Stone House

Leland Homestead // 1843

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The small, rural Town of Baltimore, Vermont, was originally a part of Cavendish but due to the geography and a mountain separating the village from the main town, residents here voted in 1793 to set off as its own town. The nomenclature of the town name, Baltimore is not clear, as the city in Maryland was named for George Calvert, first Baron Baltimore, who was granted that colony in 1632, but there is no evident connection between the two communities. The word Baltimore itself is Celtic for “large town”; appropriate for Calvert’s colony, perhaps, but hardly for this Vermont town, which is one of the smallest in the state in terms of population or square miles. The town has always been a community without a distinctive village center and has long been primarily farmland, with properties bounded by stone walls and forests. This stone house on Harris Road in Baltimore was built in 1843 by Joshua Leland and his wife, Betsy Boynton. A history of the town speaks of the house, “It was one of the most attractive houses ever built in Baltimore, a well-built front hall and stairway, four fair-sized pleasant rooms downstairs, three well-arranged chambers and a convenient back stairway, all well-finished”. The home, with its date of construction over the front door, remains one of the most historic and well-preserved buildings in the town of just over 200 residents.

Tully Bowen House // 1853

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Designed by great architect, Thomas Tefft, this three-bay, three-story brownstone house located at 389 Benefit Street in Providence, was built for Tully D. Bowen, a cotton manufacturer. The house, one of the finest Italianate style mansions in the state, is constructed of brownstone and features a recessed arched entrance surrounded by a flat-headed Doric-pilastered frame, pedimented first-floor windows resting on brackets with the alternation of flat and pedimented heads at the second story, and quoining at the corners. The property also retains its original Tefft-designed brick and brownstone carriage house. Thomas Tefft, who was just 27 at the time of designing this house and corresponding brownstone and iron gate, would become one of America’s finest architects before he died in Florence with a fever in 1859 at just 33 years old. The residence was converted to 12 apartments in 1941 and the carriage house was converted to residential use as well. Even with the subdividing the interior spaces of the residence and carriage house, the Bowen property remains in a great state of preservation and is one of the finest homes in Providence.

Frederick Sears Cottage // 1851

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The Frederick Sears Cottage in the Cottage Farm neighborhood of Brookline, Massachusetts, is significant as one of the major surviving examples of Gothic Revival domestic architecture in the Boston area. In 1849, wealthy Bostonian, David Sears (1787-1871) laid out parks and squares in the Cottage Farm neighborhood, and built houses for himself and his children. His own house, erected in 1843, was the oldest, soon followed by houses for his four daughters, Ellen d’Hautville, Harriet Crowninshield, Anna Amory, Grace Rives, and son, Frederick. The Frederick Sears Cottage is the only surviving Sears residence in the Cottage Farm neighborhood. Frederick Sears‘ cottage was built in 1851, though he did not occupy the house long, as just three years after he and his wife married in 1852 to move into this home, Marian died. The house was inherited by Frederick Sears Jr. , and was acquired by Boston University in 1960, who began to expand into this neighborhood. They maintain the significant property very well. The Sears Cottage is an excellent example of the Gothic Revival style in stone with scalloped vergeboards, quatrefoil motifs, corner quoins, and projecting entry. The house is constructed of Roxbury Puddingstone and is said to have been designed by George Minot Dexter.

Dexter-Hall Cottage // 1851

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Built across the street from the Amos A. Lawrence House in the Cottage Farm neighborhood in Brookline, the Dexter-Hall Cottage is an early Gothic Revival style residence built in the first period of the district’s history. Architect, George Minot Dexter was gifted a desirable house lot in the neighborhood from Amos Lawrence as a reward for his designing his own property, and in turn, designed this cottage in 1851 in the the same mode as the Lawrence House. The stone cottage has a three bay façade with enclosed center entry. On the second floor are wall dormers as well as a central jerkinhead dormer with a gambrel slate roof. The property was later owned by George M. Dexter’s daughter, Emily, and her husband, Thomas Bartlett Hall. The house remained in the Hall family through at least the 1920s.

Amos A. Lawrence House // 1851

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Cottage Farm area of Brookline is one of the finest neighborhoods in all of New England. The area was developed thanks to Amos A. Lawrence (1814-1886), a wealthy second-generation Bostonian, who provided much of the capital and enthusiasm for the growth of the cotton industry in New England prior to the Civil War. Lawrence’s involvement in the industry aided the development of the Massachusetts mill towns of Lowell and Lawrence, whom the city was named after. In 1851, Amos Lawrence purchased 200 acres of land from David Sears, who himself developed the equally beautiful Longwood neighborhood of Brookline on the other side of Beacon Street. Amos began to subdivide the land, working with the architect George Minot Dexter and landscape architect and surveyor, Alexander Wadsworth, who designed Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, to create an early picturesque residential suburb. With houses designed in the newly popular Gothic Revival and Mansard styles and several small parks, the area became known as Cottage Farm. This stone house was designed by George M. Dexter and was the country residence of Amos Lawrence, who had other homes built nearby and rented out to wealthy friends and family. By 1888, the property was owned by Amos’ daughter, Hettie S. Cunningham, who later, subdivided the estate into five house lots, and moved this stone house to the corner of Ivy and Carleton streets. Expressive of English architectural traditions over the more ornate Gothic Revival popularized by Andrew Jackson Downing, the Lawrence House is one of the finest residences in the Boston area. Built of granite with limestone trim and set behind landscaping and a perimeter fence, the mansion is surprisingly hard to get decent photos of, but it is a stunner. Today, the house is owned by Boston University and is known as Sloane House.

Myron Norton House // 1840

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The Myron Norton House, built in 1840, is located in the central village in Goshen, Connecticut. Built of stone, the house is unique as the only example of a stone house in the village, and the only Greek Revival house that departs from the usual gable-roofed form, having a square plan and hipped roof with monitor. The home was built for Myron Norton (1788-1853) and his wife, Caroline (Marsh) Norton, who outlived her husband by 23 years, living here until her death in 1876. Myron Norton made his fortune patenting and selling pineapple cheese molds, where he pressed the curds from local cows in wooden pineapple-shaped molds to give them the desired shape. It is the house that cheese built!

Porphyry Hall // 1880

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The Jacob E. Spring Mansion, also known as Porphyry Hall, is a high-style estate house located in Danvers, Massachusetts, that is one of the finest and most unique in the state! The house was built in 1880 for Jacob Evans Spring (1825-1905), who was born in Brownfield, Maine, and at the age of twenty, he went to Argentina and amassed a fortune in the wool business in Buenos Aires between 1845 and 1865, when he returned to the United States. Jacob and his wife, Sara Duffy, would purchase a large farm in Danvers and began planning for their family country home. Their residence was built on a high hill over two years and constructed of over 40 types of stones of irregular size and color with door and window sills of Nova Scotia freestone with arches of the doors and windows and corners of brick. The mansion was designed by architect George M. Harding of Boston, and built by several skilled masons over many months. Mr. Spring named his estate, “Porphyry Hall” with Porphyry meaning an igneous rock with large crystals in a fine-grained matrix; suitable for the walls of their mansion. The Spring’s lived lavishly at this home and spent nearly all of their fortune, selling the property after just ten years to the Xaverian Brothers, who opened it as Saint John’s Normal College. In 1907, the compound was re-organized as a Catholic boys prep school. In 1915, a chapel was added to the rear of the building, constructed from gray fieldstone to blend with the main house. Have you ever seen a building like this?

Bethshan Cottage // 1884

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Bethshan Cottage is one of Newport’s (many) “hidden” gems that gets far too little attention from publications! Located on Gibbs Avenue, down the block from Eveherdee and William Barton Rogers‘ summer cottage, “Morningside”, Bethshan was built in 1884 on land purchased by Major Theodore Kane Gibbs. Theodore was the son of William C. Gibbs, the 10th Governor of Rhode Island, and served in the Union Army during the American Civil War, mustering out as a Major in 1870. Newport-based architect Dudley Newton designed this cottage for Gibbs, which blends nearly every major architectural style of the late 19th century under one, beautiful gambrel roof. The red granite stone walls, red brick trim, red fish-scale slate roof, even the rust-colored mortar, all work together to create a lovely composition, unlike anything else seen in Newport. According to Newport’s Assessor, the house is presently an apartment house.

Cornelius Person House // c.1770

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The Cornelius Person House is a pre-Revolution stone dwelling built in the Katsbaan village of Saugerties, New York. The residence was constructed around 1770 by Cornelius Person (1744-1827) a merchant who held a store just south of this home. The store was apparently used as a meeting place for Patriots during the Revolutionary War and Cornelius fought in the local militia at the time. After the war, John Jacob Astor was said to have traded with local fur trappers at the store. The Person Stone House was originally a smaller dwelling and was expanded multiple times to give it the center hall appearance and later saltbox rear. Later alterations include the porches, but the house retains so much of its original charm.

Sewall-Scripture House // 1832

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Levi Sewall (1805-1880), a native of Maine, built this stunning granite Federal style house in Rockport, Massachusetts in 1832 in preparation for his marriage to Mary Ann Robards. The granite blocks used to build the house were hauled by oxen from Sewall’s own quarry in Pigeon Cove, which is said to have produced stone of excellent quality. Sewall was one of the towns earliest entrepreneurs in the granite business and did quite well, supplying the building material to many of the region’s buildings in the mid 19th century. The property was inherited by Levi and Mary’s son-in-law, Frank Scripture, who took over the family business. Levi Sewall’s descendants occupied the Sewall-Scripture House until 1957, and ever since, it has been home to the Sandy Bay Historical Society and Museum.