Ogden Codman Jr

Nathaniel Thayer Mansion // 1902

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The Thayer Family is one of the most prominent and well-connected families of New England, and that stature comes with handsome estates. Nathaniel Thayer (1801-1883) was born in Lancaster as the son of Reverend Nathaniel Thayer (1769–1840), a Unitarian congregational minister. Nathaniel Thayer Jr. made his fortune in businesses and held deep ties to his hometown, despite spending most of his time in Boston. He took down the original Thayer home on this site and developed the estate in the 1850s. After his death, the property was inherited by his son, Nathaniel Thayer III (1851-1911), and the house was enlarged and remodeled in the Georgian Revival style in 1902 by the architect and interior designer Ogden Codman Jr. The mansion served as a summer home to Nathaniel, who too spent much of his time in Boston. After his death, the 46-room mansion was sold out of the Thayer family with many of its furnishings sold at auction. The Nathaniel Thayer Mansion house was sold to Atlantic Union College in 1943 at a cost of $12,500. It was used as the school’s administration building between 1945 and 1951, and then as a dormitory until about 1970. From 1973 to present-day, the estate has been home to Thayer Conservatory, Center for Music and the Arts, who do a great job at preserving this significant landmark.

Cushing-Gay Townhouse // 1862

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The Cushing-Gay Townhouse at 170 Beacon Street in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston stands out as one of the most unique and pleasing early remodeled homes to look at. 170 Beacon was built by 1862 as one of two contiguous houses (168-170 Beacon) built for John Gardiner Cushing and his younger brother, Robert Maynard Cushing. John Gardiner Cushing built this house, which was originally a Second Empire style home similar to the dark gray residence nextdoor. The Cushing Family owned the property until 1894 and the property was sold to Helen (Ellis) Brooke, the the wife of Rev. Stopford Wentworth Brooke a British politician and later a minister of the First Church (Unitarian) of Boston. The Brooke’s moved back to England in 1900 and this home was sold to Eben Howard Gay, a banker and note broker. Eben’s wife of less than two years died just before he purchased this house on Beacon Street, she was just 26 years old. As a bachelor, Eben Gay hired architect and interior designer Ogden Codman, Jr., to remodel the 1860s house, giving it the present Adamesque front façade and new interiors to provide a setting for his collection of Chippendale furniture. The after being bought and sold numerous times following Gay’s financial struggles and selling of his prized home, the Cushing-Gay Townhome was purchased by the German Government in 1966 and is today the Goethe Institute, Boston, a cultural center and language school for the German language.

Villa Rosa // 1900-1962

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Built as the summer residence of Mr. Eben Rollins Morse and Mrs. Marion Steedman Morse of Boston and New York, Villa Rosa was one of the finest summer cottages in Newport. The property was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Morse, which originally included three, large estates two of which were featured previously. Mr. Morse was a stockbroker and investment banker, and the couple lived on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, maintaining a summer home in Beverly, Massachusetts. In 1900, the couple hired Ogden Codman, Jr., a society architect and historian from Boston, to design a townhome in New York (their new permanent home) and Newport, where they could summer with other wealthy New Yorkers. Their cottage, Villa Rosa, was a huge statement, likely to insert themselves into the high-society of Newport summers. Oriented to the south, rather than to Bellevue Avenue, the house took maximum advantage of its long narrow setting. The exterior of the house was covered in pastel pink stucco offset with white bas-relief panels and was crowned by a copper dome. The heart of the house was the green trellised circular Music Room or Ballroom, the first room in the United States to incorporate lattice design as a decorative scheme. The property was eventually sold for $21,500 to E.A. McNulty, a Rhode Island contractor. Ogden Codman’s masterpiece was demolished in December of 1962 and an apartment complex built on the site in 1965. Townhouse condominiums replaced the gardens in the 1970s and the gateposts, a final vestige, were cleared in 2004.

Image courtesy of Newport Historical Society.

Land’s End // 1864

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One of the more architecturally modest and refined Gilded Age summer cottages of Newport sits on one of the most picturesque pieces of land at the southeastern point of Aquidneck Island and is aptly named Land’s End. The cottage was built in 1864, Land’s End was designed by John Hubbard Sturgis for Boston banker, Samuel Gray Ward, his father’s business associate. The home features a refined Italianate style base with a roof comprised of a variation of the Second Empire mansard style called a “turtleback roof”. Land’s End is probably most famous as the residence of Edith Wharton (1862-1937) after she acquired the property in 1889. She worked with Boston designer Ogden Codman, Jr., to experiment with a style of subdued classical interiors and a remodel of the exterior, which was later featured in their book, “The Decoration of Houses”. Wharton was inspired to show what good taste is after the influx of Vanderbilts and other newly moneyed summer residents of Newport. The book focused on how to build and decorate houses with nobility, grace, and timelessness. It would, they hoped, lead its readers out of what Wharton called (pace the Vanderbilts) a “Thermopylae of bad taste” and into an aesthetic Promised Land. Wharton only lived at Land’s End for a decade, when the “stuffiness” of high-society there led her to move to the Berkshires in Massachusetts, where she worked with architect Ogden Codman to design her new home, The Mount. It the monstrous Lippitt Mansion, Breakwater was built at the time, just next door! did not help that Sadly, many of the interiors have been altered since Wharton’s time there, but with more recent interventions, but the book did help shift some of Newports later homes to a more refined, classical taste.