Sunday, March 27, 2016

Final Project Part 1

The Nichols House Museum

55 Mount Vernon Street
Boston, MA

The Nichols House Museum is a fascinating historic house museum to visit for several reasons; beautiful architectural design elements, a diverse art collection, an accomplished and significant owner, and a place in the pages of Boston’s history. The four-story townhouse was designed by Charles Bulfinch and constructed by Jonathan Mason in 1804, making it one of the earliest Beacon Hill structures. It was purchased in 1885 by Dr. Arthur Nichols for his family and in 1935 ownership was passed on to his eldest daughter, Rose Standish Nichols, who was a noted landscape architect, writer and suffragist. In 1961, shortly after Rose’s death, the house became open to the public “as an historic house museum reflecting the domestic life of a typical family of Beacon Hill at the turn of the last century.”[1] Since then, as specified in Rose’s will, the house has remained open for public viewing, is a contributing resource to the Beacon Hill Historic District, and was listed in 1966 as a National Historical Landmark.[2]

The house museum’s collection includes fine 17^th to 19^th century furniture, art, tapestries, sculpture, and other pieces of decorative art from both America and abroad.[3] Everything in the museum’s collection was owned and collected by the Nichols family, including sculptures by their uncle Augustus Saint-Gaudens.[4]

The mission of the Nichols House Museum states, “To preserve and interpret the 1804 townhouse that was from 1885 until 1960 the home of Rose Standish Nichols, landscape gardener, suffragist and pacifist. The house was built by Jonathan Mason and is attributed to Charles Bulfinch. The museum educates visitors by providing a unique glimpse into the domestic life in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries on Boston's historic Beacon Hill.”[5]

Unlike many house museums in Boston and its surrounding areas, the Nichols House Museum is open year round, though with a limited schedule during the winter months. As a visitor, you tour the house accompanied by a docent and view the world early 20^th century Beacon Hill residents, or “Proper Bostonians”, lived. True to their mission, the docents aim to provide their visitors with a truly unique glimpse into this historic life through their tours. You are shown through five exhibit rooms that have been made open to the public and curated with the original belongings and art collection of the Nichols family. Each room is beautifully curated and the docents are wonderful guides and quite knowledgeable about the house and its history.

The museum also provides basic information about the history of the museum and access to their online database of collection images, archival finding aids, and an online catalog of Rose’s book collection on their website. Their collections management system, PastPerfect, is made publically available online to help further educate those interested in learning about specific pieces in the collection. Upon opening PastPerfect the user is brought to a browsing page labeled “random images”. They have also provided users with three different search capabilities to help users locate specific collection objects and their corresponding tombstone metadata; there is an advanced search function, a keyword search, and a “Click & Search” function.

Random Images in PastPerferct

Advanced Search

Keyword Search

Click & Search

For a small house museum, their online system and amount of collection images available to view seems fairly robust though lacking in standardized metadata and proper descriptive titles for collection objects. For example, a drawing by M. Taylor Greer is simply titled “drawing”, a title that does not really help the user distinguish from one drawing to another in their search.

Example of collection object record in PastPerfect

The museum website also provides access to the finding aids for the archival collections that are owned by the museum. There are five collections all together and by clicking on the title of the collection the user is provided with a PDF of the finding aid. Three out of the five collections are made up of historical photographs, one is the Nichols family papers, and the last is Rose’s postcard collection. Eventually, I would love to see the Nichols house digitize the photograph and postcard collections and make them visible on their PastPerfect web-platform.

In addition to collections images and archival finding aids the museum has also provided a link to Rose’s book collection, known as her “Legacy Library”. They use the online platform called LibraryThing which is “an online service to help people catalog their books easily.”[6] “Legacy libraries are the personal libraries of famous readers, entered by LibraryThing members from the Legacy Libraries group.”[7] According to the Rose Standish Nichols member page on LibraryThing, her Legacy Library has been in place since 2012 and claims to be the complete catalog of Rose’s book collection which is housed inside the Nichols House Museum.

On a whole I believe the Nichols House Museum does an excellent job fulfilling their mission and educating both the visitors to the house and those who are curious to know about the collection and museum archives online. I am incredibly impressed with this small house museum’s presence online and believe they have done an excellent job making their collections visible to the wider public, not just those who are able to physically able to visit this incredible house museum.

[4] Andrew Doerfler, “For these 11 residencies, home is where there history is,” The Boston Globe, October 21, 2016, N, 11.

[6] “About LibraryThing,” accessed March 26, 2015, https://www.librarything.com/about.

[7] “Member: Rose Standish Nichols,” accessed March 26, 2015, http://www.librarything.com/profile/RoseStandishNichols.

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

The blogs Martha mentioned in class yesterday...

Hi Everyone!

Before we began presenting about our final projects, Martha mentioned 2 blogs that she recommended we check out:

1. Know Your Own Bone: a resource for creative engagement in museums and cultural centers is Colleen Dilenschneider's blog. She posts every Wednesday.

2. Museum 2.0 is Nina Simon's blog.

Final Project - Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

For the the final project I will be examining the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford, CT and how they portray information to the public during their renovation process. The Stowe House is currently undergoing a renovation to upgrade the fire suppression, environmental controls, and to re-interpret the House to fit the vision of the existing administration. This will be the first large scale renovation of the author's home since the late 1960s when it became viewable by the public. Prior to that the Stowe Center was actually a library and research archive focused on the Hartford history and the sprawling descendants of the Beecher family. The founder, Katherine Seymour Day, was the grand-niece of Harriet and grand-daughter of Isabella Beecher Hooker, and began the library with the acquisition of the Chamberlain House (now the Day House) on the corner of Farmington Avenue and Forest Street in the 1930s, while Katherine resided in the former residence of Mrs. Stowe. This is how the Center functioned for the first 30 years of existence before moving into the traditional house museum world after the passing of Katherine Seymour Day. The Curator she hired in the 1930s to organize her collection became the Director and stayed there for another 30 years, guiding the museum in its traditional educational format until a new Director shifted focus to social justice inspiration using Stowe's story of Uncle Tom's Cabin. This move has been occurring over the last decade and the current renovation and re-interpretation will result in an experience solely designed around inspiring action. It is this change in how the institution delivers information about a single person over eighty plus years of existence. Also with this is how the institutional purpose has morphed from a research oriented site to a public "edu-tainment" center to a Social Justice Worker training ground and how these factors have changed the delivery of Mrs. Stowe's life. Another avenue to explore is how a house museum delivers its message without the house of the person they are named for is out of commission. How effective can a narrative be carried on outside the confines of its usual space? Does this impact the user experience? Is the less biographical and more inspirational story better for this delivery outside of the traditional space?

The Museum is open year round and offers a variety of public programming on its own and also in conjunction with other local museums, libraries, and social justice oriented organization. There most frequent collaborator is their (and Stowe's) next door neighbor, The Mark Twain House and Museum. Both authors discussed race in the 19th Century so it may be worth exploring or noting how each institution delivers information regarding race or their authors in general. This study will utilize existing public information, interviews with staff and visitors, and attendance of the multiple programs the Stowe Center uses to convey information about Mrs. Stowe to the public.

Monday, March 21, 2016

Vaughn Woods & Historic Homestead

In Hallowell, Maine, the Vaughn Woods & Historic Homestead describes itself as a "non-profit nature preserve and non-traditional house museum." The property was owned and built upon in the late 1700s by Benjamin Vaughn, a grandson of Benjamin Hallowell for whom the town was named. It has been home to the Vaughn family ever since and still serves as a private residence. It includes nearly 200 acres of woods, waterfalls, and trails that are open to the public year-round and have welcomed visitors for decades. The homestead, built in 1794, has only recently been opened to the public for programs and limited guided tours. Beginning this summer, the homestead will begin offering weekly tours by reservation.

The non-profit Vaughn Homestead Foundation oversees the property and cites that its mission "is to preserve and interpret the cultural and environmental setting of both the Woods and Homestead for their historical, natural and educational values, and to make them accessible to the people of Hallowell and the surrounding area." Some of the language of the mission statement finds its way into much of the homestead's promotional language, but the message seems to shift and change across platforms. The Facebook page states that the mission "is to preserve the homestead and its setting and to make it relevant, useful and accessible to the people of Hallowell and the surrounding areas;" and website pronounces on every page that the homestead is "Connecting people to place through nature, history & the arts in the heart of Hallowell, Maine." The work of the mission includes cataloging over two centuries of historical materials and family records (a project begun years ago and ongoing), repairing and restoring the home, and hosting educational and cultural programming at the estate and in town.

I have arranged a private tour and meeting with the cataloging consultants and program coordinator and am looking forward to learning more about the work they do and what lies ahead.

Final Project Part I: The Concord Museum

Courtesy of the Concord Museum, www.concordmuseum.org

The Concord Museum is a small, focused collection located in Concord, Massachusetts. The collection of over 35,000 items spans over 10,000 years and includes artifacts documenting the Native American communities that lived in the area, the American Revolution, especially the role Concord played as the location of the "shot heard round the world", Colonial American life and decorative works, and the literary and cultural contributions of Concord and its most notable citizens (namely Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau). Highlights of the collection include Paul Revere's Lantern, which is one of the lanterns used by Revere to warn patriots in Charlestown of the path of the advancing British military ("one if by land, two if by sea"), the desk and other personal objects belonging to Henry David Thoreau, and the contents of Ralph Waldo Emerson's study from the 1870's.

Courtesy of the Concord Museum, www.concordmuseum.org

The collection of the Concord Museum was started by Cummings Davis (1816-1896), who moved to Concord in 1850 and began gathering historical artifacts that depicted the history of Concord, even then a very patriotic and historically-minded town. Davis's collection attracted attention throughout the 1870's, and in 1881 a group of thirty local citizens joined together to finance the purchase of a more permanent location for the collection at the courthouse. The move was accomplished in 1886 with the founding of the Concord Antiquarian Society. A year later, in 1887, the collection moved again to a nearby house, and then in 1930 to a new building made specifically as a museum. During
the 1970's, 80's, and 90's, the museum turned its focus from being a small, local collection, to educating the wider public about Concord's history and cultural contributions. To this end, the museum began more rigorous education programs and hired its first professional director. Several additions to the building in the 80's and 90's resulted in more space for educational programing, administration, exhibition galleries, a theater, and fully accessible visitor amenity areas. In 1984, the museum adopted the name Concord Museum to reflect its growth.

The Mission Statement of the Concord Museum is as follows:

The Concord Museum educates visitors of all ages about the history of Concord and its continuing influence on American political, literary and cultural life. The Museum’s nationally significant collection serves as a catalyst for changing exhibitions, extended classroom learning, dynamic programs and publications relevant to an ever-changing world. Founded in 1886, the Museum is a center of cultural enjoyment for the region and a gateway to the town of Concord for visitors from around the world.

The Concord Museum supports this Mission Statement in many ways, including:

Many educational programs that are tiered for different age levels
Annual, monthly, and weekly events that appeal to many different age groups and backgrounds
Publications: exhibition catalogs, monographs, and contributions to scholarly articles to spread awareness of the museum's collections
A fully accessible building
Dynamic, changing exhibitions
Relatively low-priced admission fees
Digital Collections and online exhibitions

Courtesy of the Concord Museum, www.concordmuseum.org

There are SO MANY educational programs available at the Concord Museum (and some that will come to local classrooms!), but my favorite include programs that allow students to cook like a colonial person in a replica kitchen, experience churning butter, sew a sachet while the food cooks, and even eat what they've made. Another great one involves teachers receiving pre-visit materials with the names of actual colonial Concord residents, which they assign to their students. The day of the visit, the class travels around Concord, acting as their assigned Concord roles, and interact with trained living history educators to experience the events of the American Revolution in Concord. Other programs focus on the importance of learning from objects (primary sources!) and nature. Some fun events at the Concord Museum include weekly tea on the weekends with different themes like Teddy Bear Tea, where you bring your favorite stuffed animal to join in tea; Musical tea, which features local singing groups; and Colonial tea, where a curator explains the ritual of tea time during the Colonial period. These events, among others, support the museum's mission to be a "center for cultural enjoyment". Some of the annual events have been happening for more than 25 years and seem to be integral to the local community. The Concord Museum describes all of its education and cultural programs and events on their website, which makes it extremely easy for educators and families to plan and arrange their visits.

Powder Horn. Courtesy of the Concord Museum, www.concordmuseum.org

The program that most reflects the museum's dedication to providing education to all is their Paul Revere's Ride Fund. This charitable project aims to provide access to the museum to underserved school districts at no cost, so that all students have a chance to learn about local history and the importance of learning from objects. The museum has a partnership with Lowell Public Schools, and in 2014, the fund allowed for all Lowell 5th graders to visit the museum and engage in an educational program at no cost. The fund even underwrites the cost of buses. Kindergarteners in Lowell were also invited to participate in the annual Family Trees event, where trees are decorated with children's literature stories and characters and displayed in the galleries around the holiday season. This project encourages literacy and supports English language learning.

Emerson's Study. Courtesy of the Concord Museum, www.concordmuseum.org

ANTON GRASSL/ ESTO.COM

For this portion of the final project, I chose to visit The Paul S. Russell, MD Museum of Medical History and Innovation, also referred to as "the front door" to Massachusetts General Hospital. The relatively new museum opened its doors in April 2012 as a space to exhibit the nearly 200 years of history at MGH as well as the research, progress, contributions to medicine, and evolution of medical procedures that have taken place at the influential institution since its charter in 1811. The building was designed by Jane Weinzapfel of the Boston architectural firm Leers Weinzapfel. Its copper exterior serves as an homage to the copper dome of the Bulfinch Building, one of the oldest pieces of MGH's history.

The museum is named in honor of Paul S. Russell, MD, who was an influential transplant surgeon and chair of the Massachusetts General History Committee. Throughout his career, Dr. Russell searched as chief of surgery, established the Boston Interhospital Organ Bank, served director of the Mass General Transplantation Unit, as well as professor at Harvard Medical School. Russell saw the importance of documenting and making available MGH's contributions to the field of Medicine saying, "There is so much to tell and a great sweep of interest--not only on the clinical side, but also on the research and community side--specifically around how the hospital has continued its tradition of caring for its neighbors, which today can mean in our community or around the world."

As for the museum's contributions to the community, it not only gives patrons insight into the changes in medical professions and procedures in the last two centuries, but it also provides an aesthetically pleasing modern structure that literally is a front door to the MGH campus, as mentioned above. Its pleasing copper exterior and large glass windows are a warmer and more welcoming facade that juxtaposes the colder, gray towering structures that make up the Mass General Hospital buildings. According to the Boston Globe, the museum and its rooftop garden serve to "provide respite from the surrounding bustle" for the "weary visitor or anxious patient". Despite being a cold and windy day in mid-March, I found the roof space to be calming, beautiful, and serene, a nice way to end my visit at the museum. Admission to the museum is free, and tours and information are enthusiastically offered by helpful volunteer docents.

Rooftop Garden. Image by Melissa W.

The first floor of the museum houses a variety of exhibits ranging from antique surgical equipment, to interactive displays showcasing current innovations and research at MGH. There are plenty of touch screen displays that are both engaging and easy to understand which aim to educate patrons on various aspects of medicine such as how patients are diagnosed, the history of treatments, differences between a normal, healthy functioning organ and one that has been plagued with maladies such as alzheimer's. Scattered throughout the exhibits are various slides and images taken from cat scans and microscopes to show patrons the intricacies of sicknesses and disease. Patrons can even learn how to diagnose like a professional!

Ether Inhaler. Image by Melissa W.

The antique surgical tools are plentiful and successfully reveal the dramatic advancements in medicine that has taken place at MGH. In addition, there are large, modern pieces of equipment on display that are currently being used in medical procedure such as a mammography unit, and even an example of an incubator manufactured using old car parts which are provided by medical teams serving poverty-stricken communities around the world. There is a rather large display of the evolution of anesthesia which includes vintage tools used to put a patient under, such as the first ether inhaler employed by MGH (left). Other interesting medical tools include various amputation knives and saws, retractors, skull saws, an aneurysm ligature carrier--which eerily resembles a scythe, and bladder syringes. Patrons no doubt feel a surge of shuddering pain while viewing these instruments as they imagine them being used on their own bodies.

The majority of the exhibits housed at The Paul S. Russell, MD Museum of Medical History are located on the bright and open high-ceilinged main floor. The Putnam Gallery which makes up the second story of the building primarily hosts lectures which are held weekly and are free to the public, but the walls are covered in large oil portraits of prominent medical figures from MGH's history. From there, patrons can climb the stairs or take the elevator to the rooftop garden. Additionally as part of the museum, patrons are welcome to visit the Ether Dome located in the Bulfinch Building, the surgical amphitheater, which was the location of the first successful public surgery using ether as an anesthetic.

The museum's website also hosts the Massachusetts General Hospital Catalog of Art and Artifacts. Included are hundreds of images and information on the museums medical equipment, memorabilia, instruments, paintings, and photographs, as only a fraction of the collection is on display. While there is no explicit mission statement located on the museum's webpage, it can be assumed that this portion of the "About Us" page sums up the institution's mission,

The Paul S. Russell, MD Museum of Medical History and Innovation tells the rich story of Mass General through interactive media displays, artifacts and photographs. You can learn about the hospital's important contributions to the medical field and see how these discoveries and advancements have shaped the present – and how the hospital can continue to shape the future of medicine.

The Russell Museum is dedicated to drawing connections between innovations spanning a period of more than 200 years – from the hospital’s charter in 1811 to present day. We encourage you to visit us for an experience that will inform, inspire and engage.

FULLER CRAFT MUSEUM

455 Oak Street

Brockton, Massachusetts 02301

http://www.fullercraft.org

Figure 1: Fuller Craft Museum in summer. Photo credit: Lightchaser Photography.

The Fuller Craft Museum is the only museum in New England dedicated to collecting and exhibiting contemporary studio craft, which encompasses hand-made functional and decorative objects fashioned from familiar materials such as wood, metal, glass, ceramics, paper, and fiber, and which date from circa 1945 to the present day.[1] It is located in the small city of Brockton, about twenty-five miles south of Boston, in Plymouth County.[2] The museum is an especially young institution, especially by New England standards. In August 1946, Myron F. Fuller (1872-1960)[3], a Brockton native who had amassed considerable wealth as a geologist and hydrologist, set up a million dollar trust toward the creation of a museum in the Fuller family name.[4] In 1969, the Boston architecture firm of J. Timothy Anderson & Associates built the 21,000 square foot museum building – which was awarded the national blue ribbon for excellence by the Society of American Registered Architects that same year[5] -- and the museum opened its doors to the public under the moniker, the Brockton Art Center Fuller Memorial.[6] At its inception, there was still no collection, and the space was used mostly for public lectures and small exhibitions of paintings and drawings.[7] Annual membership cost a mere ten dollars.[8] The Center struggled to forge its own unique identity over the course of its first thirty-five years, collecting art in every imaginable medium and changing its name to the Fuller Art Museum, before finally establishing itself in 2004 in its current iteration as the Fuller Craft Museum.[9]

Today, under current director Jonathan Fairbanks, Fuller Craft Museum receives more than 20,000 visitors and presents on average sixteen exhibits per year[10] in six of its seven galleries; e.g., the D. Tarlow Gallery, the M. Tarlow Gallery, the Barstow Gallery, the Stone Gallery, the Community Gallery, and the Courtyard Gallery.[11] On-going exhibitions include Mark Davis’ Icarus mobile that hovers above the Courtyard Gallery, and the permanent collection entitled Traditions and Innovations: Fuller Craft Museum Collects which is housed in the Lampos Gallery.[12] The Great Room proffers another potential exhibition space but its main function is to hold events, lectures, conferences, and workshops, because it has the capacity to seat large numbers of visitors and because it contains a stage.[13] Other indoor spaces include the artKitchen Café, Studios A & B, and the Reception/Museum Shop.[14] The building’s open air spaces comprise two large courtyards – Courtyards A & B – and two smaller courtyards – Courtyards C & D – and a Patio area that extends to the edge of Porter’s Pond, which the museum along with its 22-acre wooded grounds shares with Frederick Law Olmstead’s 700-acre D. W. Field Park.[15]

As visitors approach the covered walkway leading to the main entrance from the front parking area, they encounter a number of outdoor sculptures, many of which are made from natural materials in harmony with the rock-strewn, woodland setting.[16]

Figure 2: Fuller Craft Museum Floor Plan

“Right now, Fuller Craft Museum is the most exciting place to be in the world of contemporary craft. We offer a collection, exhibitions, demonstrations, workshops, and special events where you can literally touch the materials and objects. We strive to keep this work accessible, to put people in touch with the minds and methods of the makers, in touch with the values embodied by craft. Thus our motto–let the art touch you.”[17]

The statement above accurately expresses the heady optimism and boundless energy of this young, ambitious institution though it may strike some readers as pure braggadocio, disingenuous hyperbole, and perhaps, with particular regard to their motto, a little creepy. Considering that fewer than seventy years have passed since Myron Fuller mandated that a museum and cultural center be established in memory of his family, stipulating only that it should be educational in nature[18], Fuller Craft has succeeded in honoring its debt to its original benefactor and ably fulfills its purpose in serving the greater community. Studio craft, with its origins of highly skilled artisans organized within trade guilds, its production of “common” objects that are at once functional and decorative, and its roots in global cultural traditions that are readily transmitted to successive generations arguably possesses greater inherent, popular accessibility than fine art; and it lends itself naturally to community engagement through hands-on “maker” workshops, classes, the provision of on-the-spot opportunities for gallery visitors to “give-it-a-try”, etc. The collection’s emphasis on relatively recent and current works has as its corollary that the majority of its featured artisans are still living and actively creating. As a result, Fuller Craft Museum and its visitors literally gain access -- both directly and indirectly -- to first-hand contextual information from the makers themselves. The museum’s inclusion of paper-cutting artist Béatrice Coron’s TED Talk video to accompany its current Paper and Blade: Modern Paper Cutting exhibition (on view through July 31^st) serves as a good illustration:

Béatrice Coron: Stories cut from paper | TED Talk | TED.com

[1] About Us | Fuller Craft. Web. 18 March 2016. http://www.fullercraft.org/about-us/

[2] Fuller Craft Museum – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Web. 18 March 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuller_Craft_Museum

[3] “Fuller Craft Museum.” AFA News. Antiques & Fine Art Magazine, 02 Jan 2013. Web. 18 March 2016. http://www.afanews.com/articles/item/1506-fuller-craft-museum#.Vuxe4_krJ9M

[4] About Us | Fuller Craft. Web. 18 March 2016. http://www.fullercraft.org/about-us/

[5] Marshall, Traute M. (2009), Art Museums Plus: Cultural Excursions in New England. Hanover, NH and London, UK : University Press of New England. 131-32.

[6] Idem.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Annual Report 2014: july 1, 2013-june 30, 2014. Web. 18 March 2016. http://fullercraft.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Annual-Report-FY2014-zip.pdf

[11] Plan Your Visit | Fuller Craft Museum. Web. 18 March 2016. http://fullercraft.org/plan-your-visit/

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid.

[17] About Us | Fuller Craft. Web. 18 March 2016. http://www.fullercraft.org/about-us/

[18] Ibid.

Final Project, Part 1: Orchard House

Orchard House is an historic house museum in Concord, Massachusetts, situated about a mile from the town center. Built in the early 18^th century, it is preserved as the home of Louisa May Alcott who lived there with her natal family for about twenty years in the mid to late-19^th century. It was at Orchard House that Alcott penned her famous novel Little Women and there that she set her story.

The house remains much the same as it was when the Alcott family lived in it. It is a two story frame house, with an addition tacked on the back, apparently by Alcott’s father. No structural changes have been made since and about 80% of the furnishings belonged to the family, so visitors to the house get a strong sense of what it was like to live there in Alcott’s time.

The house is open to the public via guided tour only. Orchard House also offers education programs and tours for school age children, and they promote a strong link to the Girl Scouts. Many of the programs enable Girl Scouts of all ages to earn merit badges. School group tours may also include “living history” with costumed actors playing the parts of members of the Alcott family.

Other members of Alcott’s family were well-known in their own right: Her father was an educator with radical ideas about to engage children in learning, and a good friend and fellow Transcendentalist of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and one of Alcott’s sisters was an acclaimed artist. No formal mission statement appears on the website, however, it is apparent that the focus of the house is to preserve it primarily as the home of Louisa and her literary accomplishments.

http://www.louisamayalcott.org/index.html

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Chateau-sur-Mer

From the mid-19th through the early 20th century, Newport, Rhode Island was a favorite summer destination for the Gilded Age's richest scions. These grotesquely wealthy families built opulent summer homes there, throwing enormous parties and generally consuming as conspicuously as possible. Today, some of these mansions have been made open to the public under the aegis of the Preservation Society of Newport County.

The Chateau-sur-Mer was one of the first of these mansions to be built, predating the Vanderbilts' Newport houses by several decades. The house was designed and built in 1852 by architect Seth C. Bradford in the High Victorian style for the China trade merchant William Shepard Wetmore.

During the 1870's, the house was remodeled and redecorated by the architect Richard Morris Hunt, who brought a Second Empire French Style of architecture into the mix. Though Hunt thoroughly altered the look of the mansion, significant parts of Bradford's original vision remained. As a result, the mansion currently stands as an excellent exemplar for several schools of architectural and artistic aesthetics of the entire 19th century.

For reference, the Preservation Society of Newport County has made the following mission statement regarding their historic houses:

Great Houses connect people to a nation’s heritage and open windows to another age.
The Preservation Society of Newport County is a non-profit organization whose mission is to protect, preserve, and present an exceptional collection of house museums and landscapes in one of the most historically intact cities in America.
We hold in public trust the Newport Mansions which are an integral part of the living fabric of Newport, Rhode Island. These sites exemplify three centuries of the finest achievements in American architecture, decorative arts, and landscape design spanning the Colonial era to the Gilded Age.
Through our historic properties, educational programs, and related activities we engage the public in the story of America’s vibrant cultural heritage.
We seek to inspire and promote an appreciation of the value of preservation to enrich the lives of people everywhere.

The Paul Revere House - Part One

The Paul Revere House

19 North Square

Boston, MA 02213

Picture from The Paul Revere House Website

Basic History of the House

The house was first built in 1680 on the site where the former parsonage of the second Church of Boston was located. Increase Mather and his family, inducing Cotton Mather, lived in the parsonage from 1670 till the Great Fire of 1676. A brand-new two-story townhome was built four years later. Robert Howard, a wealthy merchant, was the first person to own the new building.

Paul Revere brought the house in 1770 and had his wife, Sarah, their five children and his mother, Deborah. They all lived there on and off till 1800 when he has sold the home. The building then became a tenement. The ground floors have become a shops of variety such as a candy store, fruit and vegetable store, and go on.

In 1902, his great Grandson, John P. Reynolds, Jr. bought the house in order to make sure the house won’t be demolished. In short few years, he has raised enough money and formed the “Paul Revere Memorial Association” – their mission basically was to preserve and renovate the building. In 1908, they opened the house to the public and it was one of the earliest historic house museums.

*Note: 90% of the house structure, two doors, three window frames, and portion of the flooring, foundation, inner wall material, and raftering are all original.

Brief Description of the site

It is located downtown Boston on North Square. It is located between the Faneuil Hall and Old North Church stops on the Freedom Trail.

Mission Statement

“The Association actively preserves and interprets two of Boston's oldest homes. We provide our increasingly diverse audience with remarkable educational experiences based on historical issues and social history themes relevant to our site, our neighborhood, and Boston from the 17th through the early 20th century.”

According to the website, www.paulreverehouse.org, here is what they have to say what they did according to their mission statement. From what I can see online, and from what I have heard, they do what they meant in the mission statement.

“Today the Association is an American Association of Museums accredited museum with a full range of operations and programs. Our properties are key sites along Boston's Freedom Trail, private cooperative sites in the Boston National Historical Park, and members of the Boston House Museum Alliance.

We fulfill our mission by offering educational programs for all ages - walking tours, concerts, living history presentations, lectures, school programs and much, much more. We maintain an important collection of Revere-made objects, household artifacts, items commemorating the midnight ride, and items related to Revere's life and work. We still collect actively and welcome donations of appropriate Revere-related items.

The Association is also responsible for the ongoing care of both of our historic buildings - the Paul Revere House and the Hichborn House. Annual maintenance projects and capital restoration efforts require that funds be raised on an annual basis.

We award an annual research fellowship, publish research on a range of topics and produce numerous curriculum materials teachers. We would love to hear from people who are interested in what we do or would like to learn more about opportunities such as jobs, internships, and volunteer work.

The Association supports its restoration efforts, cares for its collection and funds daily operations and programs through a healthy mix of earned income and contributions.”

References

"Paul Revere House." Wikipedia. Accessed March 20, 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Revere_House.

"The Paul Revere House." The Paul Revere House. Accessed March 20, 2016. https://www.paulreverehouse.org/.