design of several churches, schools, hospitals and various other buildings in his native city before he retired in his final years. This home is very unique for its site on a narrow urban lot with the door at the side, brick first floor with jettying at the second floor of wood construction with half-timbering. While writing this, I noticed that there are also projecting gargoyles which serve as water spouts to send water away from the structure during rainfall events. Tudors are really the best!