Beauport, the Sleeper-McCann House (1907)

Sleeper is said to have been tutored at home due to his frail health, and no trace of any formal education has been found. Some oral histories state that he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, though this claim is not supported by that institution’s records. When Henry reached the age of eleven, the Sleeper family began spending summers in their new home on Marblehead Neck, designed by architect Arthur Little. Henry’s father built the home in 1888 and died while summering there three years later. After his mother sold the home in 1902, Sleeper saw that he would have to purchase another summer retreat for his family to escape the city heat. When he visited Eastern Point in 1906, he was determined that this would be the site of their new refuge.

The social enclave of Eastern Point was created in the 1880s by wealthy Bostonians John and David Greenough, who formed the Eastern Point Associates to purchase farmland in east Gloucester from the heirs of farmer Thomas Niles. They bought the land on November 12, 1887, for $100,000 and began laying out streets and dividing the parcel into building lots. On a map of the subdivision produced for the Associates in 1889, the future site of Beauport occupied the lot designated as number 101. In 1901 the lot was sold to well-known Cape Ann hotel builder George O. Stacey, who already had sites including the Moorland Hotel, the Magnolia Hotel, and the Hawthorne Inn to his credit. One year later, Stacey purchased three adjoining lots and a few parcels across the road for the 300-room Colonial Arms Hotel which opened for the season in 1904. Stacey separated the southernmost lot, 101, and sold it to Henry Sleeper on August 13, 1907. Sleeper began construction in the fall of that year and occupied Beauport by May 12, 1908, when Andrew was his first houseguest.

Sleeper’s original Little Beauport, named after Le Beau Port, French explorer Samuel de Champlain’s description of Gloucester Harbor, was a relatively small cottage situated on a modest lot. Henry soon became the last official member of “Dabsville,” a self-imposed acronym invented by a group of artists and intellectuals who inhabited homes along a small section of Eastern Point Boulevard. The D stood for Joanna Davidge of Virginia, proprietress of Miss Davidge’s classes, a finishing school for young ladies in New York, who inhabited a cottage called Pierlane next to Red Roof. A, of course, was for its owner, A. Piatt Andrew. B was for well-regarded Philadelphia portrait painter Cecilia Beaux who resided in Green Alley, the southernmost Dabsville property. S stood for Henry Sleeper but also for South Carolina native Caroline Sinkler, whose home was sandwiched between Red Roof and Beauport. She called her cottage Wrong Roof in a joking jab at Andrew’s home. Despite that colorful bit of levity, Miss Sinkler had experienced a tragedy that left an equally indelible image. Shortly before her winter wedding, her fiancé, John Stewardson of Philadelphia, drowned while skating on the Schuylkill River. From that day forward, Sinkler wore mourning clothes in hues of lavender and black which earned her the name of “the Lavender Lady” among the members of Dabsville. Completing the assortment of unique individuals was the compulsive collector, Mistress of Fenway Court, Isabella Stewart Gardner as an honorary member. For Henry Davis Sleeper, this group of friends was his source of entertainment and inspiration for his great pride, Beauport.

Shortly after Sleeper purchased the lot on Eastern Point, he and Andrew discovered the William Cogswell house in Essex while on their way to visit Emily Tyson, who had recently restored Hamilton House in South Berwick, Maine. Sleeper eventually purchased the interior of this dilapidated eighteenth-century farmhouse and used the paneling and shutters to form the Cogswell’s Hall and the Green Dining Room, both on the original 1908 floor plan. It was this purchase that began Sleeper’s interest in architectural salvage which he used throughout his summer home, making his new house appear old.

Sleeper’s additions and changes were often inspired by objects, themes, or significant events. In 1917 the death of his mother resulted in the creation of a wing on the northern side of the house. The Pembroke Room, more commonly known as the Pine Kitchen, was constructed with doors and paneling from the seventeenth-century Barker House – his mother’s ancestral home – in Pembroke, Massachusetts. This room was not only Sleeper’s favorite but also became the most copied in the homes of his clients. Visitors to the house were drawn to the colonial hearth with its many implements, charming redware, colonial wing chairs, and wide floor boards that came from the nineteenth-century Dillaway House in Boston’s North End. At the same time, Sleeper added the Franklin Game Room which exhibits his fascination with America’s founding fathers. Over the Franklin stove he hung an image of his mother, one of only two known, flanked by Victorian wax flowers.

Sleeper’s crowning achievement, which greatly influenced the Octagon Room, came with his participation in the American Field Service (AFS). In 1915 Andrew enlisted him to raise funds for the Field Service in France, a group of American ambulance drivers that transported the wounded from the battlefield during World War I. Sleeper became the AFS’s American representative and chief fundraiser, and served as director of its Paris headquarters in 1918 and 1919. For his efforts he received the Legion of Honor (1918), the Medal of Honor (1919), and the Croix de Guerre (1921). When Sleeper returned from France in 1920 he planned and executed the addition of four more rooms at Beauport: Golden Step Room, Indian Room, Mariner’s Room, and Octagon Room. The latter, often referred to as the Souvenir de France, was created with eight sides to display his red-painted tinware (tole) that he collected while in France.

Sleeper’s interest in the decorative arts was well established before World War I. He served as Director of Museums for the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, now Historic New England, and as a founding member and trustee of the Shirley-Eustis House Association. In 1914 and 1915 he assisted in the reconstruction of the Our Lady of Good Voyage Church in Gloucester. After the war, Sleeper embarked on a professional career as an interior designer and decorator which brought Beauport further attention from the media, friends, and eventually clients.

By the 1930s Sleeper and Beauport were extremely well-known. The house became Sleeper’s showroom containing his lifetime collection of glass, ceramics, folk art silhouettes, furniture, and so much more. Upwards of five visitors a day came to see this eclectic seaside house and were often received by Sleeper’s housekeeper, Mary Landergan Wonson. She worked for Sleeper until his death in 1934, and continued on at Beauport, serving as the first site administrator of the museum until her own death in 1957. Not only did she care for and clean the house but also its collections. She made diagrams so she could put everything back in the right place. She was known as the face of Beauport as she frequently gave tours of the house. During the summer, Mary and her family lived at Beauport in five servant rooms and a bathroom above Pine Kitchen. Two of the servant rooms have been restored to appear as they did when Mary, her husband George, and their two sons were there.

In May 1934 Sleeper received a prestigious honorary membership in the American Institute of Architects for his outstanding contribution to the advancement of architecture and applied arts as “a collector of Americana and protector of the culture of early America.” Four months later Henry Davis Sleeper died at the Phillips House of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston on September 22, 1934, from leukemia and was buried in his family’s plot at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Piatt Andrew wrote a tribute published in the Gloucester Daily Times the following Monday, calling Sleeper a man of versatile talent and varied achievement. In closing he remarked, “A valiant soul left this world when Henry Sleeper’s life ebbed out the other day.” Sleeper was a gay man and never married.

Desiring a room for entertaining, Mrs. McCann took duPont’s advice and remodeled the China Trade Room in 1936. Aside from this alteration, small changes in some textiles, wallpaper, and various touches, Sleeper’s collections and arrangements remain intact.

Before her death in 1938, Mrs. McCann approached William Sumner Appleton, director and founder of Historic New England, with the intention of bequeathing the property. Shortly after this initial discussion Mrs. McCann took ill and the proposed bequest was forgotten. Instead, she left Beauport to her three children, Constance Betts McMullan, Helena Guest, and Fraiser McCann, and they continued to occupy the house for several years. Appleton approached the children with their mother’s proposed bequest and suggested the unusual idea of allowing the family to access Beauport after it obtained museum status. On December 21, 1942, ownership of Beauport transferred to Historic New England as a permanent memorial to Helena Woolworth McCann.