Historic New England Winter-Spring 2011

NEW ENEW ENNGLGLAANDND

White on WhiteWiNtEr/spriNG 2011WiNtEr/spriNG 2011

F r o m t h E C h A i r

Every time I look at a copy of Historic New England magazine I am struck by the extraordinary diversity of our holdings and by the sound research that places it all in context. This issue contains articles on top-ics ranging from a young painter during the War of 1812, to an early preservationist and contemporary of William Sumner Appleton, to a collection of stunning architectural photographs. There are also stories on the mysterious disappearance and reappearance of a Henry Moore statuette and on a diary kept by a thirteen-year-old girl in 1924.

Everything in the magazine is based on Historic New England’s holdings, the core of which is our thirty-six historic properties. Preserving them, and ensuring that they and their contents will survive for posterity, is central to our mission. We are now in the midst of a multi-year effort to raise matching funds for a $3 million challenge grant for the Preservation Maintenance Fund to support crucial work on roofs, drainage, systems, and landscapes. To secure this critical fund-ing, we are required to raise $1.2 million in matching funds in 2011. I hope you will help us continue this vital task by contributing to the fund, knowing that every dollar you give will be matched one-to-one.

—Bill Hicks

100 yEArs, 100 CommuNitiEs 1Days at Sea

pErspECtivE 2Lost, Found, and Home Again

LookiNG bACk 4The World According to Charlotte

mAkiNG FuN oF history 8Indoor Heating

prEsErvAtioN 10Keeping the Water Out

CoLLECtioNs 12The Launching of a Ship—and a Career

musEum shop 21Getting Fresh with Color

oDDs AND ENDs 22Doorknobs and Letter Slots

LANDsCApE 30From Work Yard to Lawn

CoNsErvAtioN 32Yankee Technology Revealed

ACkNoWLEDGmENts 33Centennial Donors

ACquisitioNs 34Affordable High Fashion

White on White 16

Joseph Everett Chandler 24

HistoricNEW ENGLAND

Winter/Spring 2011Vol. 11, No. 3

Historic New England141 Cambridge StreetBoston MA 02114-2702617-227-3956

historic NEW ENGLAND magazine is a benefit of membership. To become a member, visit our website, HistoricNewEngland.org, or call 617-994-5910. Comments? Please call Nancy Curtis, editor. Historic New England is funded in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Executive Editor: Diane Viera Editor: Nancy Curtis Editorial review team: Nancy Carlisle, Curator; Lorna Condon, Curator of Library and Archives;Jennifer Pustz, Museum Historian; Sally Zimmerman, Manager of Historic Preservation Services Design: DeFrancis Carbone

coVEr steve rosenthal: oxford congregational church, oxford, Maine, 1843. Photographed 2001.

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

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1Winter/Spring 2011 Historic New England

1 0 0 y E A r s , 1 0 0 C o m m u N i t i E s

s part of its 100 Years, 100 Communities initiative, Historic New England has collected oral histories from independent fishermen based in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and commissioned photo-graphs of the men and their work. In vivid words and images, the

project captures the men’s love of the sea, their pride in self-sufficiency, and their anxieties about the future.

Ray Levesque was twelve years old when he began lobster fishing. Describing how he started out to help his mother support his brothers and sisters and ended up spending nearly a lifetime on the water, he says, “I grew up on the water. I was always on the water and I never wanted to leave.” Now though, he stays on land and spends his days painting scenes from the ocean and boatyard. Since retiring from fishing, he has painted dozens of canvases, many in the wooden kitchenette he salvaged from his last boat.

Michael Pawluk began fishing to put himself through college at the University of New Hampshire. A bachelor of arts degree and fifteen years later, he still fishes, working on an off-shore boat and running a small lobster business. “I love what I do, and I’ll do it for as long as I can. We’ll see what happens, but I definitely plan to stay on the water,” says Pawluk.

Jay Driscoll represents the third generation of a family of boat builders and fish-ermen, but he does not want to see his kids enter the industry. “It’s too bad, because they see that I love my work, how satisfying it is. But no way do I want it for them,” he states. He believes that federal regulations intended to give the declining fishing stocks time to rebuild will make it impossible for independent fishermen to earn a living. “There will be no one left in this fishery. There are no young owners anymore, I think I’m the youngest one and I’m turning forty.”

The oral histories and photographs, which document an industry under stress, are archived in Historic New England’s Library and Archives and the Portsmouth Athenaeum in Portsmouth.

—Elizabeth FarishFormer Regional Site Manager, Maine and New Hampshire

Days at sea

100 Years, 100 Communities is a multi-year collaborative heritage preservation initia-tive. To hear the fishermen’s stories and for additional information, visit the 100 Years, 100 Communities section of our website, HistoricNewEngland.org.

A

AbovE portraits of portsmouth fishermen

by Jeremy heflin, from left to right: ray

Levesque, Jay Driscoll, and michael pawluk.

2 Historic New England Winter/Spring 2011

etween 1934 and 1937, when my father and mother were living in England as exiles from Nazi Germany, they got to know the English sculptor Henry Moore. They visited him in Hampstead, London, where there

was a small colony of avant-garde artists, and they admired his work. Some years later, in 1946, after my parents had settled in the U.S., and my father had become chairman of the Department of Architecture at Harvard, Moore visited them in their home in Lincoln, Massachusetts. It was a happy reunion in our little white house. Moore had brought a present—a special casting in bronze of a small reclining figure. Moore was a charming soft-spoken little man, whose spirit was already appreciated in the house. A large drawing from his wartime London Underground series hung in my parents’ bedroom. The new little statue took its place on a living room shelf above my father’s couch, where, together with a few other objets d’art, it continued to delight the eye for the next thirty-seven years.

p E r s p E C t i v E

BLost, Found, and Home

Again

this pAGE henry moore (1898–1986): Reclining Figure,

1945. FACiNG pAGE ise Gropius, her niece, Eviline, and

Walter Gropius in the Gropiuses’ living room in Lincoln,

massachusetts, 1958. the moore statue is visible on the

shelf behind them.

And

rew

Dav

is


In 1983, after my parents died, I took the little Moore, which my mother had given to my daughter and me, to live with us in our country house in rural New York. Its place of honor was again on a shelf above the living room couch. It was very dear to us, but over the next decades, its appearance had so blended in with the accompanying little art pieces that it no longer startled the eye. Indeed, it seemed to us an odd question when one day in 1992 a friend of ours asked, “Whatever hap-pened to your Henry Moore?”

What indeed! As soon as we looked on the shelf we noticed its absence! It was a terrible and un-understandable moment! There was absolutely no rea-son for the little bronze to have disap-peared! None of our friends, a small, intimate group, would have borrowed or taken it. No strangers came to our hidden-away, small house, located in woods and old pastures, far from any public road. No service people would have known about the value and sig-nificance of this piece amongst so much

bric-a-brac. We were totally stumped.Police, detectives, Interpol, and

all our friends were consulted to no avail. No theory appeared that could adequately set our minds at rest. We grieved and grieved. And the years went by.

One September day in 2008, as the orange leaves on our maple trees came tumbling down, I glanced at the stepping stones leading up to our little rock garden and said, “What’s that funny little dark thing near the top?” “Henry” had reappeared!

Found the day before beneath a briar bush by our garden handyman, the little statue had been nesting out of sight for many years. The gardener had been removing the bush when he found a dirt-covered, lumpy, and heavy object among the roots. He almost threw it out with the briars but instead left it on the stepping stone nearby. How had “Henry” come to be there? Perhaps whoever took the figure had had second thoughts and tossed it into the briar patch as he left, after

which it was gradually overgrown. We will never know, but though out of sight, “Henry” was never out of our minds. We welcomed him back with greatest joy.

I am happy that today he is safely back in his first American home—on the shelf at my parents’ house in Lincoln. His wanderings are over.

—Ati Gropius JohansenMs. Johansen, an artist and teacher, is the daughter of Walter and Ise Gropius.

The Gropiuses’ family home in Lincoln, Massachusetts, owned and operated by Historic New England, is open year round. Please visit HistoricNewEngland.org for details.

Historic New England would like to acknowl-edge our generous donors, including the Henry Moore Foundation, for their support of the permanent acquisition of the sculpture.


L o o k i N G b A C k

and attended a function with Boston’s Mayor Curley. She did charity work like her mother, sewing sachets and par-ticipating in a pageant to benefit worthy causes. Her great friend was the chauffeur, Frank Rooney, who drove her everywhere.

Later she went away to school at St. Timothy’s in Maryland, and then to Miss Schoff’s, a finishing school on rue Pierre Demours in Paris. At one point, she performed acrobatic dances at Boston’s Vincent Club, which supported programs at the Vincent Memorial Hospital, and attracted the attention of an impresario of the Ziegfeld Follies; her father firmly vetoed a job offer. In 1931, she was presented to the Court of St. James. One year later, she married Benjamin Clark, an investment banker from New York, and went on to raise four children. The comic sensibility revealed in the diary stayed with her throughout her long life, and family and friends relished her amused and irreverent remarks about the world around her.

—E. Richard McKinstryLibrary Director and Andrew W. Mellon Senior Librarian Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library

harlotte Condit Lyman was born in 1911. She was brought up with her two brothers and sister in the sheltered world of a traditional well-to-do family. They lived at 39 Beacon Street, Boston,

and Charlotte attended the Winsor School on the Fenway. Fortunately for us, Charlotte kept a journal (now a

promised gift to Historic New England) when she was thir-teen, in which she wrote about her days and drew humorous pictures. Just like any young teenager, she was blunt (her music teacher’s father was “crazy”); adored her dog, Rags (whom she called Doggum); did unexpected things, such as building a small boat; fussed over school assignments; and had fun with her friends as they played mahjong and charades, watched movies, and skated. She thought enough about the joys of chewing gum to mention she had bought some, and six months later she went to see a grown-up movie, Ponjola, starring silent screen star Anna Nilsson.

Charlotte described in her diary things that were com-monplace to her, though they would have

been extraordinary to other girls. She summered away from the city, com-

mented about the racing pigeons her father raised, had private tutors,

c

The world according to


FACiNG pAGE charlotte Lyman with her brother John and fox terrier, Doggum, c. 1923. she had two much older siblings but was especially fond of John, not only because he was close in age but because of his affectionate nature. this pAGE charlotte had a cartoonist’s gift for telling detail—the sash and ruffles on her party dress, the awkward stance of children learning to dance, and the large flakes of a heavy snowfall.


on June 16, charlotte described a fete for which the Lymans opened their house to the public to raise money for charity. she noted with disapproval that their cous-in Amy Lowell insisted on being paid for reading some of her poems for the event.

At this phase of her life, charlotte was a tomboy. she loved being outdoors, skating, sledding, riding, and boat-ing but had absolutely no interest in team sports. this high energy continued into adulthood—a keen gardener, she enjoyed the heavy work of clearing and digging as much as she loved planting flowers..

in the drawing above, charlotte is getting a new piano piece from her teacher, Miss ingraham, who came to the house to give lessonsas early as seven a.m.


charlotte enjoyed building things at her workbench, like the destroyer (August 18). she particularly loved cars and fast driving, recording on May 28 her annoyance at being driven at slow speed. During World War ii, she drove in New York city for the red cross Motor corps.

All her life she was passionate about animals. After she had children, the family home was populated with all sorts of cats, dogs, goats, rabbits, a cow, and a shetland pony who would occasionally come into the living room. Most important of all was Wally, an African green parrot that she had had since she was eleven years old.

m A k i N G F u N o F h i s t o r y

Before modern methods made it easy to heat a house, people burned wood or coal to keep warm. In cold weather, the fireplace was the focal point of the home. Over the years, people added newer forms of heating—cast-iron coal stoves, furnaces, radiators, metal pipes, and heat vents in the floor. What kind of heat does your home have?

1600sLarge open fireplaces are used for heat and cooking.

1796 Count Rumford designs a more efficient fireplace.

1820Cast-iron stoves begin to replace fireplaces in homes.

Indoor HeatingIndoor HeatingCookstove, nine-teenth century

Parlor stove, 1874

Boiler, 1931

what is what is it?it?Fires need oxygen from the air in order

to burn. Bellows blow air into a fire to make it burn hotter. This particu-

larly fancy bellows has painted flowers and leaves.

—Kathleen SimoneFormer Education Program Coordinator



Fireplaces provide heat and look nice, but a lot of the heat goes up the chimney instead of warming the room. Here are all sorts of additional ways to keep warm.

Foot warmers are small portable stoves. This one has a metal box inside to hold hot coals from the fireplace. People used foot warmers at home and also put them in their carriages and took them to church.

Bed warmers were used to warm cold beds. People put hot coals into the metal pan and then swept it back and forth between the sheets before getting into bed.

do you know

In wealthier houses, fireplaces were often surrounded with decorative tiles. Here’s how to make a tile at home. You’ll need a plain ceramic tile from a craft store, acrylic paints, a brush and a small sponge, and clear acrylic varnish.

1. With a damp sponge or paper towel, wipe the tileclean and let it dry.

2. If you want a textured effect in the background, like the sky in this tile, paint that first, using the small sponge dipped in a little paint. Let that dry, then paint your design over it.

3. After the tile is completely dry, apply acrylicvarnish with a brush to protect your design.

1855–57In Russia, Franz San Galli invents the radiator.

1895 In Iowa, Dave Lennox starts producing riveted-steel furnaces.

1935 The Lennox Company manufactures forced-hot air home furnaces.

udecorative tilesdecorative tilesdecorative tiles

Radiator,

1931

Wall register


p r E s E r v A t i o N

pril showers bring May flowers—but they can also bring leaks, flooding and mold. On the positive side,

spring rain storms offer excellent opportunities to analyze weak points in roof, gutter, and drainage systems. Roofs and gutters tend to get the most attention because leaks are visible and can cause immediate damage to build-ings and their contents. Water at ground level, however, can ultimately be more harmful to a building and the people and objects inside.

Over the past two years, as prop-erty care staff performed conditions assessments at our historic properties for the Preservation Maintenance Fund program, they encountered water in a number of undesirable locations. After rainstorms, water was pooling

around foundations and in basements at several sites. Once the surrounding ground had become saturated, water had seeped into basements through the walls and dirt floors. Water in pro-longed contact with wood leads to rot, and high humidity will cause mold and rot and will rust items made of metal. Moisture in the basement ultimately travels to the upper floors, with the potential for damage to the museum collections.

There are many different tech-niques for moving water away from buildings. The roof and siding, paired with gutters and downspouts, will shed water off the structure, but that is only half the battle—water needs to be directed away from the founda-tion. Run-outs or underground drains help lead water away from the gutter

and downspout system. The grade, or slope, of the soil needs to slant downhill, away from the building. Dry wells and other drainage receptacles may be installed to provide places for water to gather and slowly be redis-tributed. Drainage trenches, or French drains, that line the foundation can be installed to transfer water farther below grade or to a dry-well system.

All drainage systems require main-tenance. Gutters and downspouts may need several cleanings a year. As silt filters into below-grade drainage lines or dry wells, it must be removed, but because maintenance cycles for buried features are less frequent, only good record-keeping can ensure that clean-ings are not forgotten. In addition, drainage lines, which can be broken by large vehicles or pierced by tree roots, need ongoing monitoring.

Keeping the Water out

A


Last winter, rain saturated the entire region and raised the water table at many sites, perfectly illustrat-ing flaws in the drainage systems at several of our properties. Fortunately, we had already engaged a civil engi-neer to review the systems at twelve of our sites, and he went right to work, getting a clear look at the problems. In most cases, a simple series of steps was all that was needed to resolve the issues. We identified and located lost drainage lines, cleaned out silt and debris so old systems could function once more, regraded soil around foun-dations, and generally ensured that the systems we have are operating properly. In some instances, the prob-lems were more complex and required thoughtful planning to ensure that the solution will protect the integrity of the historic landscape as well as the structure.

While regular maintenance and vigilance about water penetration are necessarily an ongoing process at any property, the Preservation Maintenance Fund has allowed us not only to find

strategies for each site but also to address drainage issues across the board and develop management sys-tems with widespread applications.

—Ben HaavikTeam Leader, Property Care

tips from the property Care teamAs part of our efforts to document projects and learn from them, we have drafted a series of white papers on site drainage, avail-able at HistoricNewEngland.org. Many of the steps are commonsense activities that any homeowner or steward of historic properties can follow: • Familiarize yourself with the different components of drainage at your property—the gutters, the soil around your founda-tion, and any underground drainage pipes or dry wells. • Watch what happens during a rainstorm, note where you have problems, and per-form maintenance and minor repairs. • If problems persist, call a certified engi-neer to analyze all the components at your site and create a site drainage plan.

FACiNG pAGE the flooded italian

Garden at the Codman Estate, Lincoln,

massachusetts, in 2005. recent drain-

age projects there have helped miti-

gate damage from flooding, although

they will never completely resolve the

problem because of the garden’s low

situation in the landscape. bELoW LEFt

in 2010, the basement of the Lyman

Estate in Waltham, massachusetts,

experienced unprecedented flood-

ing in the march rainstorms. riGht

staff explore the foundation drainage

system at the barrett house, New

ipswich, New hampshire.

Support the Preservation Maintenance Fund and property care projects such as these by mak-ing a donation at HistoricNewEngland.org and clicking on the blue Donate Now button.


C o L L E C t i o N s

n October 1, 1814, during the War of 1812, sixteen-year-old John Samuel Blunt witnessed an inspiring event in the harbor of Portsmouth, New Hampshire—the launching of a ship of

the line. The seventy-four-gun warship USS Washington, only the second ship of the line built by the United States Navy, was the first to be constructed in Portsmouth. At pre-cisely 12:30 p.m., the ship started from the stocks and glided into the Piscataqua River. Despite a blockade by British war-ships outside the harbor, the launching caused widespread jubilation. As the ship slid down the ways, she was greeted with a thirteen-gun federal salute from the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard—one gun for every original state in the Union—answered by cannon fire from Fort Constitution and two privateers, Harpy and America, lying at anchor.

In the midst of the celebration there must also have been an undercurrent of fear. Were the British already mak-ing their way up the river to burn the American ships? Or,

o

The Launching of a Ship–and a Career

were they waiting to attack when the vessels tried to leave the harbor? John Samuel Blunt, known as Sam, knew first-hand what it meant to be at war—the economic hardships, the food shortages, as well as the personal risk. Born in Portsmouth in 1798, this teenager would have been only too cognizant of the danger. His father, Mark Samuel Blunt, like many other local mariners, provided critical support to the United States Navy by serving on a privateer—an armed private ship commissioned to cruise against enemy warships. If captured, he could be arrested by the Royal Navy and imprisoned.

More than just a bystander at the launching, young Sam was also an active participant in the war effort, thanks to his skill with a pen and brush. He had been commissioned to create a signal sheet showing the signals to be used from the hill in Kittery, Maine, across the river, and from the shipyard, by day or by night, in case of enemy approach. The sheet, titled “Signals to be made from hill in Kittery,”


facing page attributed to John Samuel Blunt (1798–1835):

Launching of the Ship of the Line Washington, c. 1815. thiS page

John Samuel Blunt: Signals to be made from hill in Kittery, signed

lower right “John Blunt 1814.” courtesy of the Mariners’ Museum,

newport news, Virginia.


is signed and dated in the artist’s distinctive script, “John Blunt 1814.” It demonstrates the young artist’s mastery of watercolor and confirms his direct involvement in matters of security at the shipyard. He knew the threat of a British attack was real.

Sam’s involvement with the war may have launched his career as an artist. In January 1815, shortly after the launch-ing of USS Washington, his father perished at sea off the coast of Portugal, obliging Sam to earn a living to support his mother and two younger brothers, one of whom was just an infant. Like most of the population of Portsmouth, he had certainly been following the wartime activity in the harbor

and may also have been recording what he saw in a sketch-book. It would have been natural for him to use his talent to embark on an artistic career and proclaim his skill with a large painting of such a momentous event.

The Launching of the Ship of the Line Washington was probably painted in 1815. Ambitious in size as well as sub-ject, it shows the young artist keenly observant of maritime detail, even though still learning to master perspective. In a recently discovered sketchbook by Blunt, dated 1821, there appears another drawing of the same ship house, now extended by twelve feet to accommodate the construction of a second ship, USS Alabama, launched in 1819. The depic-


tion of the building is so similar to the one in the oil paint-ing that it had to have been done by the same hand. The signal sheet explains why Blunt would have been present at the launch and why he chose to depict it from across the Piscataqua River. That standpoint offered an ideal position to watch for signals warning of enemy advance as well as to sketch the actual launching.

When Bertram K. and Nina Fletcher Little acquired the painting for their summer home, it was cited as a work by an unknown artist. Mrs. Little, widely respected as an assiduous researcher and discriminating connoisseur, was the first to assign the work to Blunt, in a 1964 article on New Hampshire painters in The Magazine Antiques. The ship house drawing in the artist’s 1821 sketchbook now confirms her attribution beyond doubt.

By 1816, Blunt had relocated to Boston and was serving as an apprentice in the workshop of the decorative painter, illustrator, and portraitist John Ritto Penniman, which pro-vided ornamental work for clockmakers, furniture makers, carriage makers, and local printers. For those with limited finances, apprenticeship was the best way to acquire instruc-tion in the arts and acquire marketable skills.

Upon completing his apprenticeship in 1819 at the age of twenty-one, Blunt and a colleague, William P. Codman, traveled by boat up the Merrimack River. Blunt’s diary of the trip records their artistic efforts, with Blunt producing landscapes and house portraits, while Codman mainly did portraiture. During the trip, Blunt painted a Seal of New Hampshire for display in the new State House in Concord.

By 1821, Blunt was back in Portsmouth, advertising his services in “portrait, ornamental, sign and glass painting, enamelling on glass, gilding, & c. & c.” That fall, he mar-ried Esther Peake Colby, daughter of Joseph Colby, a Boston carpenter and housewright. Shortly thereafter, the first of their five children was born, and Blunt was earning sufficient income to purchase property in his hometown.

Although it is clear from his two known sketchbooks that Blunt preferred to focus on nature as subject matter, his account books indicate that the bulk of his practice was in decorative painting—signs, fire buckets, Masonic aprons, military standards, and decorative finishes on furniture—the mainstay for most artists at the time. Even Alvan Fisher, another Penniman apprentice and one of the leading pro-ponents of landscape painting in New England, struggled to make a living in that genre. Of the few commissioned canvases Blunt was known to have executed, most were ship portraits—not surprising considering that the local economy centered on marine trade. Ship portraits documented the fea-tures of a ship and assisted owners and insurance companies with claims and possible recovery.

Despite the mundane nature of his practice, Blunt never abandoned marine and landscape subjects. During the 1820s,

he began to paint imaginary landscapes and seascapes clearly designed to appeal to a broader public. Perhaps inspired by prints of paintings by such masters as Claude-Joseph Vernet, his work from this time acquired an almost theatrical qual-ity—scenes of stormy seas, sublime rock formations, lumi-nous skies, abandoned forts and lighthouses populated with humans in varying degrees of distress. More than thirty of these fanciful canvases are known. Some were undoubtedly shown at his studio, where he charged a dollar for admission. It was perhaps on one of these occasions that James Rundlet, a Portsmouth–based textile manufacturer and importer, pur-chased Blunt’s painting of an imaginary scene. Signed and dated 1824, the painting still hangs in the Rundlet family home in Portsmouth, now a Historic New England property. It features a ship anchored in a safe harbor under a won-drously luminescent sky. On gloomy nights, this charming work undoubtedly brought great comfort to Rundlet as he waited for his own shipments to arrive from overseas. The artist who showed such early promise had clearly learned his lessons well.

—Deborah M. Child

Ms. Child, an independent art historian and museum con-sultant, is the author of The Sketchbooks of John Samuel Blunt and project curator of the Portsmouth Athenaeum’s Catalogue Raisonné for John Samuel Blunt (1798–1835).

FACiNG pAGE John samuel blunt, imaginary scene, 1824.



p o r t F o L i o

first met Steve Rosenthal in 1965, when we were class-mates in architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Both of us were fascinated by photography, just a hobby for me but something much more serious

for him. Steve did very well in school and was hired as an architect by a prominent Cambridge firm. But over the next few years, his interest in photography kept nagging at him. He began freelancing as an architectural photographer and eventually went into that field full time. Over the years, he established himself as the unrivaled dean of commercial architectural photographers in New England and one of the leaders in the nation.

I think this deep background in architecture is a key to understanding Steve’s work in his book, White on White. What makes photography interesting is that every good pho-tographer sees and presents a different world. Steve’s DNA as a photographer was an understanding of architectural space. Where another photographer might be more interested in effects of light, let’s say, or in abstract patterns, Steve always seemed best at capturing the three-dimensional quality of a space. You always felt you could inhabit his photographs.

During all those years as a professional photographer, we now know, Steve was pursuing an almost secret hobby. He was quietly photographing historic white Protestant churches in New England. Steve doesn’t know, or at least can’t say, what drove him to this pursuit. Perhaps he needed to connect with the old because his daily work immersed him in the new. Perhaps he needed to return from the world of color to the purer art form that is black-and-white photography.

In these photos, Steve is certainly a master of what I just called effects of light and abstract patterns. But he rarely fails to place his image in a suggestion of architectural space. And because there are no human figures, the windows, the head-stones, and the facades of these churches become, like mimes in white, silent actors in Steve’s unique artistic achievement.

—Robert CampbellMr. Campbell is a Cambridge architect and the Pulitzer Prize winning architecture critic for the Boston Globe.

iWhite on WhitePortraits of New England churches by Steve Rosenthal

LEFt york street baptist Church, york village, maine, 1891. Photographed 1971.



FACiNG pAGE Washington Congregational Church, 1840, schoolhouse, 1843, and town hall, 1787, Washington, New hampshire. Photographed 2002.

this pAGE, AbovE old First Church, old bennington, vermont, 1805. Photographed 2005.

riGht First Congregational Church of hamilton, hamilton, massachusetts, 1843. Photographed 2008.


AbovE union Church, south Effingham, New hampshire, 1891. Photographed 2003.

Mr. Rosenthal has made a promised gift of his entire photographic archive to Historic New England. The images in this article are drawn from his recent book, White on White: Churches of Rural New England, published by the Monacelli Press. An exhibition by the same name, containing forty framed original photographs, will be on view from April 4 to June 5, 2011, at the Dillon Art Center, Groton

School, Groton, Massachusetts; from June 30, through September 23, 2012, at the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut; and from October 6, 2012, through January 27, 2013, at the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut. Please visit HistoricNewEngland.org for information on additional venues or to book the exhibition. To order the book, visit the website or call 617-994-5925.


Getting Fresh with Color

righten your life with his-toric color! One example of a fresh spring palette is this array of paints and deco-

rative items in marine hues. Historic New England licensees examine our collections and work with our curators to create reproductions of wallpapers, textiles, and paint colors based on originals in our collection.

B

mu

sE

um

sh

op

Take inspiration from historic paint charts, available from our muse-um shop at 617-994-5925, find objects and information on our licensees’ web-sites, and create historic character in a palette of your choice.

—Carol BruceRetail Operations Manager

visit the licensees’ websites:

southwoodfurn.com (chair);

brunschwig.com (fabric);

christophernormancollection.com

(wallpaper); n1studios.com (plate);

californiapaints.com (paints).

Green Glass Jukebox Earthday


Doorknobs and Letter Slots

o D D s A N D E N D s

hen the architec-tural story of a his-toric house is told, it nearly always

focuses on those features that com-mand our attention—the pedimented portico, the graceful staircase, the carved overmantel. It’s easy to disre-gard the small details in a house and the simple stories that can be gleaned from things as seemingly insignificant as a piece of hardware. Recently, a Historic Homeowner member asked if the mercury glass doorknobs and brass letter slot on the double doors of her 1870 Brookline, Massachusetts, man-sard house were both original.

While it was immediately clear that the mercury, more properly called

silvered, glass knobs were part of the original door hardware and that the letter slot was not, both items provided a window into past lifestyles. Tellingly, no letter slots or anything having to do with mail delivery appeared in an 1855 advertisement for “House Trimmings” that listed four types of doorknobs, including “Glass Silvered, Octagon and Plain” and plenty of other architectural hardware such as bell pulls, shutter knobs, sash fasteners, and sliding door “sheaves and ways.”

The Brookline doorknobs might have been locally produced, as patents for silvered glass items were held by two Boston manufacturers. In 1855, William Leighton, superintendent of the New England Glass Company in

Cambridge, Massachusetts, now noted for its highly-collectible pressed and etched glass, received a patent (#12265) for “a cheap [hollow-glass] door-knob…having the color and brilliancy of polished silver rendered durable and free from…tarnishing.” Alternatively, the doorknob may have been made by the Boston Silver-Glass Company, also in Cambridge, operated by Alonzo E. Young. An 1868 history of American manufactures noted that “the manu-facture of silvered glass is extensively carried on by [Mr.] Young and from its showy and effective appearance is in great demand.” Young operated the Boston Silver-Glass Company as early as 1857 and held a patent (#90040,

W

1865) on silvered-glass “bottle hold-ers” (wine coasters).

Unlike the now rare silvered-glass doorknobs, which today are collec-tor’s items, the mundane letter slot provided insight into something that still carries over into modern life, mail delivery. Home mail delivery was an important new service in 1870, when the Brookline house was built. Free city delivery was established by Congressional act in 1863 to forty-nine large cities whose post office revenues were sufficient to pay mail carriers to deliver mail to individual homes. Before 1863, postage covered only the cost of delivery between post offices, and the recipient either collected the mail personally or paid a private car-rier to deliver it.

In a time when city households typically were occupied during the day, delivering the mail meant the letter carrier waited for the door to be answered before handing over the mail directly, person-to-person. Undelivered mail went back with him until someone became available to receive it. Estimates on the time let-ter carriers wasted waiting for doors to be answered ranged to upwards of an hour and a half a day. The letter slot allowed mail to be delivered into the home without delaying the carrier. Household mail boxes served the same purpose but with less assurance that mail would not be stolen or damaged by weather.

By 1912, all new customers were required to supply a letter slot or mail box for home delivery, and in 1923, the Postmaster General mandated that every customer provide a letter slot or box in order to receive mail. Implementation of the free city delivery system had required a series of unantic-ipated adaptations in community life, including the provision of street names, numbered addresses, sidewalks, cross-walks, and street lighting. The humble letter slot was one of these far-reaching adaptations. Gradually finding its way

into hardware catalogues over a sixty-year period, the letter slot is a little piece of history on your doorstep.

—Sally ZimmermanManager of Historic Preservation Services

the contemporary name for silvered glass, mercury glass, incorrectly sug-gests that these shiny decorative objects, which included doorknobs, vases, candlesticks, curtain pins, and other ornamental accoutrements, were made using mercury. in fact, the shini-ness of these ornaments derived from a technique innovated by Bohemian (czech) glass blowers in the 1840s of creating double-walled blown and molded glass objects that were coated on the interior with silver nitrate in a liquid solution and then sealed. William Leighton’s patent of 1855 noted that it was the sealing off of the interior silvered surfaces that rendered “the color and brilliancy of polished silver” durable “from the action of chemical or mechanical agents.”

FACiNG pAGE A sturdy brass letter slot,

in the back door of a mansion in

Jamaica plain, boston, was added after

the construction of the c. 1875 house.

its placement suggests the letter car-

rier was intended to avoid the grand

front entrance. this pAGE the silvered-

glass doorknob on an 1870 mansard

house in brookline, massachusetts, is

original to the paneled mahogany

double entrance doors. other silvered-

glass knobs have been preserved

throughout the interior.

the historic homeowner staff takes all your old house questions seriously, from

paint color to pilasters, hardware to hearthstones. if you are looking for help

deciphering the nuts and bolts of your old house, you may want to consider

upgrading to historic homeowner membership. have a smaller question? For

a nominal fee, historic New England general members can access technical

assistance on old houses through the old house maintenance Advisor. For

information, call 617-994-6645.

Architect and Preservationist


in Boston: “[Chandler] went sleuthing among rafters, walls, plastering and floor sills. [He]… knew the type characteris-tics of the seventeenth century house in New England. The job became one of inference. From a lower sill, shaped by the opening and shutting of a frame-work, it was clear that the original windows had been casements, swinging outward…The detection of these details was due to the painstaking inspection of every foot of wall in the old building as it was opened by Mr. Joseph Everett Chandler, the architect in charge.”

career of an important leader of the Colonial Revival. Previously known only for his restorations of such landmarks as the House of the Seven Gables in Salem, Massachusetts, Joseph Everett Chandler (1863–1945) is now credited with more than five hundred commissions. Chandler helped build the historic preservation movement in New England and was a mentor and friend to William Sumner Appleton, the founder of Historic New England. In addition, his wide-ranging career included four other chapters, as pioneering architectural historian, accomplished architect of new build-ings, restorer of hundreds of colonial houses, and innovative museum designer.

Surveying preservation in New England in 1913, the Boston Evening Transcript singled out Chandler for praise. Declaring him “an Architectural Sherlock Holmes,” it described Chandler’s investigation of the Paul Revere House

shoe box full of diaries purchased

by Historic New England has

resurrected the nearly forgotten

FACiNG pAGE Chandler’s 1886 diary (upper right), as well as

blueprints and correspondence for the Edward osgood house

(1925–1931) in Wenham, massachusetts, are now in the historic

New England Archives. other massachusetts commissions shown:

quincy homestead restoration in quincy, Adams Library in

kingston, Aptucxet trading post recreation in bourne, and brick

business blocks in plymouth. AbovE LEFt Joseph Everett Chandler,

photograph by Alfred W. Cutting. AbovE riGht Chandler restored

the isaac royall house in medford, massachusetts, in 1913.

A


Chandler used his investigative skills to reveal the secrets of many other landmarks, including, in Massachusetts, the Old State House in Boston, the Hooper-Lee-Nichols House in Cambridge, the Rebecca Nurse House in Danvers, the Isaac Royall House in Medford, the Antiquarian and Harlow houses in Plymouth, the Quincy Homestead in Quincy, the Hooper-Hathaway and Retire Becket houses in Salem, and in Connecticut, the Nathan Hale Homestead in Coventry. He restored at least three dozen colonial buildings that are today museums—across New England and as far away as Virginia. Regrettably, after his death, his drawings and papers were destroyed, and his reputation slipped into obscurity.

Rediscovering the outlines of Chandler’s career became possible only recently, through his diaries. The diaries, each slightly larger than a deck of cards, record much of his life from schoolboy to celebrated architect. The son of a butcher in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Chandler traced his lineage back to several Mayflower passengers, including Governor William Bradford. He grew up in a c. 1719 house set in an even older garden, which led—in a series of terraces called “dykes”—from Plymouth’s main street up to the Burial Hill of the Pilgrims. In his 1881 diary, he wrote of driving carriages of

wealthy tourists on sightseeing rides past Plymouth Rock and old Plymouth houses.

Chandler enrolled in architecture classes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then located near Copley Square in Boston; his 1886 diary captures the energy of a city transformed by the new Back Bay neighborhood and the genius of architect H. H. Richardson. He hiked through Hingham, Massachusetts, sketching colonial houses, and won an internship with McKim, Mead and White in New York. After M.I.T., Chandler journeyed west to Chicago, working for William Pretyman—an artist who designed Aesthetic interiors for Gilded Age Chicagoans—and archi-tects Burnham and Root in their offices atop the Rookery Building. Returning to Boston in 1890, he was the lead architect at the firm of Rotch and Tilden for a high school for Plymouth (today the town offices), modeled after the court- house at Williamsburg, Virginia.

Chandler wrote essays and two important early books on American architecture. The Colonial Architecture of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, 1892, is a portfolio of photographs of iconic buildings of the mid-Atlantic states. Produced initially for architects, it found a broader audience. Chandler directed his best-known book, The Colonial House,

LEFt William sumner Appleton sent these Chandler sketches to

the newspapers to build interest in the restoration of the paul

revere house in 1907–08.

riGht Wallace Nutting posed this photograph at the hearth of the

Cooper-Frost-Austin house in Cambridge, restored by Chandler

for historic New England in 1912.


1916, to people restoring old houses or building new Colonial Revival houses. However, Chandler’s detailed examination of colonial houses inspired others to study American archi-tectural history.

Another chapter of Chandler’s career includes dozens of new buildings that he designed, primarily Colonial Revival but also Arts and Crafts in style. He served a brief stint as a partner in Cole and Chandler, a prolific firm in New London, Connecticut. His first solo commissions were seaside cottages in Plymouth for clients who wanted new houses with careful colonial detailing. Chandler designed the Plymouth boyhood home of Henry-Russell Hitchcock, the architectural historian and champion of Modernism. Hitchcock observed that while Chandler’s “Neo-Colonial” design included fireplace man-tels copied from Samuel McIntire, “the plan has…as much spatial flow as [Frank Lloyd] Wright’s earliest houses of the same years; and like them it is in the continuing tradition of the Shingle Style.” Most of Chandler’s houses were small in scale, with a practical plan and fine details, and have survived with few changes.

Other commissions were for large summer estates, such as those for Charles Sumner Pierce at Islesboro, Maine, or A. Piatt Andrew on Eastern Point in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

Chandler, Andrew, and Andrew’s close friend Henry Davis Sleeper were part of the Boston Bohemian circle who built or redesigned creative summer houses, exemplified by Sleeper’s Beauport, now a Historic New England property. Chandler traveled widely, with commissions outside New England, including a grand house in Louisville, Kentucky.

Chandler also designed brick commercial blocks in Plymouth, an art gallery in Brookline, Massachusetts, a town hall in Westminster, Vermont, and libraries in the Massachusetts towns of Duxbury, Kingston, and Sandwich. For Dartmouth College, Chandler designed fraternity houses based on the homes of John Hancock and Isaac Royall.

In another chapter of his career, Chandler restored several hundred historic houses from Maine to North Carolina. On Boston’s Beacon Hill, he reworked sixteen houses on Chestnut Street alone, including the Harvard Musical Association and the oldest Swan rowhouse, the residence of Julia Ward Howe, author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” He converted the Swan stable on Mount Vernon Street into a honeymoon cottage for his friend Arthur Wellington.

Of the countless colonial farmhouses Chandler restored, the best preserved is the Stevens-Coolidge House in North Andover, Massachusetts. Working collaboratively with

LEFt Working with Caroline Emmerton, Chandler restored the

house of the seven Gables in salem, massachusetts, and created

its Colonial revival garden. photograph by Alfred W. Cutting.

riGht storrowton, in West springfield, massachusetts, is Chandler’s

largest creation, an open-air architectural museum village.


Chandler from 1914 to 1942, John Gardner and Helen (Stevens) Coolidge remade the farm and several neighboring houses into a Colonial Revival village. Today, The Trustees of Reservations maintains the house and its manicured gar-dens—the largest of Chandler’s many surviving landscapes.

The chapter on museum work begins with the period rooms Chandler designed for museums and historical societ-ies. At a time when many house museum interiors merely displayed historical relics, Chandler restored and furnished rooms as though their occupants had just gone out for a stroll. And, while other Boston architects were gutting his-toric buildings like Faneuil Hall to make them fireproof, Chandler took care to preserve a building’s historic fabric.

Chandler promoted the emerging museum study of American furniture and decorative arts. He collected furni-ture and restored private houses as showplaces for furniture aficionados, such as his friends in the Walpole Society, the collectors’ association founded in 1910. For Chauncey Nash, he moved two houses to Cohasset, Massachusetts, and recon-structed them. Chandler counseled Edwin Hipkiss, curator of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and he led the planners of the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on tours of New England. After the design for

the Met’s American Wing went to George F. Dow and other colleagues, Chandler lamented in his diary, “[Grosvenor] Atterbury was the architect and therefore Jack Tompkins was in it when curiously I had been in it at the start! Same old story when there is a big plum!”

Chandler’s largest museum project was Storrowton, an innovative open-air museum in West Springfield, Massachusetts, built between 1927 and 1930, at almost the same time as Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia and Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. For Storrowton, Chandler moved and restored a dozen old buildings—including an inn and barn from towns doomed to drown under the Quabbin Reservoir—and situated them around a village green. In 1934, he guided Albert Wells through Storrowton and drew up the initial plan for Old Sturbridge Village.

Storrowton was financed by Helen Osborne Storrow, who was also a patron of Walter Gropius. Chandler and Gropius met several times at parties hosted by Storrow. In October 1938, Chandler wrote, “Dr. Gropius (German architecture professor) and his wife [were] guests of honor. She is very delightful and vivacious: he is quite the reverse. Much talk about his ‘modernistic’ house near by in Lincoln.”

LEFt Chandler designed several grand country houses, such as

this shingled italian renaissance revival house (1901) for Charles

sumner pierce in islesboro, maine.

riGht the family of New hampshire Governor robert perkins bass

pose in front of their Chandler-designed house in peterborough,

New hampshire.


The Gropius House is now a Historic New England prop-erty, and Storrow and Chandler’s discussions recounted in the diaries throw new light on the rivalry between colonial and Modern.

The final chapter of Chandler’s career, his contribu-tion to historic preservation, centers on his friendship with William Sumner Appleton. In 1900, Chandler and Appleton measured the ruins of a lost Boston landmark, the c. 1679 Province House. Though that drawing subsequently disap-peared, the two men continued to work together for decades. Between 1905 and 1908, they collaborated on the Paul Revere House; Chandler oversaw its restoration and furnish-ing, while Appleton raised funds and managed publicity.

After founding Historic New England in 1910, Appleton often gathered the region’s leading practitioners of preserva-tion for collaboration and debate. In 1912, he hired Chandler to restore the Cooper-Frost-Austin House for Historic New England. Appleton brought together architect-educators Norman Isham and Frank Chouteau Brown, museum profes-sional George F. Dow, and entrepreneur Wallace Nutting. Friends and rivals, these contemporaries—born during or shortly after the Civil War—all wrote about and restored colonial houses. Chandler describes a meeting in 1922: “A red letter day for Old Houses. Took train with Sumner Appleton for Beverly, Mass., met by Francis Dow and his [carpenter] brother Eugene and after conferring about restoration of old Balch House then went on to [the Claflin-Richards House in] Wenham…a fine early house [that I] had formerly noticed. Then on to Andrews House, Topsfield—Mr. Dow is restor-

ing for a Mr. Proctor—then to Saugus to Boardman House.”By 1918, Appleton was still consulting Chandler and

Isham, but he personally took charge of Historic New England’s restoration of the Browne House in Watertown, Massachusetts. Appleton pursued a new museum approach of conservative restoration, while his architect friends were obligated to transform old houses into twentieth-century liv-ing spaces, and to do so under deadline, often for unreason-able clients.

Appleton recommended Chandler to potential clients. In 1913, he corresponded with New Hampshire Governor

Robert Perkins Bass, who sought an architect to produce a new house of the “very oldest type.” Appleton gave Bass a reading list, an itinerary of old houses to tour, and direc-tions on summer beams, chamfering, over-hangs, and casement windows. The house in Peterborough that Chandler designed for the Basses contains a dining room reminiscent of the one at the Paul Revere House with a stun-ning view of Mount Monadnock. Through Appleton, Chandler was hired in 1919 to restore the Sargent-Murray-Gilman House in

Gloucester, Massachusetts. Appleton and Chandler’s friendship strained under

disagreements, especially over Storrowton and the 1927-1930 recreation of the Aptucxet Trading Post in Bourne, Massachusetts. But they continued to work together; in 1934, Chandler drove Appleton to Plymouth for another investiga-tion, complaining in his diary, “Sumner finally stirred his stumps a half hour late and we got off.” In 1937, Appleton criticized Chandler’s documentation of work on the fireplace at the Warner House in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, but added a conciliatory note to his old friend:

“It is funny enough to laugh at, but tragic enough to cry about, the moral of which is, Joseph my friend, that you and I, at the cost of time, patience and perhaps of money, have always got to do a lot of dirty work that the local committee forgets about. Accordingly, in your next incarnation, be care-ful to avoid any leaning towards antiquarianism.”

After Chandler’s death, an ailing Appleton wrote several letters attempting to secure Chandler’s papers. By acquir-ing his diaries today, Historic New England has achieved Appleton’s goal of preserving some of Chandler’s records and restoring his legacy.

—Timothy T. OrwigMr. Orwig is an architectural historian who wrote his doctoral dissertation at Boston University on Joseph Everett Chandler.

AbovE For his estate, manalone, 1906–1942,

in sudbury, massachusetts, Chandler designed

an italian villa. riGht A marble lion that

Chandler bought on a European trip with

horace sears watches over manalone.


L A N D s C A p E

f you look through your pictures of your house, you’ll probably find several shots that show it at its best but none that show the trash stor-

age, compost bin, or tool shed. A hun-dred years ago, it was even less likely that the functional work areas around the house would be documented.

Recently, Historic New England hired me to research the landscape history of the 1821 Phillips House, in Salem, Massachusetts, to better understand how the property looked between 1911 and 1938, when the Phillips family lived there. I suspected the grounds had undergone significant alterations since that time but was not optimistic I’d be able to find much evidence. So, I was delighted when I viewed a home movie made in 1929 by twenty-two-year-old Stevie Phillips of one his family’s domestic staff in the Phillips House backyard. Quite

by accident, Stevie’s two-minute film captured exactly the kind of informa-tion about the landscape I needed for my survey.

In 1911, Anna Wheatland Phillips purchased the Federal-style house on historic Chestnut Street and commis-sioned architect W.G. Rantoul to reno-vate it in the Colonial Revival style. The restored mansion became the fam-ily home for Mr. and Mrs. Phillips and their son, Stevie. It has undergone few subsequent alterations, and Historic New England has chosen to interpret the property to its appearance between the two world wars. The landscape has not been as well preserved as the house; additions and removals created a mismatch between the interpretation of the landscape and that of the house.

Most of what we know about the landscape in the Phillips era is based on a 1911 survey, a handful of pho-

From Work Yard to Lawn

itographs, and Stevie’s home movie. The survey shows the footprints of the buildings on site—residence, carriage house, a whimsical summerhouse, a shed, and what appear to be a chicken coop and a rabbit hutch. Photographs show the street side of the house and a glimpse of the side garden and summer-house. The most revealing evidence—Stevie’s movie—shows the work yard behind the house. Shielded from the garden by a fence and the shed, this area was used for drying laundry, maintaining vehicles and equipment, deliveries of food and coal, and the comings and goings of the staff. The movie shows an asphalt pavement in front of the carriage house, complete with a puddle (which still forms there today), clotheslines, a wooden walk-way, and a shed full of miscellaneous stored items.

c. 1920 c. 2010


FACiNG pAGE site plans show changes in

landscape use that are evidence of dramatic

changes in technology and lifestyles over

ninety years. this pAGE, bELoW top A still

from stevie phillips’s movie of a member

of the domestic staff contains evidence of

a utilitarian work yard behind the house.

bELoW bottom An undated snapshot of the

rear garden shows a corner of the shed, the

garden house, and an animal house.

During the Phillips era, the prop-erty had three distinct outdoor spaces. The front and most public space still looks much as it did then, with a strip of lawn, two trees, the sidewalk, and an open fence—iron in front of the house and wooden to the east. The garden on the east side of the house extended north from the front fence to the summerhouse and shed at the rear. Today, this space is still a garden, but most of the defining early twentieth-century features—shed, summerhouse, animal enclosures, and fence—no longer remain. In addition, the property lines between the Phillips House and the abutting property at Number 30 Chestnut Street to the east, as well as the northern boundary, have been moved so the garden space is now smaller.

Today, the work yard is substan-tially different. The fence and shed are

gone. A mature beech tree, planted in the 1940s, stands where once the laundry was hung out to dry. A brick driveway and paths and a lawn, added in the 1970s, form a landscape treat-ment appropriate for the late twentieth century rather than the time when the Phillips family lived there.

Thanks to Stevie’s film, we have a good understanding of the work yard required for the proper functioning of a large household around 1919. Following the dramatic technological and social changes of the latter half of the century—in domestic service, heating, laundry, shopping, and car maintenance—large work yards like this one were no longer needed. Spaces once set aside for labor could be rede-signed and adapted for leisure and enjoyment.

—Tanya SeredinMs. Seredin is principal of the land-scape design firm of Mohr & Seredin, in Portland, Maine


amuel Gragg’s “elastic” chair is perhaps the first great tech-nological innovation made in American furniture. With

its sleek lines and utter simplicity, it could be mistaken at first glance for a product of twentieth-century Modern design. In fact, Gragg designed his chair at the turn of the nineteenth cen-tury, as a variant of the klismos chair (derived from chairs depicted on Greek vases) fashionable at the time. Gragg’s chair is uniquely individualistic and immediately recognizable. Its distinc-tive appearance is an early instance of the principle that form follows func-tion.

Samuel Gragg of Boston received a patent for the chair in 1808. His inven-tion used the inherent springiness of steam-bent wood to create a new form with resilience, lightness, and com-fort. To satisfy the popular taste for “fancy” (painted) chairs, Gragg usu-ally decorated the chairs with painted

leaves, peacock feathers, and trompe l’oeil reeding.

Relatively few Gragg chairs have survived, and Historic New England is fortunate to have three in its collection. We recently undertook to conserve one of them for the exhibition Sit Down! Chairs from Six Centuries at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine. When this chair came into our collection, the paint had already started to flake off. The flaking paint made cleaning difficult, so no one had yet tried to conserve the chair. The challenges facing the conservation team to prepare it for display were to secure flaking paint, remove grime, and repair losses to the painted designs.

We began by consolidating the flaking paint with a water-soluble synthetic adhesive. After the adhesive dried, we were able to clean the surfaces with a water-based cleaner without dislodging the paint and remove any dried adhesive that was still visible.

Next, we applied a coat of synthetic varnish to protect the paint and isolate it from the in-painting that would re-integrate the design. Using synthetic paints that are soluble in mild solvents, we in-painted only those places where the original paint was missing. The in-painting allowed the original design to re-emerge, so that the chair may once again be enjoyed as it was meant to appear, with only some signs of wear and tear to indicate that it is two hun-dred years old.

—John ChildsFormer Conservator

s

Yankee technology revealedLEFt bentwood chair by samuel Gragg, c. 1808, after

conservation. bELoW John Childs cleaning the chair.

C o N s E r v A t i o N


A C k N o W L E D G m E N t s

cENtENNiAL DoNorshhistoric New England would like to thank our generous istoric New England would like to thank our generous ccentennial donors and those who supported at the entennial donors and those who supported at the $1,500 level and above during Fiscal Year 2010 $1,500 level and above during Fiscal Year 2010 (April 1, 2009–March 31, 2010).(April 1, 2009–March 31, 2010).

Anonymous (8)Mr. and Mrs. Theodore AlfondMs. Deborah L. AllinsonMs. Louise T. AmblerMr. William F. Armitage and

Ms. Désirée CaldwellMr. and Mrs. George BallantyneMr. and Mrs. John D. BarnardThe Barra Foundation, Inc.Ms. Ann M. Beha and Mr. Robert A. RadloffMr. and Mrs. Alan BembenekDr. and Mrs. Ernst BerndtMr. Ronald BourgeaultMr. and Mrs. Edward P. BousaMr. and Mrs. Lewis P. CabotCambridge Trust CompanyMr. and Mrs. Geoffrey S. CarabooladThe Cathedral Church of St. John the DivineMr. and Mrs. Richard W. CheekSen. Martha Fuller Clark and

Dr. Geoffrey E. ClarkMr. Arthur D. Clarke and Ms. Susan P. SloanMrs. I. W. ColburnConnecticut Humanities CouncilMs. Julia D. CoxDr. Abbott Lowell CummingsCynthia Woods Mitchell Fund for

Historic InteriorsThe Davis Family FoundationMr. and Mrs. Nicholas B. DeaneDonations at the Historic New England

propertiesMr. and Mrs. Philip J. EdmundsonMs. Alan EmmetThe Family of John Hubbard Sturgis EatonFelicia FundFerguson Perforating & Wire CompanyMr. Howard FinkelsteinMr. Stan N. Finkelstein and

Ms. Jill A. BenedictMr. John H. Finley IVDr. and Mrs. Edwin G. FischerDr. and Mrs. Josef E. FischerDr. Christopher D. M. FletcherMrs. Pamela W. FoxMr. and Mrs. Charles M. Ganson, Jr.Mrs. Susan Zises GreenMr. and Mrs. Martin D. HaleMs. Martha D. HamiltonMr. and Mrs. Robert C. HanssHarold Whitworth Pierce Charitable Trust

Mr. and Mrs. William C.S. HicksMr. and Mrs. Charles H. HoodMr. and Mrs. Andrew HowardMr. and Mrs. James F. Hunnewell, Jr.Ida Ballou Littlefield Memorial TrustInstitute of Museum and Library ServicesThe Iris FoundationMr. and Mrs. C. Bruce JohnstoneMr. and Mrs. Joseph S. JunkinMr. and Mrs. John F. Keane, Sr.Mr. Leigh KenoMs. Anne F. KilgussMr. and Mrs. Gordon F. KingsleyMr. and Mrs. Stephen T. KunianMr. and Mrs. William R. LeitchMr. and Mrs. Newton H. LeveeMr. and Mrs. George LewisMr. and Mrs. Robin LincolnDr. Janina A. LongtineThe Lowell InstituteMr. and Mrs. Peter S. LynchMr. Michael Maglaras and

Ms. Terri TempletonMaine State ArchivesMassachusetts Cultural CouncilMassachusetts Historical CommissionMr. Paul F. McDonough and

Ms. Carla A. BlakleyMr. and Mrs. John B. McDowellMr. and Mrs. F. Warren McFarlanMr. and Mrs. Michael M. MoodyNew Hampshire Charitable FoundationThe Reverend Doctor Barbara H. NielsenMr. Carl R. Nold and

Ms. Vicky L. KruckebergThe Ogden Codman TrustDr. and Mrs. Robert OsteenMs. Sandra Ourusoff and

Mr. M. Holt MasseyMr. and Mrs. Robert I. OwensMrs. Stephen D. PaineMr. and Mrs. Randy ParkerMrs. James PearsonMr. and Mrs. Anthony D. PellMr. Robert A. Pemberton and

Ms. Barbara R. JordanMr. Samuel D. PerryMr. Samuel Plimpton and

Ms. Wendy ShattuckMs. Julie A. PorterPrince Charitable Trusts

Procter & GambleMr. and Mrs. George PutnamMs. Sally W. RandMr. Robert B. RettigMr. and Mrs. Kennedy P. RichardsonMr. and Mrs. Mark V. RickabaughMrs. Louise C. RiemerMr. Robert RosenbergThe Roy A. Hunt FoundationDr. Margaret Ruttenberg and

Mr. John RuttenbergThe Saquish FoundationDr. F. H. Sears and Dr. Sharon S. BushnellMr. and Mrs. Roger ServisonMr. and Mrs. Henry D. Sharpe IIISkinner, Inc.Mr. and Mrs. Colin L. M. SmithMr. Joseph Peter Spang IIIMr. Andrew Spindler-Roesle and

Mr. Hiram ButlerMr. and Mrs. Frederick A. StahlMr. Thomas G. Stemberg and

Ms. Katherine ChapmanMr. and Mrs. Charles F. StoneMr. Charles M. Sullivan and

Ms. Susan E. MaycockMr. E. Clothier TepperMr. and Mrs. Michael K. TookeMiss Kimberlea TraceyTrustees of the John R. and

Emma D. Quint Memorial FundUSDAMr. and Mrs. William VareikaMr. and Mrs. Richard R. WheelerMr. and Mrs. Stephen H. WhiteMs. Elaine WildeMr. Robert W. Wilkins, Jr. and

Ms. Suzanne CourcierMr. Richard H. WillisWinfield FoundationMr. Stephen G. Woodsum and

Ms. Anne R. LovettMr. and Mrs. John A. YozellMr. and Mrs. Charles A. Ziering, Jr.

AbovE palais-royal scenic wallpaper. France,

1805–1810. Gift of mary Ann morse and

brooks banker.

141 Cambridge StreetBoston MA 02114-2702

Non-Profit OrganizationU.S. Postage

PAIDBoston, Massachusetts

Permit No. 58621

own line of clothing. In his designs for Jackie Kennedy, Cassini drew on his Hollywood training to create a new type of First Lady through costume design.

The Vasiliou dress represents a moment in time when many American women, inspired by Mrs. Kennedy and her elegance, looked to adopt elements of her fresh style. Cassini’s ready-to-wear line provided an affordable way for young middle-class women like Mrs. Vasiliou to take part in that style revolution.

—Nancy CarlisleCurator

1962 snapshot shows Virginia Vasiliou wear-ing an Oleg Cassini dress in her future mother-in-

law’s Arlington, Massachusetts, kitch-en shortly before her marriage. It was the height of the Kennedy era, when elegance and fashion returned to the White House.

Designer Oleg Cassini became a household name in the early 1960s, when Jacqueline Kennedy chose him as her personal designer. Together, they set a style for American women characterized by A-line dresses and sig-nature pillbox hats. Cassini’s avowed aim for his collaboration with Mrs. Kennedy was to create an iconic style that was, in his words, “simple, youth-ful, elegant.” Women’s Wear Daily duly noted their success, “Elegance and taste surrounded every movement of the first family and America watched, learned, absorbed, and copied.”

The son of impoverished European aristocrats, Cassini’s first success came as a designer for Paramount Studios. By the late 1950s, he had begun his

A C q u i s i t i o N s

Affordable high Fashion

A

the award-winning Historic New England magazine is a benefit of membership. to join, please visit historicNewEngland.org

AbovE oleg Cassini

dress. LEFt virginia

vasiliou wearing the

dress in 1962.

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