Daily Archives: September 29, 2014

September 29, 2014

The Last Days of the Loring House?

By daseger

Perhaps because I grew up in a Shingle-Style cottage on the southern coast of Maine, I have always taken the style for granted, even now and here, living on the North Shore of Boston, where it also reigned in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The strident Federal architecture of Salem appealed to me much more when it came time to buy a house–not quite at war with nature but not really melding with it either. But now, just across the water in the Pride’s Crossing section of Beverly, one of the most iconic Shingle cottages is apparently nearing its end: a house so harmonious with its surroundings yet so exacting in its details that even I can appreciate it. The Charles G. Loring house was built between 1881 and 1884 as a mid-career commission of the architect William Ralph Emerson (1833-1917), who is widely credited with originating what came to be known as the Shingle Style. The man who coined that term, Yale architectural historian Vincent Scully, calls the Loring House the very best of all the houses along this coast and considers that it may well be the finest surviving example of the Shingle Style, yet despite these and other weighty judgments, it may soon be taken down by its present owner, one of the co-founders of iRobot.

Ryerson & Burnham Archives, Art Institute of Chicago: Myron Miller photograph, 1969

Ryerson & Burnham Archives, Art Institute of Chicago: Myron Miller photograph, 1969

Ryerson & Burnham Archives, Art Institute of Chicago: William Ralph Emerson’s “Plan of Principal Floor” of the Loring House, 1881

The house was built as a summer cottage by Charles G. Loring (1828-1902) on family land. Loring (like his father) has an amazing biography: he was a thrice-breveted Major-General of the Union army, the second time “for gallant and meritorious services at the battles of the Wildneress, Spottsylvania, and Bethesda Church and during the operation before Petersburg, Virginia” (Loring Genealogy). A passionate Egyptologist, he became one of the first trustees and curators at the newly-founded Museum of Fine Arts, Boston after the war, and then its first director. After his death in 1902 the estate was transferred to another old Boston family though its acquisition by Quincy Adams Shaw, one of the Museum’s major benefactors. It remained in the Shaw-Codman family for over a century, until the death of Mr. Shaw’s grandson, Samuel Codman, in 2008 (at age 100). After he inherited the house in the 1960s, Mr. Codman worked tirelessly to maintain it, apparently single-handedly, and I think you can see the impact of his care when you compare the photographs above. Even before Mr. Codman’s death, a group of “Friends” organized to raise funds in order to endow and preserve the house as a study property of Historic New England; very sadly, their fundraising goals fell short and consequently the house went on the market and was purchased first by several Loring descendants and then by Ms. iRobot. Her proposed “alterations” were deemed destructive by the Beverly Historic Commission, which imposed a one-year demolition delay that has now expired. An application sent to the Beverly Conservation Commission last week indicates the Loring House will be replaced by a larger structure (surprise).

Ryerson & Burnham Archives, Art Institute of Chicago: Myron Miller photograph, 1969

All of my preservationist friends are desolate: their only consolation is that this house is very well-documented, inside and out. There are the Myron Miller photographs that I have showcased here, along with the beautiful images of the renown architectural photographer Steve Rosenthal, who provided his services pro bono to the Friends of the General George G. Loring House. Another reason why I never really appreciated the Shingle Style is its characteristic interiors, which always seemed a bit drab to me, but obviously I’ve been looking at the wrong Shingle Style houses. As Mr. Rosenthal’s photographs illustrate so well, the Loring House glows with light and features details that are most likely irreplaceable, but apparently also ephemeral.