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ABOVE Eugene Kirchner returned to the Otis House after an absence of more than fifty-four years.
BELOW This year's winner of the SPNEA Book Prize.
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ABOVE One of the newest additions to SPNEA's Stewardship Program is the Mordecai Leadbetter House (c. 1860) in Weston, Massachusetts.
BELOW Volunteers at Gropius House, Lincoln, Mass., install wire cages to protect newly planted apple trees from deer.
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Historic Recollections
( *see first image of left column )
One afternoon last winter, eighty-six-year-old Eugene Kirchner
returned to the Otis House after an absence of more than fifty-four
years. He came to tell several members of the staff about his experiences working
for SPNEA's founder, William Sumner Appleton, in the 1930s
and 40s. Around 1936, SPNEA carpenter E. L. Shores hired Kirchner
to work with him, and for about ten years the two men traveled
throughout New England in an old Ford station wagon doing
whatever needed to be done at the various properties-carpentry,
stone masonry, roofing, brickwork, plastering, painting, and
more. Kirchner described Appleton visiting the properties,
often in the company of noted architect Frank Chouteau Brown,
to oversee the work under way or to investigate original building
fabric, or clipping hundreds of articles from newspapers for
the SPNEA library files. Still active as a carpenter today,
Kirchner was working at the home of Appleton Circle Patrons
John and Kerry Bastow, who figured out the connection and
reintroduced him to SPNEA. Thanks to this happy coincidence,
Eugene Kirchner's wonderful stories and anecdotes about a
long-ago SPNEA have been preserved for the future.
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Bostonians at Home
SPNEA is participating in a joint exhibition called Bostonians at
Home: Five Boston Families, 1680-1960 on view at Suffolk University
Law School in downtown Boston. Images, artifacts, and stories explore
the experiences of five Boston families, the homes in which they
lived, and their contributions to the culture of the city as patriots,
mothers, craftsmen, poets, intellectuals, and businessmen. The historic
sites featured, all members of the Alliance of Downtown Boston's
House Museums, are SPNEA's Harrison Gray Otis House, the Paul Revere
House, the Prescott House, the Gibson House, and the Nichols House.
The exhibition is on view through September 23 at the Adams Gallery,
David J. Sargent Hall, Suffolk University Law School at 120 Tremont
Street. The gallery is open to the public from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
daily, and admission is free. For more information, please call
(617) 573-8508.
SPNEA Book Prize
( *see second image down of left column )
A Building History of Northern New England by James L. Garvin has
been awarded the SPNEA Book Prize, given each year to the publication
that "advances our understanding of architecture, landscape,
and material culture of New England and the United States from the
seventeenth century to the present." Please watch for an announcement
of a talk by Mr. Garvin to be scheduled later this season. Order
the book online at www.spnea.org
New By-laws
At Annual Meeting on June 1, the general SPNEA membership voted
overwhelmingly to approve the amended and restated by-laws proposed
by the Board of Trustees. This new document allows more flexibility
in managing SPNEA and fulfills another goal of the strategic plan.
In person and by proxy, the votes totaled 1,244 in favor, 51 opposed,
and 18 abstentions.
Replanting an Orchard
( *see fourth image down of left column )
In 1937-38, Walter Gropius built his house in a field that had once
been a commercial orchard. The orchard was a notable feature of
the property during the Gropius years, but gradually the trees began
to die off, and by 1999, few remained. That year, cuttings were
taken from the survivors and grafted to root stock at an orchard
in Maine. This past Arbor Day, community volunteers and orchardist
John Bunker planted fifty of these heirloom Baldwin saplings to
reestablish the orchard as the last phase of the Save America's
Treasures grant project.
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New Stewardship Property
( *see third image down of left column )
SPNEA's Stewardship Program continues to add historic properties
to its portfolio of privately-owned New England properties
protected through perpetual preservation restrictions. One
of the newest additions is the Mordecai Leadbetter House (c.
1860) in Weston, Massachusetts. Located on approximately one
acre of land in a neighborhood undergoing the pressures of
subdivision and new development, the Leadbetter House is an
exemplary vernacular Greek Revival structure. The property
also includes a well-preserved timber-framed barn, constructed
around the same time as the house, with a gable roof and access
through large doors on the gable end wall. Both interior and
exterior portions of the house and barn, as well as the surrounding
land with stone walls, will be preserved against alteration,
neglect, and demolition, thanks to the current owner's generous
donation of preservation restrictions to SPNEA.
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Visiting Scholar
For ten weeks last spring, SPNEA served as the host organization
for Quinque Scholar Lauren Murdoch, an architectural finishes conservator
with Historic Scotland. The Quinque Foundation, which promotes exchange
of preservation expertise between the United States and Scotland,
sponsored a visit to Scotland by SPNEA's Paint Supervisor Fred O'Connor
in the summer of 2001. During her visit, Murdoch worked with SPNEA
staff as well as outside consultants on a variety of projects involving
architectural and decorative finishes. Her visit provided a substantive
and rewarding two-way exchange of information. The cultural exchange
was not limited to conservation, as she took time to attend several
professional conferences, visit house museums, and enjoy a baseball
game at Fenway Park.
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