Tag Archives: Historic Houses

August 31, 2026

Green Mountain Gothic

By daseger

I felt that I needed one more road trip before I start school later this week, so I headed to Vermont by myself to engage in some intensive “house hunting.” For me, a road trip has to have some kind of quest beyond just seeing the scenery and I’ve long wanted to chart Gothic Revival houses in Vermont. I spent my early childhood in Strafford, Vermont, where the Justin Morrill Homestead is located. This pink picturesque house became kind of the standard of “great” houses for me, as we had free rein in the village and I would visit it frequently. Later on we moved to southern Maine, and the nearby city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire with its colonial and Federal houses became my architectural ideal, and that focus eventually brought me to Salem. But my fascination for the more romantic Gothic continued, and I’m always seeking them out. We have a few Gothic Revivals here in Salem, including the very notable Brooks house, and down in New Bedford there are more, but in the back of my mind I’ve always associated that style with Vermont, so off I went to test my memory.

My ideal and my map.

Vermont is relatively small, but I didn’t have time to survey the entire state, so I focused on its south central region, from Woodstock in the east, over to Poultney in the west, down to Manchester and back across to Putney. I did not confine myself to the highly detailed “Carpenter Gothic” style of the Morrill homestead, but looked for more general silhouettes. There’s a few churches here, but I think nearly every Vermont town has a Gothic-esque church with myriad variations of crenellated parapets instead of (or in addition to) spires. There is a lot of vernacular variation, and a lot of mixing of the two most prominent mid-nineteenth century styles, Gothic and Greek Revival. I based myself in Cavendish, and this was no accident, for I had seen real estate listing for an amazing mansion named Glimmerstone, and I drove straight from Salem to see it on Friday morning. What a bargain! (Be sure to look at the back in the listing)

Glimmerstone Mansion in Cavendish

Actually, I drove through the “Stone Village” of nearby Chester to get to Cavendish: this is a linear neighborhood of 1840s buildings constructed with the Scottish “snecked ashlar” technique and style, in which local rubblestone is used in varying large and small pieces to tie interior and exterior walls together: I think it’s a form of “Celtic Bond” but please feel free to correct me! In the midst of the Stone Village is a perfect little Gothic Revival church, but the rest of its buildings have a more classical style. The snecked ashlar technique clearly extended to Cavendish, and to Glimmerstone, as well as a few neighboring houses.

Chester and Cavendish: how great is this last house and terraced lawn!!!

And then I was off—across and around the state with some beautiful weather! Again, I could have taken many pictures of churches: the little white chapel in the western village of Wells below is very representative. There are also many versions of the “classic” white center gable house, sometimes with a porch, sometimes without, and with varying degrees of trim. Gothic Revival houses in Vermont are mostly made of wood (outside of Cavendish and Chester) but there was the occasional brick. Below is just a sampling, or a foundation on which I hope to build.

Gothic Revival variations in Vermont: Windsor (top three, front and back of the Townsend-McIndoe House), Rutland, Poultney, Wells, Manchester, Newfane.

11 Comments | tags: Architectural History, Architecture, Gothic Revival, Historic Houses, road trips, Vermont | posted in Architecture, Historic Houses

August 24, 2026

Old Bristol

By daseger

We’re on the Pemaquid peninsula in Maine and I finally feel that I have the terrain down. We’ve been alternating between the adjacent Boothbay peninsula and Pemaquid over the last few summers, and I drive around without navigation but just yesterday I came upon a peninsula off the peninsula which was still unknown territory and I have still not figured out all the islands. Pemaquid, extending south from Newcastle and Damariscotta, used to be just one big town, Bristol or “Old Bristol,” but is now divided between Bristol, South Bristol, and Bremen. Bristol has five villages: Bristol Mills, Pemaquid, New Harbor, Round Pond, and Chamberlain. South Bristol (separated and incorporated in 1915) has three villages: South Bristol, Christmas Cove, and Walpole. We’re staying in the latter, and even though it is located north of much of Bristol, it’s in South Bristol. Bremen, also located in the northern part of the peninsula but on the northeastern side, seems more distinct than the Bristols, and it was separated from Old Bristol in 1828.

The Pemaquid Peninsula is nameless on Frank and Ruth Taylor White’s 1935 pictorial map of Maine, created for Little, Brown’s national atlas (David Rumsey Historical Map Collection); an 1857 map of Old Bristol; our view from Walpole on the eastern shore of the Damariscotta River.

I was at first perplexed by the co-existence of two Colonial meeting houses on the peninsula, built just years apart in the 1770s and located just a few miles apart: the Walpole and Harrington meeting houses. Was there a huge schism? I just love Maine meeting houses–so unadorned and preserved in their spireless states (my favorite one is in Alna, just north of Pemaquid). Walpole is particularly famous, and it deserves to be, because it is beautiful. My confusion over the two proximate meeting houses is just a reflection of my Massachusetts bias regarding relative population density: because the distance was so great, there were actually three meeting houses built on Pemaquid in the 1770s: Walpole in the east, another one in Round Pond on the western side of the peninsula (no longer standing), and Harrington in the center. The Harrington meeting house is not really in the center now, as it was moved in 1840, and substantially altered at the same time. Apparently it’s been restored back to its Georgian form, but I didn’t get to go inside.

Another relic of the eighteenth century on the Pemaquid peninsula is the “Arch Bridge” in Bristol Mills, but I would say that Pemaquid has more of a late 19th century/early 20th century feel. Colonial Pemaquid includes the remains of the 17th-century Fort William Henry and an 18th-century fort house, but also a reproduction tower built in 1908. There are quite a few un-expanded and unadorned simple summer shingle cottages in every village, testifying to its continuing role as a summer place, but also wonderful capes and the full range of 19th-century vernacular styles evident of year-round occupation, past and present. With the smaller scale of its working ports (unlike Boothbay across the way) Pemaquid seems to have found the perfect mix of tourism and residential occupation, although maybe locals would beg to differ one way or the other! I’m in my refugee-from-Salem season (which starts earlier and earlier every year, and grows longer and longer as well), so nearly everywhere looks perfect.

The Arch Bridge in Bristol Mills, Colonial Pemaquid, a house and its view from Pemaquid Harbor Road, a South Bristol cottage compound, a BEAUTIFUL house (+ barn) in New Harbor, Back Cove in New Harbor and Round Pond.

2 Comments | tags: Architecture, Escape from Salem, Historic Forts, Historic Houses, Maine, maps, Meeting Houses, Pemaquid Peninsula, Summer, Vacations | posted in New England, Travel

August 17, 2026

The Phillipses’ Library

By daseger

This is my third year working at the Phillips House of Historic New England once a week or so over the summer, and it’s been such a wonderful experience for several reasons. My colleagues are great: we’re all part-time old house people who are solely interested in showcasing the house and the family who lived there to the best of our abilities. We compare and work on our tours constantly. It has been a continuous learning experience: the house is filled to the brim with the varied possessions of this wealthy Salem family, all acquired over generations, so just capturing the contents of one corner of one room takes time. And it has been equally delightful meeting every single visitor to the house: most interested in a more comprehensive history of Salem, away from the witching crowd, but even those who wander in with little felt witch hats on seem delighted to see more or something else entirely.

When I’m working at the house, there’s always a time when there are no visitors, and that’s when I wander around and look at things with more focus and purpose. The first year, I was focused primarily on the general architecture and the McIntire woodwork in the front rooms. The second year, I studied the mirrors and artwork. And this year has been all about the books. Even though the house was constructed on Chestnut Street in 1820-21 we interpret the house about a century later, when the Phillips family moved in after an extensive renovation: it’s their house. Stephen Willard Phillips (1873-1955), his wife Anna Pingree Phillips (1870-1938) and their son “Stevie” Phillips (1907-1971) were all avid readers, and looking at their books is a great way to learn more about both them and the time in which they lived. There are about 3000 books in the house, most encased in glass-fronted bookcases. This is about half of their entire library; the remainder is in storage. I’m sure many of their books, like all of their possessions, were inherited, but there are sufficient quantity that were obviously chosen by them to reveal their personal interests. The Phillipses’ books offer an introduction to both the house and the household, as one of the first things visitors see when they enter the house is the massive Gothic Revival bookcase in the room designated as Mr. Phillips’ Library. It faces stiff competition from the McIntire mantel in the same room, but in my experience, always wins! People go right to it, and to the books within.

It’s difficult to photograph glass bookcases, but I think that you can see that there are broad swaths of color among the books, representing the classic series that most libraries of this era possess: the Harvard Classics, the Waverly novels, other “great” works. But if you look closer you see more ephemeral titles, lots of works by regional authors, lots of military history and New England history. Mr. Phillips was born in Hawaii, and assembled a large “Hawaiian Library” that he eventually donated to the other Phillips Library of the Peabody Essex Museum, so that interest is not represented here.

Other bookcases reflect the same mixture of classics and topical, more contemporary texts, and as you move back and upstairs to the more private spaces the latter becomes more dominant. This is a family which lived through two world wars (well, Mrs. Phillips died in 1938) and so was clearly seeking explanations from observers (and participants) such as Winston Churchill. Mrs. Phillips liked to read novels, and you see lots of them on the second floor but very few on the first. She also clearly liked gardening books.

Stevie’s childhood books are encased in both his second-floor bedroom and first-floor playroom, reflecting interests in everything from fairies to pirates. I would really like to read The Battle of the Nations, apparently a “family-friendly” history of World War One, to determine how it manages to be just that, but it is behind glass doors. There is an adjoining boy’s history of the Battle of the Somme! Lots of sea stories in general and tales of pirates in particular.

My favorite bookcase is just outside the master bedroom on the second floor, in a hall which has its own door so it’s really kind of a suite and therefore quite private. There’s a key closet in there too. I like the bookcase because it does not have glass—instead, it just has a simple tapes running across the shelves, and for some reason this always gives me the feeling that the Phillipses just stepped away, leaving their possessions behind. One book in particular caught my attention one day, all about the Vanderbilts, and I thought wow, I guess rich families like to read about other rich families. The rest of the books in this case are an eclectic collection: biographies, novels, contemporary affairs, local history, pamphlets, and also reference books that look well-read. These books are not as pretty as those in Mr. Phillips’ library, but they are perhaps more reflective of the Phillipses’ lives.

4 Comments | tags: books, Decorative Arts, Historic Houses, Historic Interiors, Historic New England, Libraries, The Phillips House | posted in books, Historic Houses, Salem

July 13, 2026

The Bryant Homestead

By daseger

This past weekend I drove out west to the lovely little town of Cummington, Massachusetts to see the summer home of journalist and poet William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878). A Federal farmhouse transformed into a Victorian “cottage” at the close of the Civil War, it possesses an impressive profile and situation and I’ve wanted to see the interior for quite a while. As a Trustees of Reservations property in a rather remote area of our state, it’s only open to the public a few times a year and I’ve never been able to make one of these dates, but I was free on July 11 so I hopped into the car. It was a beautiful, breezy, old-fashioned New England summer day, free of the humidity that seems to characterize our new climate, so PERFECT.

While I will drive miles to see any old house at any time, this is one of the few times when I was motivated by more than architectural curiosity. True to my post from a few months ago, I have indeed been reading poetry as a way to wean myself off Salem as it assumes its new role as headquarters of the Warren “Museum” and Bryant was, of course, first and foremost a poet. I can’t really say his poetry drew me to his house though; it was more his prose—and one particular observation in particular. In his Letters to a Traveler, he recounts an 1843 visit he made to his aunt, Charity Bryant in Vermont, where she lived with her long-time partner, Sylvia Drake, in a relationship that everybody, including William, seems to have recognized as a marriage:

“I passed a few days in the valley of one of those streams of northern Vermont, which find their way into Champlain. If I were permitted to draw aside the veil of private life, I would briefly give you the singular, and to me most interesting history of two maiden ladies who dwell in this valley. I would tell you how, in their youthful days, they took each other as companions for life, and how this union, no less sacred to them than the tie of marriage, has subsisted, in uninterrupted harmony, for forty years, during which they have shared each other’s occupations and pleasures and works of charity while in health, and watched over each other tenderly in sickness; for sickness has made long and frequent visits to their dwelling. I could tell you how they slept on the same pillow and had a common purse, and adopted each other’s relations, and how one of them, more enterprising and spirited in her temper than the other, might be said to represent the male head of the family, and took upon herself their transactions with the world without, until at length her health failed, and she was tended by her gentle companion, as a fond wife attends her invalid husband. I could tell you of their dwelling, encircled with roses, which now in the days of their broken health, bloom wild without their tendance, and I would speak of the friendly attentions which their neighbors, people of kind hearts and simple manners, seem to take pleasure in bestowing upon them, but I have already said more than I fear they will forgive me for, if this should ever meet their eyes, and I must leave the subject.”

These lines are so endearing, so out of their time, at least as I understand the mid-nineteenth century. I found them particularly so as I was reading about a current controversy which has arisen because the first historian of this relationship, Rachel Hope Cleves, is accusing cartoonist Tillie Walden of taking liberties with her research and archival reconstruction in a new graphic novel issued under the very same title, Charity and Sylvia. You can read more about this dispute here if you like; I’m still grappling with it but once I read Bryant’s view of this now storied relationship I preferred to stick with him. And so off to his house I went, where I found another impactful same-sex relationship! But first the house, which was a much smaller and more humble dwelling when Bryant purchased it in 1865. It was his family’s homestead but, but the Bryant farmers had gone west decades before so he was returning to his roots. He raised it up, added a floor and on and on, and created a pastoral summer retreat from his beloved New York City where he spent the last ten summers of his life.

This house has the simplicity of a summer residence, emphasized by all the old wicker and spindle furniture, cotton runners and curtains, and pumpkin painted floors. And it’s not “done”: only the dining room and Bryant’s first-floor study could be called “decorated” and only with family possessions. Everything else looks casually placed—and the bedrooms look like someone just hastily made their bed and stepped out! It’s a hand-me down house with two notable transactions in its history: Bryant’s (re-) purchase in 1865 and his grandaugher Minna Godwin Goddard’s (re-) purchase of the estate from her aunt’s companion in 1917. Bryant died in 1875 and left the property to his two daughters, Frances Bryant Godwin and Julia Sands Bryant. After her sister’s death, Julia was sole owner and left the homestead to her cousin, companion and “chum,” (the word used in Julia’s obituary in the New York Times) Anna R. Fairchild, from whom Minna purchased it, donating it to the Trustees a decade later.

I loved the wallpapers: several looked original, complete with water stains. And that general air of they just stepped away, evident throughout the house but particularly so in the upper rooms. Cool closets! The Trustees guide let us go everywhere, even into the room (and there always is one) with all the chairs lined up (alas, too dark for a photo). I had other places to see in the area, but you could certainly make a day of the Bryant Homestead, as the grounds are lovely and extensive: there are two more dates for house tours, in August and September.

4 Comments | tags: Architecture, Historic Houses, Historic Interiors, Massachusetts, road trips, Trustees of Reservations | posted in Architecture, Historic Houses, New England

April 27, 2026

The Wilton House

By daseger

Virginia was the second leg of our southern road trip: we visited family in Richmond, toured historic gardens, and saw several Lost Cause and revolutionary exhibitions. I am enjoying the regional America 250 interpretations. For example, the Virginia Museum of History and Culture has branded Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington, Virginians all of course, as the “Voice, Pen, and Sword” of the Revolution. Now I am a big Patrick Henry fan, but I think we can identify a few other notable voices—perhaps the Adamses of Massachusetts? Different messaging in Philadelphia–which I’ll explore next week. I thought I’d just spotlight a beautiful house today: the Wilton House, also in Richmond, thought its original location was 15 miles outside of the city. It’s a very high-style Georgian mansion built in 1753 for William Randolph III and his family. Threatened by industrial development in 1933 (the year after the bicentennial of Washington’s birthday, cresting an intense Colonial Revival wave) it was purchased by the National Society of Colonial Dames, dismantled, and carefully resurrected on a beautiful site overlooking the James River in Richmond’s west end. Its detaled resurrection, or re-erection, is extremely notable in the history of historic preservation, and I wanted to learn about that as well as see the house. The story, as well as the house, did not disappoint.

I tried, but my amateurish photography can’t really do this house justice: it’s so textured and there was only natural light in many of the rooms. Every single room, downstairs and up, is panelled, and those amazing windowed alcoves seemed to let in different shades of light. The black walnut staircase was astounding! The largest and most public of the downstairs rooms—photos four and five above—was so gorgeous I gasped but I don’t think it’s really captured here. It is set up for General Lafayette, who stayed at the Wilton House just before Yorktown. The interpretation was both architectural (both design and construction) and historical in terms of the Randolph family history and general history, because this was a conspicuous house, visited by many, including George Washington. Ultimately the decline of the Randolph family fortune led to the decline of the house and the derelict status from which the Colonial Dames rescued it. But both the family and its restoration were set in a broad historical and social context, so we see the list of people enslaved by the Randolphs as well as family portraits (in close proximity), and photographs of those who contributed to the restoration of the house and that story too. A dual narrative, encompassing many “smaller stories,” exemplified by a beautiful house.

5 Comments | tags: American Revolution, Decorative Arts, General Lafayette, Historic Houses, Historic Interiors, Historic Preservation, road trips, Virginia | posted in Culture, History, Houses

April 21, 2026

Greetings from Annapolis

By daseger

I’m on the first leg of what has become my annual spring southern tour, stopping in at Annapolis for a few days. I love Annapolis, so I visit here every other year or so, but generally during my spring break in March when the historic houses I want to see are not open yet. But this spring I’m on sabbatical, so I shifted my visit later to see the William Paca and Hammond Harwood Houses–and more colorful gardens. This week is Historic Garden Week in Virginia, so I’ll have lots of color in my next post, but today is all about Georgian architecture. Annapolis really had a golden age of architecture in the second half of the eighteenth century, and the Paca and Hammond Harwood Houses are exemplars of this exuberance, as is the Brice House in the same neighborhood, which is currently undergoing a multi-million dollar restoration. William Paca was a Maryland signer of the Declaration of Independence, and later Governor, and his house first fronted an extensive walled garden that later became the site of the Colonial Revival Carvel Hall Hotel. In 1965 Historic Annapolis (a very venerable preservation organization but not as old as Historic Salem) partnered with the State of Maryland to restore the Paca house and recreate its garden, which involved the demolition of the hotel. I imagine this was quite the project, but wow, what a result. I’ve been dying to go into the Paca house for years, and it did not disappoint, except for the dining room, which you won’t see below because it was essentially a pass-through room.

The recreated gardens below, from the house, and out back: the two-storey summer house was recreated based on visual evidence from a portrait. Its perspective shows the Paca house, but the knot garden’s view shows the nearby Brice house.

The dining room at the Hammond Harwood House compensates for that of the Paca house, and then some! It’s right around the corner, and somehow even more stately, certainly more Palladian. But a similar “Annapolis Plan”–the main house in the center, connected to two wings by “hyphens,” a large interior hall with the stairway on the side. The house was built in 1774 for the young and wealthy plantation owner Matthias Hammond who wanted a house in the capital and commissioned architect William Buckland to design it. Hammond never inhabited this grand house, but it survived without many alterations into the twentieth century, when St. John’s College owned and utilized it briefly for the one of the first scholarly programs on American decorative arts. From 1938, the House has been owned and operated by an independent nonprofit association.

Both houses are beautiful and instructive, but I want to spotlight the food history presented at each. Generally this is my least favorite part of a historic house tour: I think large displays of plastic food look silly. But that was not the case at either the Paca or Hammond Harwood Houses. Instead, there were unique and creative displays, and substantive interpretations of the types of food that were prepared and consumed. And of course, these interpretations included discussions of the central roles that enslaved persons played in the households, as well as their diet. I learned a good bit of eighteenth-century “kitchen technology” as well. My guides in both houses referenced the research of food historian Joyce White, so I snapped up one of her books in the Hammond Harwood gift shop and consulted her website as soon as I got back to my hotel: wonderful resources and I particularly love her hedgehogs!

3 Comments | tags: Annapolis, Food history, Georgian Architecture, Hammond Harwood House, Historic Houses, road trips, William Paca House | posted in Historic Houses, Tourism, Travel

May 27, 2025

White Houses of Thomaston

By daseger

We’re up in midcoast Maine for a long Memorial Day weekend and I spent an afternoon walking around Thomaston, which was the site of a very early English arrival in 1605: I’m not sure why this is not more heralded, or at least discussed. It became a very important shipbuilding town over the nineteenth century but for me, growing up in southern Maine, Thomaston had two associations: the prison and large white houses. The Maine State Prison at Thomaston was in operation from 1824 to 2002, and because of my adolescent preoccupation with the Isles of Shoals and the 1873 Smuttynose Murders I knew that the murderer, Louis Wagner, was held and executed at there. My other Thomaston association is far more pleasant: an impression of a succession of large white houses as we drove through on Route One. So I went back to look for the great white houses: there are indeed so many, and not just on the highway.

The most majestic white house of Thomaston (likely very prominent among my childhood impressions) is actually a recreation: of General Henry Knox’s Montpelier. The Revolutionary War hero was married to an heir of the Waldo Patent, which had allocated a large chunk of midcoast Maine to Boston merchant Samuel Waldo in the early 18th century. Waldo’s grandaughter Lucy Knox became his sole heir as her family, the Fluckers, were notable Loyalists who left the country at the onset of the Revolution. After Knox had finished his military and government service, he and Lucy retired to Thomaston and built Montpelier in 1794. They lived there until his death in 1806, after which the house was occupied by members of the Knox family until 1854, when it was sold. Several decades later it was demolished to my way for the Knox and Lincoln Railroad, and recreated in 1930 as a perfect Colonial Revival monument: now it houses the Henry Knox Museum. Was Montpelier the inspiration for all the stately white houses of Thomaston or was it James Overlock (1813-1906), who designed and built scores of solid structures in vernacular and revival styles with all the new building technologies of his day? Likely both, with a healthy measure of New England traditionalism, but all these white houses are certainly a testament to Thomaston’s shipbuilding wealth in the nineteenth century, and to the preservation efforts of their successive owners.

Just one sample of Thomaston’s white houses.

2 Comments | tags: Architecture, Henry Knox, Historic Houses, Historic Preservation, Maine, Memorial Day Weekend, road trips | posted in Architecture, Travel

April 7, 2025

When Salem was Pretty

By daseger

The Salem visual vibe is darker now, and focused firmly on “Gothic” rather than Federal or Colonial, but the Witch City used to be pretty. I wrote the chapter on the Colonial Revival in our forthcoming book Salem’s Centuries. New Perspectives on the History of an Old American City (for which we have our cover, and a production schedule, and a publication date coming soon!), spotlighting four Salem “influencers” who emphasized the city’s beauty and craftsmanship through various cultural initiatives: Mary Harrod Northend, Frank Cousins, George Francis Dow and Caroline Emmerton. They were so successful that Salem coasted into a period of being known primarily for its architectural and aesthetic heritage that lasted well into the 1960s, an image that was sustained by the Essex Institute’s house museums and the very public battle over urban renewal. A succession of commercial and graphic artists celebrated Salem through their accessible imagery, and we see Salem grouped with Colonial Williamsburg, Historic Deerfield, Sturbridge Village, Mystic Seaport, and other traditional heritage destinations. In today’s competitive tourism realm Salem has pulled ahead of (or moved behind?) that pack by emphasizing horror over beauty, Gothic over Federal, and darkness over light. At least that’s the projection I see in so many shop windows and on so many websites, but I think I better do some more searching in the real world. There are also many AI images of a Salem that doesn’t even exist, a concocted Victorian-Gothic world with black cats and cute witches, but also church spires! Fantasy Salem is even more idealistic than what came before, depictions in color and black and white of well-manicured car-free streets and stately houses, a “city of treasures” according to Katharine Butler Hathaway.

Some of my favorite images of Salem from the 1920s to the 1960s: Felicie Waldo Howell’s “Spring on Chestnut Street” + various houses; shelter magazines LOVED Salem in the 1920s; Rudolph Ruzicka made several Salem prints; interior vignettes from House & Garden, June 1939;Chestnut Street scenes from Philip Kappel and Samuel Chamberlain; LOVE these notecards from Nantucket artist Ruth Haviland Sutton; the “Silent Traveler,” Chiang Yee’s view of the Custom House.

8 Comments | tags: Art, Branding, Colonial Revival, ephemera, Heritage Tourism, Historic Houses, Witch City | posted in Culture

October 16, 2024

Weekend in Wiscasset

By daseger

Just back from a long weekend in Wiscasset, Maine with family, lots of eating and drinking, house-hunting, and pumpkins. My stepson is working at an oyster farm in the region so we’re going to midcoast Maine pretty regularly, and this Columbus/Indigenous Peoples Day weekend was of course a good opportunity to escape Witch City. We stayed in a lovely house in Wiscasset, one of Maine’s prettiest towns, and made regular trips up Route One to Damariascotta, which was holding its annual Pumpkinfest, complete with Pumpkin Queen, Pumpkin Drop, Pumpkin Derby, Pumpkin Regatta, and a main street embellished with large embellished and carved Pumpkins.

Wiscasset houses & shopping & Damariascotta pumpkins.

I worked at Historic New England’s Phillips House in Salem on Saturday and visited Historic New England’s Nickels-Sortwell House in Wiscasset on Sunday. It certainly has been an HNE summer for me! We spent so much time with the pumpkin festivities in Damariascotta that I turned up at Nickels-Sortwell at 3:00 pm: the last tour of the day on the last day of their season! Bad form on my part, and I apologized profusely, but of course my guide was completely gracious and welcoming and eager to show off the house. Historic New England has two houses in Wiscasset: the very dramatic Castle Tucker and the very……..strident Nickels-Sortwell, and I had never been to the latter so I was thrilled to be able to squeeze it in this weekend. I always look at history and houses through a comparative Salem prism, and this was not difficult to do regarding the Phillips and Nickels-Sortwell Houses: both are Federal constructions which evolved into a Victorianized rooming house/hotel and then were restored with Colonial Revival inspiration by wealthy Yankee families.

I learned a lot about the house and the families who lived in it on my tour, but after we said our goodbyes I was still puzzled by the assertion of my guide that in the year of the house’s construction, 1807, “Wiscasset was the busiest port north of Boston.” Of course I couldn’t stop myself from contesting that statement: I think Salem was? Certainly Portsmouth and Portland were busier? She responded that she wasn’t sure but that was a pretty standard Wiscasset claim. And she’s right: I looked at all the the Wiscasset tourist and historical information on the web and there it was, again and again: Wiscasset was the busiest port north of Boston, Wiscasset was the busiest port east of Boston in 1807, the year of the Jefferson Embargo Act. This is clearly not true in terms of tonnage or voyages, but I’m wondering if “busiest” means something else? Shipbuilding and other maritime industries AND customs revenues? HELP early American maritime historians!

2 Comments | tags: Historic Houses, Historic New England, House Museums, Maine, maritime history, New England, Pumpkins, Shopping, travel | posted in New England, Tourism

October 7, 2024

The First Weekend of October in Salem

By daseger

It’s been a long time since I spent an October weekend in Salem, but there I was on this past Saturday, walking through the crowded streets on my way to the Peabody Essex Museum to take their new “Brick by Brick” architectural walking tour (this is the exact same name as Historic Salem’s Christmas in Salem Tour this year; I sense collusion). I got behind some baby strollers which cleared my path like a snowplow, and dodged and darted amidst the sea of felt witch hat wearers. I knew they would put me in a nasty mood, so as soon as I spotted one “1692/They Missed One” t-shirt, I put on invisible blinders. This was the only day that I could take this tour, and I was desperate to get into one of the Peabody Essex Museum’s long-shuttered period houses: I wasn’t sure which one we were entering but it turned out to be Gardner-Pingree, the most beautiful house in the world! The tour encompassed all of the PEM’s houses save for the Assembly House, and we navigated the path between them relatively quietly armed with audio devices and earbuds, hardly new inventions but still apparently unknown to many Salem tour guides.

random scenes on my way and back; don’t drive to Salem!

I always feel sorry for the Gardner Pingree House this time of year: it’s so beautiful and the tourists don’t seem to notice it; they lean on its amazing fence looking away and down at their phones. But being inside while the crowd was outside was very calming; I could barely hear a thing! It’s a fortress against vulgarity. We got to go into the McIntire summerhouse out back and then heard brief histories outside the exteriors of all the other PEM buildings, again while tourists turned their back on them, their doors rendered to mere frames for selfies.

Gardner-Pingree, Crowninshield-Bentley, Derby-Beebe summerhouse, John Ward, and Andrew Safford houses of the Peabody Essex Museum.

The main guide (Isabel? I believe, in the striped shirt) was very good at weaving in general Salem history with the history of the houses, so I think this would be a very good tour for new visitors to Salem who are not looking for well-worn witch trial narratives and ghost stories. It also has the benefit of getting new visitors out of the congested downtown into the McIntire Historic District, where the Peirce-Nichols house and Ropes Mansion are located. Salem’s “Heritage Trail” (yellow line) just doesn’t go there. The Ropes is the only PEM House that is open on weekends, and it is a Hocus Pocus house with a beautiful late-season garden, so it’s always a draw, but Peirce-Nichols hasn’t been open for decades. I don’t follow the party line in Salem that “tourists come for the witch stuff, but come again for the history” but my summer at the Phillips House has convinced me that a certain percentage of our tourists are actually coming for the history, so I’m glad that there are institutions which can provide it.

Peirce-Nichols house and Ropes Mansion garden–now in full bloom.

back to work: one good thing about October is I can’t find excuses not to walk to work, along Lafayette Street where there is a range of “decorations”. I like these little skeletons.