Bleakhouse, part of Historic New England's Stewardship
Program since 1976, recently sold to a new private owner. Constructed c. 1796 by John White, the Peterborough, New Hampshire, property retains much of its original character, and is an important example of transitional Georgian and Federal-style architecture, materials, and workmanship.
Preservation restrictions held by Historic New England protect the historically important exterior features of Bleakhouse, both for their aesthetic value and as irreplaceable artifacts of the craftsmanship of nineteenth-century New England. Learn about other stewardship properties for sale.
A Lincoln Cultural Council grant helps bring regional history and architecture experts to Lincoln, Massachusetts. This spring, Historic New England presents a series of talks and tours on Walter Gropius and his influence on American mid-century Modernism, as well as a talk about the design interests and correspondence of Odgen Codman Jr.
On April 14, Jane Thompson, co-founder of Design Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, asks What Does the Gropius House Tell You About Design History? The following week, Dr. Melissa Renn of Harvard Art Museums presents the lecture Bauhaus in Boston, which examines Walter Gropius and his legacy of Modernism.
In June, historian Camille Arbogast reads excerpts and explores the relationship between Odgen Codman Jr. and Edith Wharton through their extensive correspondence from the Historic New England archives.
Later this year, local author Barbara Rhines presents Regional Mid-Century Modern: Domestic Architecture in Lincoln and Metro West. She and Joseph Cornish, senior stewardship manager for Historic New England, discuss options for appreciation and preservation of Modern architecture in the region.
These programs are supported in part by a grant from the Lincoln Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.
Online registration is now available for the following:
What Does the Gropius House Tell You About Design History?
Bauhaus in Boston
Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman: A Creative Kinship
Online registration for Regional Mid-Century Modern is available soon.
- A team prepares for the Workhorse Parade.
Thousands of archival images tracing the development of transportation in Boston are now available in our Collections Access Project.
Historic New England acquired the Boston Transit Archive in the mid-1980s with the goal of making the material available to the public. Digitizing the thousands of gelatin dry plate negatives included in the collection was a particular challenge. Exposed directly onto fragile 8" x 10" sheets of glass, these images provide an unparalleled view of Boston and its environs in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
In 1986, we began creating microfilm copies of each image. Our online collections database, launched in 2010, allows us to share these images with a worldwide audience.
More than 8,000 images from this collection are online, with more to come. Many of the images document the materials that were essential to day-to-day transit operations, such as pipes, ditches, and machinery. But there are also surprises. Some images raise as many questions as they answer:
- Why did the transit agency have so many dolls in its office?
- Why were school cadets lined up with saxophones and drums in June of 1933?
- Where did those cats come from?
Browse the archive and tell us your thoughts in the comments section of each record.
- Adam Osgood inspects under an upholstered sofa during clean-up day at the Collections and Conservation Center in Haverhill.
Historic New England's collections team took a day to perform a comprehensive cleaning project in the furniture storage areas of the Collections and Conservation Center in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Eight staff members and two interns spent the day vacuuming and dusting objects while thoroughly checking for any pest infestations, mold, or other structural damage. Objects with a known carpet beetle infestation were removed from the storage area and placed in the carbon-dioxide treatment chamber("the bubble") to safely kill all pests without damaging the collections. This project was a part of the routine management and preventative maintenance of the collection.
- Intern Marysara Naczi helps with collections clean-up.
Learn how to weatherize your older home without damaging its historic fabric. Join Rebecca Harris of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Christopher Skelly of the Massachusetts Historical Commission, and Sally Zimmerman of Historic New England on Saturday, February 11, as they present information on insulation, windows, lighting, and renewable energy options.
The program takes place at the Adams Street Branch Library, 690 Adams Street, Dorchester, Massachusetts, from 9:30 to 11:00 a.m. Afterwards, take an optional tour of the weatherization project at Historic New England’s 1683 Pierce House. This event is free but registration is required. The optional tour of Pierce House is limited to the first fifteen people to register. Please call 617-994-6644 or register online.
While many of our museums are quiet during the winter months, our landscapes remain active. At Hamilton House in South Berwick, Maine, Piscataqua Region Garden and Landscape Manager Gary Wetzel spends hours trimming trees and bushes as part of winter landscape maintenance.
In this photo, Gary carries a bundle of lilac branches away from the river's edge. Elsewhere on the property visitors enjoy sliding down Apple Tree Hill and snowshoeing in the fields and woods.
- While they were visiting the Collections and Conservation Center, Robert Mussey and Clark Pearce analyzed a sideboard made around 1815 that we believed was English. After looking closely at the construction details they firmly re-attributed the piece to the Boston cabinetmaker Thomas Seymour and English-trained carver Thomas Wightman.
- Pearce and Mussey examine how the object was constructed.
Independent furniture scholars Robert Mussey and Clark Pearce recently spent two days at Historic New England’s Collections and Conservation Center poring over examples of furniture made in Boston between 1815 and 1830. The two are working to identify and codify the work of the cabinetmaking shops Vose & Coates (also Vose Son & Coates, or Vose & Son) and Emmons & Archibald. Having already thoroughly analyzed and documented a bed at the Codman Estate that was almost certainly purchased by Charles Russell Codman from Vose, they were particularly interested in a sideboard that belonged to the Norton family that is nearly identical to a labeled example by Emmons and Archibald.
Both scholars were extremely pleased with what they found. According to Pearce, “the sideboard pushed us into a place where we now understand the difference between Vose and Emmons & Archibald case pieces. We understood the differences between pier tables and card tables, but we hadn’t yet gotten a handle on case pieces. The Norton sideboard clarified our understanding of the differences between the workmanship of the two shops.”
- Stephen Phillips of Phillips House in Salem, Massachusetts, c. 1940
Phillips House in Salem, Massachusetts, is open all winter long, with tours on the half hour every Saturday and Sunday. Learn how the Phillips family spent their winter months at 34 Chestnut Street during the Winter Weekends program, beginning January 14 and running on Saturdays through February 25. Sip hot cocoa; watch home movies from the 1920s and '30s with footage of the family enjoying skiing, sledding, and skating; and tour the museum. For the first time this year, this program is free for Historic New England members.
On Sundays through February 26, the Phillips House is open for free to select surrounding communities (with valid I.D.):
- January 15: Beverly
- January 22: Peabody
- January 29: Danvers
- February 5: Marblehead
- February 12: Swampscott
- February 19: Nahant
- February 26: Lynn
Salem itself is not just an October town. In February, the Salem So Sweet festival features chocolate and wine tastings and a citywide ice sculpture competition. During the winter months, take advantage of special deals at local hotels and bed and breakfasts, shop locally, and dine at some of the finest restaurants north of Boston. To learn more about the winter calendar of events in Salem, visit Destination Salem.
Phillips House hours are Saturday and Sunday, 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
- Blue porch ceiling at Historic New England's Lyman Estate, also called The Vale, in Waltham, Mass.
Homeowners often ask how a porch ceiling should be painted, and take for granted that an old-fashioned porch ceiling was always painted blue. But research shows that blue porch ceilings were not typical, and indeed, the treatment for most porch ceilings, at least early in the last century, was to varnish the ceiling, which most often was lined with tongue-and-groove match or bead-board.
Nonetheless, blue porch ceilings are common, so where did the idea of the blue porch ceiling originate?
To read more, visit our Hot Topics page.
- This 1937 winter image shows our present beech as a young tree
The copper beech trees that dot the landscape of the Lyman Estate in Waltham, Massachusetts, have provided shade for nearly a century.
In the 1820s Theodore Lyman asked his son George to send six copper, or purple, beeches from Europe to be planted at the estate to filter views of the farm and work areas and create a shady stroll from the garden area to the river.
The Historic American Building Survey (HABS) created the earliest known landscape plan more than a century later in the 1930s. The plan included Theodore Lyman’s purple beeches, including several of his trees from the 1820s. On the lawn, the maps depicted a living beech listed with a fifty-four-inch diameter. This beech survived until 1999, making it at least 180 years old. Its replacement, now five years old, has a long way to go to catch up. An older specimen in the front meadow, believed to have been planted in 1804, was listed with a seventy-two-inch diameter in the HABS plan. Many of the copper beeches imported so long ago were enjoyed by four generations of the Lyman family.
The large purple beech (Fagus sylvatica ‘Atropunicea’) standing at the end of the camellia greenhouse and the beginning of the peach wall garden provides shade for the sensitive leaves of the flowering shrubs inside. Now approximately fifty inches wide, it is most certainly one of two young beeches identified on the HABS plan with a twelve-inch diameter. Historic New England landscape staff maintains the health of this centurion tree by annually spraying the leaves to protect against defoliation by invasive European Winter Moth larvae, regularly pruning to prevent decay and protect the glass roof below, and using an air spade to loosen the soil at the base of the tree.
See the Lyman Estate landscape during Camellia Blooming Season, February 8 to March 4 at the Lyman Estate Greenhouses.
The Kingsbury-Whitaker House, a Stewardship Program property in Needham, Massachusetts, recently sold to new private owners. Constructed in several stages beginning c. 1710, with later alterations dating to the 1840s, 1870s, 1920s, and 1930s, the Kingsbury-Whitaker House retains key elements from each period of construction and thus is an important example of Colonial, Greek Revival, and Colonial Revival architecture.
The earliest section of the Kingsbury-Whitaker House was constructed by Timothy Kingsbury, Deacon of the First Parish Church, Needham's first town clerk, and a town selectman. The house remained in the Kingsbury family until 1839, when it was sold and significantly enlarged by Edgar Kimball Whitaker, a Boston merchant responsible for bringing the Charles River Railroad to Needham in 1853.
The Needham Historical Society Inc. (NHS) purchased the house in 1949 and opened it to the public as a historic house museum. In 2005, after acquiring another historic house in Needham with better public visibility and access, the NHS decided to de-accession the Kingsbury-Whitaker House, protecting its significant architectural features through a preservation easement.
Historic New England has worked with several non-profit organizations to responsibly sell historic properties when a historic house museum is not viable. After the House Museum: Returning Historic House Museums to Private Ownership, a program offered by Historic New England’s Stewardship Manager Caitlin Corkins, uses case studies of successful partnerships to explore this work.
- Staff measure the air pressure at Pierce House in Dorchester, Massachusetts.
Last year, Historic New England implemented a number of small measures to increase energy efficiency at Pierce House, and recent tests show that the improvements have paid off.
Air leakage is a major factor in energy waste. Cold air infiltrates a house and causes the heating system to expend more energy to keep the house warm. In order to reduce air leakage, Historic New England staff re-pointed the foundation of Pierce House and implemented minor, reversible repairs to decrease the flow of air through the many nooks and crannies found in an old house. We also installed interior storm windows.
Repeating the same blower door tests that were performed before the project began, we determined that our simple methods reduced air leakage at Pierce House by thirty percent. Although we do not have a full year's worth of data, we are excited about the preliminary results and what they tell us about simple techniques that homeowners can use to reap big results. Learn more about our efforts to increase energy efficiency at our historic properties.
Please consider supporting energy efficiency projects like this or the Lyman Estate weatherization project by contributing to the Preservation Maintenance Fund.
Preservation is happening above and below ground at Hamilton House. Archaeologists spent several days testing to determine the sensitivity of an area of the property slated for a new drainage system.
The proposed drainage system will redirect ground and rainwater away from several historic structures, a vital step for their long-term preservation. The results of the archaeological testing will help preservationists locate the drainage system to avoid negatively impacting archaeological resources.
- Otis House Lead Guide Camille Arbogast helps install a display for First Night tours.
Historic New England staff installed a display of early nineteenth-century dresses, shawls, and an elaborate tea service at the Otis House Museum. The costumes are similar to what Mrs. Sally Foster Otis and her guests would have worn at a festive holiday celebration.
See the installation as part of First Night Boston on December 31. Visitors wearing First Night buttons receive a complimentary tour of the first floor of the Federal-style Otis House. From 6:00 to 9:00 p.m., enjoy live classical guitar by Chris Renna and refreshments for purchase after the tour.
Visit FirstNight.org for more information about the citywide celebration.
Two members of Historic New England's collection services staff, Michaela Neiro and Adam Osgood, recently performed wallpaper conservation on-site at Castle Tucker. Due to moisture infiltration and age, the historic paper had begun to separate from the wall along its seams. Michaela and Adam used stainless steel tacks to secure strips of acid-free mat board to temporarily stabilize the wallpaper until the moisture problem can be addressed.
Michael and Adam performed this treatment in four rooms, where it will help prevent further damage to the Victorian wallpaper and the objects below. They also removed a nineteenth-century Chinese parasol that will be reproduced and re-hung in the spring.