Historic New England Fall 2009

HistoricNEW ENGLAND

DRAWINGTOWARD HOMEFALL 2009FALL 2009

F R O M T H E C H A I R

The purpose of this magazine has alwaysbeen to share our vast resources and exper-tise with our membership. In this issue, weare honored to include articles written byoutside writers as well as staff. Noted architectural historian and author JamesO’Gorman contributed an insightful essayon our forthcoming exhibition, DrawingToward Home, and conservator DeboraMayer describes the process of treatingthese fragile drawings so they may safely goon tour. Beverly K. Brandt, professor atArizona State University, writes about therole of Boston’s Society of Arts and Crafts infurthering aesthetic reform at the turn of thetwentieth century. Artist and teacher AtiGropius Johansen explains adapting Bauhauseducational methods for young audiences.Caroline Craig reminisces about her yearscooking for Bertram K. and Nina FletcherLittle. And American furniture expertKemble Widmer explains how, throughphysical examination and documentaryresearch, he and fellow connoisseurs wereable to pinpoint the origin and history of amuch admired but hitherto unidentifiedeighteenth-century chest.

In 2010, Historic New England cele-brates its one hundredth year with numerousspecial public-oriented programs, includingbeing featured at NewYork’s Winter AntiquesShow in January. We willkeep you informed on themany ways you can takepart in celebrating the re-gion’s rich cultural heritage.

—Bill Hicks

SPOTLIGHT 1Antiques Showcase

CREATIVE LEARNING 9An Awakened Eye

MAKING FUN OF HISTORY 10Gropius and Modern Design

KITCHEN STORIES 18Cooking for the Littles

MUSEUM SHOP 19Gifts Inspired by History

PRESERVATION 20Sleeper’s Outdoor Rooms

OPEN HOUSE 22Sleuthing a Masterwork

BEHIND THE SCENES 25Fit for Travel

ACQUISITIONS 26Coming Home

Reforming Interior Design 2

Drawing Toward Home 12

Except where noted, all historic photographs and ephemera are from Historic New England’s Library and Archives.

The award-winning Historic New England magazine is a benefit of membership.To join, please visit

www.HistoricNewEngland.org

HistoricNEW ENGLAND

Fall 2009Vol. 10, No. 2

Historic New England141 Cambridge StreetBoston MA 02114-2702(617) 227-3956

HISTORIC NEW ENGLAND magazine is a benefit of membership.To join Historic New England, please visit our website, HistoricNewEngland.org or call (617) 227-3956. Comments? Please call NancyCurtis, editor. Historic New England is presented by the Society for thePreservation of New England Antiquities. It is funded in part by theMassachusetts Cultural Council.

Executive Editor Editor DesignDiane Viera Nancy Curtis DeFrancis Carbone

COVER Elevation of an unidentified residence, c. 1855. Alexander Esty,architect.

1Fall 2009 Historic New England

S P O T L I G H T

or fifty-six years, the windswept steps of the National HistoricLandmark Park Avenue Armory in New York City have beenthe January destination for antiques collectors from acrossAmerica, leading to what has become America’s most presti-

gious venue for fine and decorative arts, the Winter Antiques Show.Founded in 1954 to benefit the East Side House Settlement, a social

service organization supporting families and community development,the Winter Antiques Show (www.winterantiquesshow.com) has long setthe standard for antiques shows nationwide. It sparked the creation of“Americana Week” in New York, where exhibits, auctions, and eventscelebrate collecting. Attracting top American and international dealersand celebrity crowds, the 56th Winter Antiques Show will be held fromJanuary 22 to 31, 2010, in New York City, with the celebrated openingnight party on Thursday, January 21.

Each year the show presents a loan exhibition, sponsored by Chubb PersonalInsurance, as the centerpiece of the installation in the impressive armory drill hall,with strong competition among institutions for this coveted opportunity for high vis-ibility among collectors and colleagues. Recent exhibitors have included MountVernon, the Winterthur Museum, and Colonial Williamsburg. In celebration of ourcentennial, the 2010 exhibition will be Colonial to Modern: A Century of Collectingat Historic New England. In keeping with the antiques and works of art showcasedat the show, where each object is authenticated by a committee of 160 experts andrange in date from antiquity to 1969, Historic New England will present a surveyexhibit showing some of the finest objects from our collection of nearly four hundredyears of New England heritage. Our focus will be great objects with great stories—such as the Quincy family’s Boston-made Japanned high chest, a tour de force of fur-niture, which comes from one of New England’s most influential families and has sur-vived two fires.

Historic New England has long been active at the Winter Antiques Show, work-ing with dealers who support our collecting efforts, and hosting an annual receptionfor Appleton Circle members at a different private home or collection each year. For2010, the organization’s involvement will be expanded with participation at theopening night party and through a series of lectures about our properties, collectionsand work, which will be offered for the public in the historic Veterans Room,designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany and fellow members of Associated Artists.

—Carl R. Nold, President and CEO

ABOVE High Chest. Boston,

Massachusetts, 1735–45.

Gift of Edmund Quincy.

F

AntiquesShowcase

Pete

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upon the interior’s potential to mold the inhabitant’s char-acter. Additionally, it sought to unify exterior and interiorholistically, as a way of imposing order upon the hodge-podge atmosphere of the late Victorian period. Both incor-porated the unique, handmade, or antique to counteract thecrass commercialism of mass production. Period pho-tographs, book illustrations, trade cards, and advertisementsprovide vivid testimony to the impact of these two move-ments and demonstrate the sophistication of the late nine-teenth-century Boston interior.

In 1877, American critic, editor, and author ClarenceCook wrote his seminal book, The House Beautiful. Its frontispiece, “My Lady’s Chamber,” by the English artist and theorist Walter Crane, features a charming domestic scene

Boston, 1880s–1920s

Reforming Interior Design

design in Boston: the Aesthetic and the Arts and Crafts. Bostonwas the center in the United States for the Aesthetic movementduring the period from 1875 to 1890, and the American branchof the Arts and Crafts movement originated in Boston with thefounding of The Society of Arts and Crafts (SACB) in 1897—the oldest, continuously operating organization of its type in thecountry. Both movements focused upon design reform, thougheach interpreted this impulse differently. Boston’s cultural cli-mate—with its emphasis upon art, architecture, education, andpublishing—provided an ideal setting for the quest for beautyand usefulness that each movement promoted.

The Aesthetic movement emphasized living beautifullyamong beautiful things in reaction to the gritty realities of theIndustrial Age, while the Arts and Crafts movement focused

uring the second half of the nine-

teenth century, two movements

profoundly affected interiorD

FACING PAGE Walter Crane, frontispiece for Clarence Cook’s The

House Beautiful, 1877. ABOVE LEFT Morning room,T. Quincy Browne

house, Boston, c. 1882. ABOVE RIGHT Illustration in a Barstow Stove

Company catalogue, c. 1886.

4 Historic New England Fall 2009

epitomizing everything that an attractive home should beaccording to the tenets of the Aesthetic movement. Theimpact in Boston of The House Beautiful may be attributedto Cook’s references to local shops and New Englandantiques, and to Crane’s popularity. In 1891, Crane came totown to display watercolors at the Museum of Fine Arts andto lecture on art, ornament, and interior décor at a meeting ofthe Boston Society of Architects. For decades following thebook’s publication, Bostonians adhered to Cook’s advice infurnishing their homes.

In “My Lady’s Chamber,” a young woman pours teabefore a fireplace in an elegant drawing room. At her feet, acat lapping from a saucer reinforces the mood of domesticharmony and comfortable coziness. “Sweetness and light”were two qualities that aesthetes prized in contrast to thedarkness and overcrowding of the typical late-Victorian inte-rior. For inspiration, they turned to the pre-industrial era,collecting antiques from the 1690s to 1820s that remindedthem of quieter and more gracious days. Crane’s illustrationshows a mantelpiece with classical fluting and dentil mold-ing, a convex mirror—popular during the English Regencyand American Federal eras—and cabinets with delicate glaz-ing bars and segmental pediments, typical of the works of the

Englishmen George Hepplewhite and Thomas Sheraton. Thechair to the lady’s back has the square-cut, tapered legs of theClassical Revival, and even the cloth-covered “spider” teatable represents the lightness of scale popular in furnishingsfrom the late eighteenth century.

Touches specifically associated with the Aesthetic move-ment include blue-and-white ceramics: tiles—possibly Dutchdelft—embellish the fireplace surround, while vases andplates crowd both the mantel ledge and the hanging cup-board. The covered temple jars—at either end of the man-tel—may be Chinese. The fans reflect a newer craze, broughtabout by the opening of trade with Japan in the 1850s, whichincreased the availability of inexpensive imports. Related isthe chair in the right foreground, whose light scale, sveltelines, pseudo-bamboo turnings, and ebonized finish charac-terize the Anglo-Japanese style, a hybrid product of designersstriving to blend vernacular (or folk) with Asian.

Finally, the bellows hanging from the dado features arepoussé heart motif. It conveys a sentiment—espoused bydesign reformers as varied as English architect C.F.A. Voyseyand American architect Frank Lloyd Wright—that the hearthwas the heart of the home. The only elements conspicuous bytheir absence are aesthetes’ favorite flowers, either the lily

ABOVE Sitting room, 348 Beacon Street, Boston, 1880s. Allen &

Kenway, architects. Soule Art Company photograph.


(synonymous with innocence or “sweetness”) or the sun-flower (symbolic of “light”). Note the latter in a trade cardfor art potter Abram French & Co., (contents page).

“My Lady’s Chamber” reveals the complexity of theAesthetic interior as representative of design reform. Drawingin turn from the pre-industrial era, the Far East (and MiddleEast, in the form of oriental rugs), the vernacular, and nature,it emphasized delicacy and sophistication, a love of the rare,exquisite, and handmade, a quietude and nostalgia borderingupon escapism.

My Lady might feel instantly at home in the morningroom of the Quincy Browne house at 98 Beacon Street.Altered by architect Herbert Browne for his father c. 1882,the room incorporates recycled architectural antiques,including an elegant neo-classical mantel edged with (possi-bly blue-and-white) ceramic tile. The Hepplewhite-type arm-chair closely parallels the one in Crane’s illustration. And thedelicate, painted fancy chairs that ring the tea tables areskeletal in the manner of Crane’s Anglo-Japanese example.The cornice, which spans the built-in cabinetry, mantel ledge,and corner cupboard, features an encrustation of ceramics—many Asian—indicative of the porcelain mania from whichmany aesthetes suffered.

Boston’s manufacturers recognized the appeal ofreformed Aesthetic interiors. An advertisement from aBarstow Stove Company trade catalogue shows a youngmother pouring tea who might feel equally comfortable in“My Lady’s Chamber.” At her feet, a little child warms itshands near a pierced metal grille connected to a basement-level furnace. The spindly Amero-Oriental tea table (a spin-off of the Anglo-Japanese style) contrasts markedly with theTurkish-influenced couch, on which a guest perches daintily.Aesthetic bric-a-brac abounds here, a counterpoint to thefunctional simplicity of the furnace on the level below.

The fur rug in the Barstow advertisement is not dissimi-lar from the tiger pelt evident at 348 Beacon Street.Associated with the architectural firm Allen & Kenway—Francis R. Allen would become a member of the SACB—thisroom (captured in a Soule Art Company photograph) exudesthe spirit of aestheticism. Note the overmantel with convexmirror, the porcelain mania, objets d’art, musical instru-ments, and contrast between overstuffed seating furnitureand delicate side tables. This tasteful mélange offers some-thing for the eye from every angle. Yet, the dominant featureis the exotic wall covering embellished with a Japanese flying

ABOVE LEFT Cover of sample brochure for the Strathmore Paper

Company, c. 1910. ABOVE RIGHT Foyer or sunroom, c. 1925.William

T. Clark photograph.


ABOVE LEFT Antiques Room at the Jordan Marsh Company, Boston,

c.1926. ABOVE RIGHT Catalogue cover for Daniel Low & Co.,Salem,

Massachusetts, c. 1927.

crane motif. Comfortable, cultivated, and quirky, this interioris the essence of Boston sophistication.

Around 1900, a new influence began transformingBoston’s interiors—the Craftsman, which grew out of theArts and Crafts movement and replaced dainty fussiness withgreater strength and restraint. A paper brochure, titled “TheCraftsman Look,” features an interior that is both similar tobut distinct from “My Lady’s Chamber,” epitomizing thisshift. A young woman in a flowing gown arranges flowers ina large vase supported by a sturdy trestle table. In the fore-ground stands an armchair framed of heavy square-cut postsand wide seat rails, its only ornament a slight shaping to thecrest rail and two large ball finials. Its straight back and crispright angles provide a character-building seat for the prag-matic user. The room presents a place for everything—sturdybookcase and window seat—and everything seems to be inits place.

A key distinction between the Aesthetic versus theCraftsman interior is the emphasis that the latter places onthe interior architecture: heavy beams call attention to theskeleton of the structure. A picture molding creates a restfulhorizontal line along the walls and a practical means forarranging art. The room is devoid of ornamental motifs and

decorative patterns; to paraphrase Frank Lloyd Wright, itsuccessfully “eliminates the inessential.” The severity of thisCraftsman interior shows the radical progression of designreform from the 1880s to the early 1900s.

A period photograph by William T. Clark illustrates afoyer (or possibly a sunroom) from the 1920s that continuesin this vein. Both bench and center table show the trestle-endconstruction seen in the Strathmore advertisement. A chair inthe back right corner exhibits the same solid sturdiness of the“Craftsman Look” armchair. Wickerwork and rush seatsprovide handcrafted texture and an alternative to thick cush-ions. The floor runner—combining a Greek key motif withIslamic strapwork—resembles rugs purveyed by GustavStickley, whose magazine, The Craftsman, marketed the Artsand Crafts movement and design reform to middle-classAmericans nationwide. One exotic touch—a glass hanginglantern with enameled floral decoration—provides a vestigeof aestheticism. Throughout this room, the interior architec-ture asserts itself in a forthright fashion. Strong geometry—the grid of the window mullions, tiled floor, angular furni-ture, trellis that outlines the shallow arch of the ceiling—imposes unity.


Consumers interested in design reform incorporatedAesthetic or Craftsman touches within their homes and reliedupon local manufacturers and merchants to supply appropri-ate products. One that catered to myriad tastes in home fur-nishings was Boston’s Jordan Marsh Company, which fea-tured an Antiques Room replete with furniture in the QueenAnne, Chippendale, and Pillar-and-Scroll styles. (Englishstyles predominate, although the chair in the front rightshows strong influence of seventeenth-century France.) Thesesorts of pieces would have delighted aesthetes or accommo-dated those interested in the Colonial Revival.

Similarly, the cover of the catalogue for Daniel Low &Co., in Salem, Massachusetts, c. 1927, caters to a taste forantiquarianism that continued well into the twentieth century.Striking is the similarity of this image to that of “My Lady’sChamber” from fifty years earlier—right down to the fire-place bellows. Only the gender of the occupant varies.

In an effort to keep up with the latest trends, JordanMarsh also catered to those with a taste for the “CraftsmanLook.” One advertisement features a smoking room from asuite in which Gustav Stickley might have felt at home: sim-ple geometric forms, practical upholstery, and elegant electricluminaries create a sense of order. A decorative frieze above

a prominent horizontal molding allows art and interiorarchitecture to blend seamlessly. Repetition of straight linesand right angles establishes unity. Stiff chair backs reinforcethe character-building practicality of this clean-lined room,which neatly blends usefulness with beauty.

Tastes for aestheticism or the Arts and Crafts were notmutually exclusive. Sometimes an interior would blend ele-ments of both, as evident in the Beacon Street studio HerbertBrowne designed for his father c.1882. Such touches as thefloral and foliate pokerwork panel to the left of the fire-place—note the almost Japanese quality of these motifs—combined with the wicker armchair and surfaces strewn withtasteful bric-a-brac are evidence of the Aesthetic movement.By contrast, the sturdy fireplace with built-in settle bench,and sgraffito plasterwork that enlivens the tall chimneystackare typical Arts and Crafts elements. Built-in furnishingswere one means of organizing interior space and linking fur-niture with structure. The incised line work in the plasterchimney coating introduces a touch of the hand. Presumably,Herbert Browne became aware of such English Arts andCrafts traits from traveling abroad or perusing architecturalpublications. That he and his partner, Arthur Little, neverjoined the SACB—despite their obvious affinity for design

ABOVE LEFT, TOP Smoking room display at the Jordan Marsh

Company,Boston,c.1906. ABOVE LEFT, BELOW Studio in the T.Quincy

Browne house, 98 Beacon Street, Boston, designed by Herbert

Browne, c. 1882. ABOVE RIGHT Music room in Arthur Little’s house,

2 Raleigh Street, Boston.

Historic New England Fall 20098

reform—remains one mystery surrounding the story of theArts and Crafts movement in Boston.

A room from Arthur Little’s own house at 2 RaleighStreet illustrates a presence from the classical past—namely,the Winged Victory of Samothrace—that was ubiquitous inBoston interiors regardless of their style, so much so that itinvited comment by the English author H.G. Wells in his1906 book, The Future of America. “It is incredible howmany people in Boston have selected her for their aestheticsymbol and expression. Always that lady was in evidenceabout me, unobtrusively persistent.” Her lithe dynamic form,symbolic of triumph and evocative of female beauty, musthave appealed to cultured Boston households. Even HenryHobson Richardson, mentor to many of Boston’s key Artsand Crafts architects whom he trained in his Brookline,Massachusetts, studio, included a photograph of the WingedVictory in his book-lined office. Considered by many to befather of the Arts and Crafts movement in Boston,Richardson blended Morris & Co. textiles with Asianimports, antiques, and objets d’art. The resulting artisticmélange established a precedent in interior décor that manyof Richardson’s protégés followed in their own work.

This overview of reformed Boston interiors only beginsto suggest their richness as a subject for historians. Theyserve as testimony to two important movements that soughtto influence consumers’ surroundings as well as theirlifestyles. Boston’s architects created these captivating roomsin consultation with talented artists, skilled craft workers,and cultured clients. Fortunately, the city’s art photographerspreserved them for posterity in vivid portraits. Graphicartists also captured their essence in stylized renderings thatreveal details and atmosphere that photographs cannot.Taken together, these images document an important aspectof life during Boston’s Gilded Age, when interiors expressedan alternative approach to usefulness and beauty.

—Beverly K. Brandt, Professor in the Department of InteriorDesign at Arizona State University, is the author of therecently published The Craftsman and the Critic: DefiningUsefulness and Beauty in Arts and Crafts-Era Boston(University of Massachusetts Press).

ABOVE Studio of Henry Hobson Richardson, Brookline, Massa-

chusetts, c 1885.


n the 1940s, I attended BlackMountain College, a small liberalarts school in North Carolinaknown for its excellent art depart-

ment. I remember well the hot sunnymorning when I arrived at the collegegates for the summer session. There, onthe dirt road ahead of me, was a groupof students with shovels, hoes, andrakes, working away and raising a finecloud of dust. A man in white overallswas earnestly instructing them. I won-dered if I had come to the wrong place.

As it turned out, I was watching a group of art students and their in-structor, the well-known painter JosefAlbers, in their art class, grading aroad. Albers taught outside the studioquite as much as within, forcing his stu-dents to learn new ways of seeing.Solving the problem of shaping the con-tour of a road for proper drainage is amatter of observation and good design.

Albers brought our attention to everyvisual thing we encountered and madeus alert to its unique qualities. To seesomething fresh—as if for the firsttime—is not easy, whether an object, aproblem, or another person. It needs tobe learned. It needs effort. It needs “anawakened eye.”

This approach had been taught atthe Bauhaus, starting in 1919, in the“foundation course,” which all stu-dents took upon entering the school.The course explored the basic elementsof all design and asked students on theirfirst day to leave their preconceptions atthe door. For years, I have taught aworkshop for adults that challengesthem to transform a piece of whitepaper with just a few folds into a three-dimensional sculpture. I ask them notto visualize but to start right in experi-menting and let the sculpture “hap-pen.” They have to explore the paper’s

C R E A T I V E L E A R N I N G

I

qualities and potentials, take risks, andlearn from discovery.

I am now working with HistoricNew England’s education staff andpublic school teachers to develop a pro-gram for elementary school studentsbased on the Bauhaus foundationcourse. The children will be asked tobuild structures out of paper cups ormarshmallows and toothpicks and totransform a flat sheet of paper into asculpture. When they come to theGropius House, students will see theinnovative solutions my parents arrivedat in 1937 as they designed a new kindof New England house to suit theirneeds. We hope the students will seethat new ideas are all around them andbecome confident in their ability to“think outside the box,” a life skill thatlies at the core of all problem solving.

—Ati Gropius Johansen

An Awakened Eye

Mrs. Johansen, daughter of Walter and IseGropius, is an artist and teacher. She moved withher parents into the Gropius home in Lincoln,Massachusetts, after its completion in 1938.

ABOVE Ati Johansen,at right, teaching a paper

workshop. BELOW Walter Gropius and

Josef Albers, 1946.

�


Here are several pieces of furniture made with tubularsteel designed by Marcel Breuer. A Bauhaus teacher, Breuerwent on to become a famous architect and furnituredesigner. He was inspired to use chromed metal tubes infurniture while riding his bicycle, which was made of thesame material. He designed a variety of popular tablesand chairs that combined tubular steel with leather,wicker, and wood. The Gropius family found these light-weight pieces very practical and used them as both sidetables and stools.

M A K I N G F U N O F H I S T O R Y

�

1883 Walter Gropius isborn in Berlin,Germany.

1911 Gropius designs therevolutionary glass-walled FagusFactory.

1919Gropius founds theBauhaus school inWeimar, Germany.

1925Gropius designs an influ-ential glass-and-concretebuilding for the BauhausSchool.

Is it a stool or a table?

Gropius and Modern Design

do you know �

Let’s learn about the impact the

The new house that Walter Gropiusbuilt in 1938 for his family inLincoln, Massachusetts, looked very

different from other houses. Gropius was thefounder of the Bauhaus schoolin Germany, which encouragedartists and designers to usemodern materials and think innew and creative ways.

Bauhaus had on our modern world.


While designing the family’s new home in Lincoln, Walter Gropius askedhis twelve-year-old daughter, Ati, what she wanted her room to be like.

Ati answered that she wanted a glass roof and a sand floor.Although those details did not make it into the finaldesign, Gropius designed some features that would give herthe feeling of being connected to the out-of-doors: a deck offher bedroom, where she could sleep under the stars, and herown spiral staircase so that she and her friends could climbup to her room from the ground outside.

Ati also chose the warm color palette in her room andhad lots of space where she could make and hang her ownartwork.

1933The Nazi regimeshuts the Bauhausdown.

1937Gropius moves to theUnited States to teachmodern design atHarvard University.

1937–1938Gropius designs andbuilds a house forhis family in Lincoln,Massachusetts.

��dream house

1945Gropius and seven otherarchitects open an architec-tural firm, The Architects’Collaborative.

1969Gropius dies atthe age of 86.

a room for a child

If you could design your own

dream house, what materials

would you use? Draw a picture

of your house and email it

to CaseyTheClock@

HistoricNewEngland.org.

In designing his house, Walter Gropius used both new and traditional materials,

mixing them in creative and unusual ways. Some of these included:

Huge plate glass windows overlooking the garden

A glass block wall separating two rooms

Clapboards used onan inside wall andplaced vertically


C O L L E C T I O N S

DrawingTowardHome

ABOVE Perspective of a house at Northeast

Harbor, Maine, unbuilt, c. 1928–30. Bigelow,

Wadsworth, Hubbard and Smith, architects.


major component of the American pursuit ofhappiness has long been a home of one’s own(the automobile is a distant second: the one acastle, the other a chariot). Early on it might

have been a four-square neo-classical box or a cozy Gothiccottage. Of late, for the middle class, it has taken the form ofa detached single-family dwelling set on a weed-free lawn insuburbia, preferably with a two- or three-car garage,although town houses, apartments, condos, and seaside orcountry trophy houses may also qualify. It might be a ranchhouse, a Cape, a Colonial, or a McMansion. It might havebeen designed by a “name” architect or a faceless drafterworking for a developer. In any case the center of the nuclearfamily looms large in the popular American psyche.“American Dream Homes,” “American Dream Realty,”“American Dream Builders,” “American DreamMortgages”— the Internet abounds with commer-cial enterprises seeking to help us, at a profit tothemselves, to achieve the perfect framework for ourbirthright: domestic bliss. (The origins of the recent

Aeconomic crisis may be sought in the failure to properlyfinance the dream.)

The meaning of the American home ranges from refugeto showplace. Frank Lloyd Wright designed hearth-centeredhouses with sheltering roofs and inconspicuous entry ways,following age-old symbols of domestic security. HisZimmerman House of the 1950s in Manchester, NewHampshire, is a canonical example. Silas Lapham, in WilliamDean Howells’s 1885 novel, The Rise of Silas Lapham, sawthe dream house rising for his family’s use in Boston’s newBack Bay district as proof of his upward mobility. As the cen-ter of self expression, the home is perhaps the most charac-teristic building type in a capitalist democratic society. Itscentral position in American life makes it an architecturaldesign problem worthy of attention. The drawings selected

ABOVE Elevation and plan of the fence and gates for the Henry Clay Frick

Estate, Prides Crossing, Beverly, Massachusetts, 1905 (detail). Little and

Browne, architects. Gift of Herbert W. C. Browne.

Exhibition preview: One hundred drawings of domestic buildings from

Historic New England’s collection

C O L L E C T I O N S


for Drawing Toward Home exemplify that fact. They are allfor domestic buildings in New England in the eighteenth,nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Although specific to lifein the Northeast, they parallel the history of architecture, andhence architectural graphics, at the national level.

A house, like any building, is the result of a two-stageprocess: conception and execution. The design drawing is themediator between the mind of the architect and the materialforms of the building. It makes graphically manifest thetranslation of the client’s wishes, expressed as the buildingprogram, into their physical embodiment. Before a newhouse is a home, it is commonly a desire, a dream, an air cas-tle that may be made concrete by the repetitive product of aspeculative developer or a custom home designed by a regis-tered architect. The developer’s clients take more or less whatis offered; an architect trades on personalized work. Thedomestic architectural commission comes from people whodescribe what they want in a house, where it will be located,the size of the family as well as the budget, the number ofpets, and other matters affecting the final product, including

TOP Side elevation of a house for W. S. Appleton, Newton,

Massachusetts, 1875. Peabody and Stearns, architects. Gift of

William Sumner Appleton. ABOVE Sketches of a cottage at Great

Diamond Island, Casco Bay, Maine, 1888. John Calvin Stevens,

architect. Gift of Earle G. Shettleworth, Jr.


the personalities of the owners and theimage they want to project to the world.The designer translates this verbal infor-mation into preliminary graphic imagesthat he or she hopes will satisfy the client’sneeds and wants, and eventually producesthe working or contract drawings thatwill, with a set of written specifications,form a legal contract and direct thebuilder in the construction of the house.

Domestic architecture, like any othertype of building, varies over time in tech-nology and style, as do the drawings cre-ated to explain a proposed building toclient and builder. Whether hand crafted or computer gen-erated, whether of a Gothic Revival cottage or anInternational Style house, the drawings are of variousstandard types. There are the preliminary sketches of a pro-ject that eventually evolve into a series of definitive graph-ics. The latter include the fundamental plans, or horizon-tal slices through a proposed dwelling, that are the dia-grams of the clients’ intended pattern of living. They showthe shapes of and relationships among the rooms.Sections, or vertical slices through the house, illustrate therelationship of superimposed spaces, the structure, and theinterior elevations of the rooms. Exterior elevations reflectthe expression of those interior arrangements on the out-

side of the home through the placement and shape of win-dows, doors, wings, roofs, porches, and so on. There are alsodetails, drawings at a larger (sometimes full) scale that explaintypical or important aspects of construction or design.Architects also prepare drawings for ancillary elements of adomestic complex, such as landscaping, outbuildings, andgateways to estates. This exhibition even includes the elevationof a two-story martin house designed by Luther Briggs, com-plete with cupola, to provide upscale nesting quarters for theclient’s avian neighbors.

All of the above are flat graphics that are not intended tosuggest the three-dimensional reality of the finished design.Mere diagrams that show undistorted, measurable relation-ships between the parts of a house, they are useful forinstructing the builder, or, as colored elevations, for impress-ing the client. In either case they are two-dimensional. Notuntil well into the nineteenth century did the majority ofAmerican architects, especially in New England, begin fre-quently to intrude upon the domain of the artist, to projectthree-dimensional views, or anticipatory presentation per-

ABOVE Elevation of a house

for Mr. and Mrs. Everett A.

Black, Lincoln, Massachu-

setts, 1968. Henry B.

Hoover, architect. Gift

of the family of Henry B.

Hoover. RIGHT Martin

house, detail of a drawing,

1860. Luther Briggs, Jr.,

architect. Gift of Elizabeth

Huebener. BELOW Plan and

elevation of a house for P.D.

Wallis, Boston, 1858. Luther

Briggs, Jr., architect. Gift

of Elizabeth Huebener.


early show of architectural drawings was held in October1890 at Boston’s fashionable St. Botolph Club, a select socialgathering founded in 1880 by a group of men includingpainters, sculptors, architects, and amateurs interested in thearts. Since the club hoped to attract an audience from beyondthe architectural drafting room or the clients’ conference table,the exhibition committee said it wanted to have “largely per-spectives, and, in general, such drawings as would interestnot only the profession, but the outside public generally.”

The large number of presentation perspectives in thisexhibition distorts the graphic production of architecturaloffices. Many of these views are beautiful objects in theirown right, suitable to hang on living room walls, and theycan often be found in dealers’ shops and, as we have justseen, in museum or gallery exhibitions. Their attractivenesshelps to preserve them. But the basic plans and sections, theessential working drawings that make up the bulk of thearchitect’s office time, often lack sufficient eye appeal for thegeneral public, and as often do not survive. Unlike the

spectives, that became a standard part of their graphic reper-tory. Furthering their new stature as artists, architects usedperspective views as visual aids to their sales pitches. AsBenjamin Linfoot put it in 1884, the “architect… must keephis client’s enthusiasm alive and active by sending or submit-ting bright, jaunty little perspectives of his contemplatedwork.”

Some architects were gifted enough to do their own pre-sentations, which were of course useless as instructions to thebuilder but useful to persuade the client to build, or—pub-lished in the new professional journals—to show off theirskills to their peers, but early on there appeared men called“perspectivists” or “renderers,” who specialized in such eye-catching drawings. These renderers existed either in-house,on the staff of one architect, or were itinerant, traveling fromoffice to office, even city to city, to rent their pencils or brushesto any who wanted them. By late in the nineteenth century suchviews of intended or realized buildings came to exist inde-pendently of the construction process. This gave priority totheir artistic rather than their utilitarian value. They wereexhibited at galleries, museums, and clubs, and published injournals and books, with the drafter’s intention of reachingbeyond a specific client to a wider audience.

The first formal exhibition of drawings by the BostonSociety of Architects took place at the Art Club in February1886. The show included more than two hundred works,some sent over by English architects, in pen, pencil, andwatercolor. A residential design by Maine’s John CalvinStevens drew particular attention. But the most important

ABOVE Perspective and plans of a house for Charles F. Harding,

c. 1880. Henry M. Francis, architect.

ABOVE Perspective of the cottage of Rev. John Cotton Brooks,

Marion, Massachusetts, 1882. John M. Allen, architect. Gift of

Christopher Monkhouse.


Drawing Toward Home: Designs for Domestic Architecture fromHistoric New England features one hundred original drawings. Itopens at the Boston University Stone Gallery on November 18, 2009,and will then travel to the National Building Museum, Washington,D.C. in 2010. James F. O’Gorman served as chief curator with Lorna Condon, Christopher Monkhouse, Roger Reed, and Earle G.Shettleworth, Jr.

preparatory sketches of artists that are recognized as collec-table works of art, architectural drawings created as means toan end are not always valued for themselves, especially if thearchitect is not famous. They get manhandled or are discard-ed altogether; they are not considered precious objects.Architects retain them only as they find them useful in theproduction of the finished product. At the terminus of theconstruction cycle, or the demise of the architect, they becomeobsolete; their sheer volume overwhelms, people lose interestin them. An archive such as that at Historic New England isnecessarily selective, but it is nonetheless an essential tool inexplaining our cultural heritage. The preservation of these his-toric documents—however incomplete—ensures that ourunderstanding of the history of domestic design in theNortheast will be formed as fully as possible.

Design for the New England human habitat in all itsvariety is celebrated in this exhibition. The drawings stemfrom the six northeastern states and from the offices of archi-tects unknown as well as famous. They represent domesticityfrom a broad spectrum of the social hierarchy, from subur-ban and coastal estates to Boston three-deckers. They spanthe eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, from the origins ofarchitectural draftsmanship in this country to the dawn of Computer-Aided Design (or CAD) programs.

Historic New England collects these architectural draw-ings as part of its mission to preserve and interpret regionalmaterial and social history. Its many house museums are notthe only portals to the past that help it fulfill that aim. Thefull story of architecture and society in the Northeast cannot

be told from surviving buildings alone. Some drawings doprescribe what was built and still stands, but some preservethe design of houses now lost, and others record the stages ina design process that ultimately resulted in something differ-ent or unexecuted. The student needs both buildings anddrawings. The collection of architectural graphics owned byHistoric New England represents a major resource for thestudy of the region’s history and culture and adds a signifi-cant dimension to our understanding of the evolution of thedomestic environment in New England, and by extension, ofthe entire United States. What is shown in this exhibition isthe mere tip of the iceberg, a small sampling of an extraordi-narily rich and indispensable resource for the fulfillment ofthe organization’s mission.

—James F. O’Gorman, architectural historian and author, isProfessor Emeritus at Wellesley College, Wellesley,Massachusetts.

RIGHT Perspective of

an unidentified sub-

urban residence,

1930s. David J.

Abrahams, architect.

Gift of Jean S. and

Frederic A. Sharf.


K I T C H E N S T O R I E S

might sometimes make a strawberry-rhubarb or blueberry jam, but it neverbecame a part of the regular rotation.Mrs. Little loved turnovers, and blue-berry jam makes a great turnover. Wemade grape jelly from the Concordgrapes and mint jelly for lamb. Theyate raspberry jelly the way other peoplemight eat cranberry sauce. Probablyraspberry was the all-time favorite, itwas more coveted. For a large gather-ing the strawberry jam came out; it wasgood, but it was, shall we say, less trea-sured. Raspberry was more rare. Wealso made raspberry jam. There weretwo rows of raspberry bushes upbehind the grapevines, so there wereonly so many raspberries. It takes eighttimes more raspberries to make a batchof jelly, because you have to cook itdown and strain it. And jelly was amust. A family favorite for Saturdaysupper was jelly omelets. Supper was a

hen the Littles inter-viewed my hus-band, Al, and meabout working for

them, they talked mostly about Al’sduties on the farm. I asked whethermaintaining the flower beds would bean important part of my job. I said,“There’s not much gardener in mysoul, that’s just not my thing.” Mr.Little looked at me very intently andsaid “Can you cook?” And I said,“Yes, sir, I can cook.” He said, “Toheck with the flowers!” Even so, therewas always a row of cutting flowers—zinnias, bachelor buttons, marigolds—in the vegetable garden, and Mr. Littlewould go out with a basket and cut theflowers himself and do arrangementsfor the house.

We would make hundreds of jarsof jams and jellies—raspberry, straw-berry, peach, and marmalade. For fun I

WCooking for the Littles

different meal than dinner, morerelaxed, and they always had supperon Saturdays.

We preserved all the other vegeta-bles and fruit grown on the farm.Vegetables—corn, squash, peas andlima beans—were usually frozen ratherthan canned. Mrs. Little especiallyloved lima beans, peas, and asparagus.In the spring we would mail freshasparagus to their Brookline house bythe shoebox full, at least twice a week.We stored the food in the cellar or inthe freezer at Cogswell’s Grant, andthen every six to eight weeks we’dmake a trip to the Littles’ house inBrookline. When the Littles had guests,it was very important to be able to saythat everything on the table came fromthe farm. They took pride in that. AndAl and I did too.

—Caroline Craig

Caroline Craig reminisces about cooking at Cogswell’s Grant in Essex,Massachusetts, summer home ofBertram K. and Nina Fletcher Little,during the twenty years that she and her husband,Al, worked there as resident caretakers.


Necklaces 22" long with 2" drop. Pierced earrings 2" long.Pins approx. 1.25" x 2". To order, please call 617-227-3956.

GiftsInspired by HistoryGenuine cultured pearl necklaces and gold- and silver-tonedpendants, pins, and earrings form a graceful collection adapt-ed from antique jewelry in our collection.Key: M = Member price NM = Nonmember price

White Pearl Necklace $55 M $65 NMEarrings $30 M $35 NM

Blue-gray Pearl Necklace $55 M $65 NMEarrings $30 M $35 NM

Silver WheatEarrings $25 M $30 NMPin $30 M $35 NM

Gold WheatEarrings $25 M $30 NMPin $30 M $35 NM

Gold LeafPin $25 M $30 NM

Silver AngelPin $30 M $35 NM

Gold AngelPin $30 M $35 NM

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P R E S E R V A T I O N

enry Davis Sleeper spentbetween 1907 and theearly 1930s sculptingBeauport into a master-

piece of interior and exterior design.The care he took in designing the insideof the house extended into the land-scape, as he connected the interior tothe harbor view through a series ofenclosed spaces conceived as outdoorrooms. One could stroll toward thewater’s edge, first to a brick terrace andthen down to a second terrace andwalled gardens at lower levels.Unfortunately, later alterations elimi-nated several key features in the land-scape, thereby blurring Sleeper’s origi-nal concept. Consequently, with fundssecured from the Winfield Foundation,Historic New England has undertakena multi-year project to restore the land-scape to the period of late 1920s

through the 1930s. This period reflectsSleeper’s fully developed spatial rela-tionships and structure in the land-scape but also integrates the early yearsof ownership by the McCann family.

In 2008, we began to restore twosections of masonry that had been lostover time—one section of a half-wallseparating the walled garden and thelower terrace, and the stairway con-necting the brick terrace to the lowerterrace. The half-wall plays a criticalrole in clearly defining two exteriorspaces. The stairway, which had beencovered over in the 1940s to expandthe usable space on the brick terrace,was an important part of the circula-tion pattern.

Rebuilding the half-wall was thefirst step and the more straightforwardpart of the project. Not only was thiswall illustrated in many historic dia-

Hgrams and site plans, but a remainingsection could serve as a model. Thestairway was more puzzling. We hadsome historic images and site plans,but the records were incomplete. Wehoped, based on evidence discoveredduring work at the site twenty yearsago, that a remnant of the stairwaymight still be extant under the terrace.So, with breath held, we excavated.Our excitement grew as we clearedaway and at last found the originalstairway largely intact. Now, instead ofrestoring a lost feature, we could pre-serve the actual stairway.

Over the course of the summernew plantings were added to the gar-den and the restoration of the waterside of the house was completedthrough window conservation andpainting as part of the Save America’sTreasures grant. Extensive work on

Sleeper’s Outdoor Rooms


both garden and house will continueover the next several years thanks to this generous funding. Please visitBeauport to see the exciting results ofour efforts, and be sure to check outthe latest information on the project athttp://beauportblog.wordpress.com.

—Ben HaavikTeam Leader, Historic Preservation

FACING PAGE The newly restored garden. THIS PAGE,TOP The terrace

before and after restoration, showing how the space has been

transformed with new plantings and the reopened staircase, which

now offers inviting access to the lower level. BELOW Careful dis-

mantling of the terrace revealed Sleeper's original stairway.

Finding the stair meant that Historic New England could preserve

it instead of creating a new one based on conjecture.

arly in 2007 Joyce King, a fellow furniture scholar, and Iwere retained by the antiques firm C.L. Prickett to researchan important desk and bookcase. Joyce and I had alwaysbelieved that the desk and bookcase belonged to a particu-

lar group of furniture made by Nathaniel Gould, a little knownSalem, Massachusetts, cabinetmaker, but we had no conclusiveproof. Numerous trips to the Massachusetts Archives and othersources yielded little useful information. One evening Joyce googledGould’s name and found that three of his ledgers were at the

Massachusetts Historical Society(MHS), in the papers of his lawyer,Nathan Dane. The ledgers had been atMHS since 1834. Fortunately for us,MHS had just placed summaries of the

Dane collection online a few weeks previously. When Joyce and Iexamined the Gould ledgers, we found an entry that enabled us tofirmly identify another Gould piece that is one of the most significantitems in Historic New England’s collection—a four-drawer chest inthe bombé form.

Nathaniel Gould was born near Salem, in what is now Peabody.Orphaned when he was only twelve, he was assigned to the guardian-ship of his uncle, a house joiner, but in all probability was placed inan apprenticeship with a Charlestown joiner, Thomas Wood. Within

E


Gavin Ashworth Photography

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O P E N H O U S E

Sleuthinga Masterwork


two years of completing his indenture, however, he hadreturned to Salem and started his own shop. His careerwould span the next twenty-four years until his death. Interms of design and woods used, the output from his shop—which included desks, secretaries, chairs, tables of all descrip-tions, beds, and chests of drawers—was the finest furnitureproduced in Salem during the mid-eighteenth century.

Gould’s ledgers document over two thousand furnituresales to Salem residents, predominantly to the town’s elitemerchant and shipping families like the Ornes, Derbys,Crowninshields, Pickmans, Allens, Lees, and Debloises. Hismost important and frequent clients were the Cabots, twogenerations of whom were regular customers.

Because Gould’s ledgers list items sold, dates, and pur-chasers, it is possible to connect pieces with known prove-

LEFT Entry for Andrew Cabot in Nathaniel

Gould’s wastebook, 1767–81. Original manu-

script from Nathan Dane Papers, Massachu-

setts Historical Society. BELOW Stereo view of

Andrew Cabot’s 1781 house in Beverly,

Massachusetts, now Beverly Town Hall. 1860s.

nance through genealogy. Just before he retired, HistoricNew England’s Chief Curator Richard Nylander supplied theline of inheritance that linked this chest to a sale in the ledger.Longtime Historic New England member Martha Batchelderhad left the chest to the organization in her will. Her late husband was a great-great grandson of Andrew Cabot(1750–91) of Salem and Beverly, and the chest had descendedto him through four generations of the family. Cabot hadprobably purchased the chest, along with a secretary alsomade by Gould, for the new mansion house he had built forhimself in Beverly when he moved there in 1781.

The chest is constructed in a form that at the time wascalled “swelled,” known today as “bombé.” This shape wasone of the most difficult and expensive forms to produce,because fabricating drawers with curved sides that conformto the curvature of the case sides requires a level of skill farbeyond that of the average cabinetmaker.

Following the outbreak of the Revolution, all businessesfor craftsmen along the Massachusetts coast suffered signifi-cant declines. Raw materials were difficult to procure due toBritish seizure of ships and banned trade with the colonies.With the economy disrupted by war, few families had funds

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available for discretionary purchases above basic subsistence. The decline is readily apparent in analyzing Gould’s ledgers,as his business was reduced by eighty percent from the levelof the late 1760s.

Thanks to profits from privateering, the Cabot familywas one of the few that could afford to maintain theirlifestyle, as evidenced by Andrew’s purchase of the chest.One clue remains as a testimony to the economic difficultiesof the time: a flaw—actually an indentation—that mars theleft front of the third drawer. After examining the piece, JohnChilds, Historic New England furniture conservator, and fur-niture scholar and author Luke Beckerdite, concluded thatthe indentation was not caused by damage to the piece sub-sequent to its sale, but was actually a tear-out that occurredwhen the board was shaped. Gould probably could not

obtain sufficient wood to fashion a new drawer front thatwould match the grain pattern of the other three drawers.Allowing the chest to leave the shop in this condition, particu-larly in a sale to such an important client, simply would not havebeen acceptable a few years earlier.

Historic New England’s bombé chest stands as an icon inits own right as the product of Salem’s best cabinetmaker of theperiod from 1760 to 1780. Furthermore, it is unusual in thatwe know the maker, date, and purchaser—which is rare forAmerican furniture of this period. The chest is also of extremeimportance to furniture scholars as the missing link to a largegroup of furniture purchased by a select group of customers.

—Kemble Widmer IIFurniture scholar

This article is based on an essay by Kemble Widmer II and JoyceKing in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite and pub-lished by the Chipstone Foundation in 2008.

ABOVE Detail of third drawer showing damage, known as a tear-out,

which occurred when the drawer front was being planed.The blade

caught some irregular wood fibers and tore them out. Normally,

Gould could easily have removed the marks by further planing with

a finer plane, but the drawer’s swelled bombé shape did not allow it.


B E H I N D T H E S C E N E S

Some unusual or especially fragile itemsrequired custom matting and framing.

Generally, I cleaned the surfaces ofthe drawings with special dry cleaningsquares. In all cases, so as to preservehistorical evidence, I took extreme careto avoid removing any notations ormarkings. If there were tears, I rein-forced them with narrow strips ofJapanese paper and wheat starch pasteapplied to the reverse of the drawing.For tears or losses on tracing papers, Iused extremely thin mending paper tohide evidence of the repairs that other-wise might be visible through the trans-parent paper. I treated creases withhumidification, followed by placing thepaper between absorbent blotters todry. Acidic mats I removed with ascalpel, sometimes with the aid of mois-ture or solvents to soften the adhesive.

I am proud to have worked on thisimportant exhibition and to have

onservation planning forDrawing Toward Homebegan in 2005 whenLorna Condon, curator

of Library and Archives, asked me toevaluate the condition and treatmentneeds of the drawings planned for exhi-bition. Surveying the one hundred itemsselected, I found a diverse array—drawings done in graphite, pen and ink,or watercolor. The supports wereequally varied—tracing paper, starch-coated fabric, and watercolor paper.Some of the works had suffered dam-age from poor storage and handlingbefore Historic New England acquiredthem, including tears and losses, creasesand cockles, surface soil, and discol-oration from poor quality mountings.

My conservation goals were to cleanand stabilize the drawings. Each objectneeded to be exhibitable and strongenough to withstand the rigors of travel.

CFit for Travel

Dav

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arm

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ensured that these fragile works are nowsafe to be placed on display and enjoyedby a large audience. Not only do thedrawings now look their best, they havebeen stabilized and will remain in goodcondition for years to come.

—Debora Mayer, Helen Glaser SeniorPaper Conservator for SpecialCollections, Harvard College Library,Harvard University, Cambridge,Massachusetts

LEFT Room model by A. H. Davenport and

Company, Boston and East Cambridge,

Massachusetts, early twentieth century, after

treatment. BELOW Drawing of the James A.

Noyes house, Cambridge, Massachusetts,

1893–94. Longfellow, Alden, and Harlow,

architects. Shown before and after treat-

ment.

141 Cambridge StreetBoston MA 02114-2702

Non-Profit OrganizationU.S. Postage

PAIDBoston, Massachusetts

Permit No. 58621

LEFT Sideboard, c.1820. ABOVE Marcia Oakes

Woodbury depicted the author’s dining

room and the sideboard in one of her illus-

trations for Jewett’s Deephaven.

every view of the outward, materialworld…

Sarah spent part of her childhoodin her grandfather’s house in the centerof South Berwick, Maine, which wasfilled with the stuff of history—mar-itime equipment in the barn’s loft;gleaming old mahogany furniture inthe living room, library, and diningroom. Much later, in 1887, when she,her sister, and her mother took overthe house, they retained most of thefurnishings and upgraded the finisheswith Arts and Crafts wallpapers andWilliam Morris carpets. William Dean

uthor Sarah Orne Jewettunderstood better thanmost how a home reflectsand sustains those who

live inside. In her 1879 story “LadyFerry,” she wrote,

One often hears of the influ-ence of climate upon character;there is a strong influence of place;and the inanimate things whichsurround us indoors and out makeus follow out in our lives their ownsilent characteristics. We uncon-sciously catch the tone of everyhouse in which we live, and of

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A C Q U I S I T I O N S

Coming Home

Howells visited Jewett there anddescribed her home as “the fittest pos-sible setting for literature such as yours.”

When Jewett’s nephew left thehouse to Historic New England in1931, he left many of the contents torelatives. Recently the heirs decided tosell a number of pieces, and HistoricNew England was fortunate to pur-chase them. In September, this side-board, along with other items, returnsto Jewett’s house as fitting tribute tothe storyteller who lived there.

—Nancy Carlisle, Curator

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Historic New England Fall 2009

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