When an architect designs their own home, they typically focus on the minute details which can make such a difference, often because they know what works and what doesn’t! This home was designed and built for William F. Goodwin, an architect with an office in Downtown Boston. After the Waban Station was built in 1886, he sought open space and a large home in suburban Boston, to get away from the hustle-and-bustle of daily life. Years after he moved into his home, he gifted his services to design the neighborhood’s first church, the Church of the Good Shepherd.
This stunning Stick style house in North Adams was built for Charles Cutting (1850-1940), founder of the C. H. Cutting Company, a prosperous clothing company in town. The company started as a partnership between 20-year old Cutting and a Mr. Silsby, who retired just a year after co-founding the company. Cutting used his business connections to help establish other local clothing companies including the Bay State Clothing Company in Adams, the Orange Clothing Company in Orange, MA, and the Athol Clothing Company in (you guessed it) Athol. With his wealth, he had this amazing Victorian home built on East Main Street where he lived until his death in 1940.
Located in the Cape Arundel Summer colony in Kennebunkport, this Shingle style cottage, built in 1887 sits perched on a hill with views of the Atlantic Ocean. Built for John Bach McMaster, a historian who was also a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, the house was the first of two he owned in Kennebunkport, where he summered. The son of a former Mississippi plantation owner, McMaster grew up in New York City and worked his way through the City College of New York. Although he obtained a degree in civil engineering in 1873, he was deeply interested in American history. He worked briefly as a civil engineer in Virginia and Chicago in 1873, but he returned to New York the following year and earned a meagre living by tutoring.
McMaster was appointed assistant professor of civil engineering at Princeton University in 1877. Meanwhile, he planned to write a broad-scale history of the United States. In the summer of 1878 he led an expedition to the American West, an experience that impressed on him the pioneers’ efforts and the need for a social history of the West. His inspiration materialized in 1881 with the completion of the first chapter of A History of the People of the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War. The earnings from the series gave him substantial wealth and he then bought a summer residence up in Maine seen here.
If anyone knows the architect of this house, please share!
One of the older extant homes in Kennebunkport is the Gideon Walker Farmhouse, built in 1745. The home once sat on a larger parcel of land, on the outside of the village, which at the time, only had a handful of other homes nearby. At the time, the town was named Arundel, and was later renamed Kennebunkport, in reflection to its economy becoming one of shipbuilding and trade along the Kennebunk River. As the village population grew, the Walker land was sold off and developed for other large estates. The Georgian house featured a small, one-story projecting entry, typical of the period. In 1910, owner Anson McKim of Montreal, hired Portland architect John Calvin Stevens to update the home, which included the addition of the front entry’s second story and a large side addition approximating the size and location of the former barn which once stood there. The home has since been renovated a few more times on the interior and exterior, yet it still retains its historic integrity.
The gorgeous Reuben Nickerson House on Bridge Road in Eastham is an excellent example of a transitional Greek Revival home with hold-over features of the Federal style. Reuben Nickerson was born in 1814 on Cape Cod and worked as a farmer and saltmaker, he later served as a senator, school committee member, and representative. He was married twice; first to Elizabeth Doane who died in 1849, and he remarried Elizabeth’s sister Sarah Doane just a year later. By the 20th century, the home was operated by descendants of Reuben as a funeral home and residence. After WWII, the home was a bed and breakfast and has since been reverted to a single family home. Detail on the home includes: wide, paneled pilasters, boxed, molded cornice, a pedimented gable, a 2-part wide frieze, and a fanlight at the entrance.
Located just a stones throw from the Penniman House, the c. 1780 Knowles House stands at the historic end point of Fort Hill Road. Accounts differ on its history. Some sources explain the home was built in c.1790 by Seth Knowles (who died in 1787) a prominent citizen of Charlestown, Mass., and one of the original members of the Bunker Hill Monument Association and of its board of directors. From my research, the home appears to have been built for Thomas Knowles, Seth’s son, and was later willed to his son, also named Thomas. Thomas Knowles Jr., was born in 1803, in Eastham, and in early life settled at New Bedford, engaging in the whale fishery industry. Deed research would be required to find out more. The gorgeous Federal home features a large, center cross gable with dentils at the cornice.
This old farmhouse in Swansea, MA, was built by 1820 for Preserved Gardner (1795-1873), one of five sons of Peleg Gardner, who owned much of Gardners Point. Preserved lived in the home until his death in 1873, and the home and acres of farmland were willed to his only son to live past childhood, Ira Gardner (1836-1901). Ira donated a large tract of land adjacent to the farmhouse to the town in 1882 for a cemetery, in which his father was buried. Later, the farm was purchased by Thomas D. Covel a bank president of Fall River who operated it as a gentleman’s farm and made the house his summer home. A ‘gentleman farmer‘ utilized their farms for pleasure rather than for sustenance or profit. After WWII, the land was purchased by the town to be used as a park and the property is still owned by the town. The Federal home with its veranda that wraps around the side has been neglected by the town for decades while the parks adjacent are maintained adequately.
The town has weighed various options for the home ranging from demolishing it, to preserving the front facade and converting it to a garage and storage shed (with a small museum on the second floor). I hate that idea personally. This seems like an ideal candidate for the town to allow a private individual or developer to move the home and restore it back to its original grandeur. Thoughts?
Buildings of New England 