Category: Colonial Revival

Waltham Public Library (1915)

by Dan//Colonial Revival, Libraries, Waltham

Waltham Public Library

In 1865, Waltham‘s Free Town Library was established as a merger of the earlier libraries of the Waltham Social Club, the Rumford Institute, and the Agricultural Library Association. It was initially located above a bank and, from 1880, in a building at the corner of Charles and Moody Streets. The current library was built in 1914-1915 and was designed in the Colonial Revival style by the Boston firm of Loring and Leland. The builders were Horton and Hemingway of Boston. To make way for the new Library, a tavern, built in 1672 and known as the Central House, was torn down. The library is also known as the Francis Buttrick Library, after the building‘s benefactor. Francis Buttrick, who came to Waltham in 1838 and became wealthy in the lumber and real estate businesses. He left a $60,000 bequest for a library in 1894, but due to legal issues the money had not been available for use for many years. Through the accrual of interest, the bequest had grown to $123,731 by 1914. The Library was expanded in the 1990s. Merry Christmas from Historic Buildings of Massachusetts!

Lydia E. Pinkham Memorial Clinic (1922)

by Dan//Colonial Revival, Commercial, Salem

Pinkham Memorial

In the nineteenth century, Lydia E. Pinkham started a company which produced a popular patent medicine named for its creator. It was an herbal-alcoholic tonic, or “Vegetable Compound,” created to relieve menstrual and menopausal discomfort. Her daughter, Aroline Chase Pinkham Gove, a supporter of what is now the North Shore Children’s Hospital, also established a baby clinic, in honor of her mother, in 1922. The Lydia E. Pinkham Memorial, designed by the Boston architectural firm of Haven and Hoyt, is a distinctive Colonial Revival building at the intersection of New Derby Street and Hawthorne Boulevard in Salem.

Stebbins-Hammatt House (1795)

by Dan//Colonial Revival, Federal, Houses, Longmeadow

Stebbins-Hammett House

The Stebbins-Hammett House began as a brick house, painted red, built in 1795 for Benjamin Stebbins, in the year following his marriage to Lucy Colton. In the twentieth century, the house was owned by the Hammatt family (Julia B. Hammatt was a graduate of Wellesley in 1925). The house was eventually completely rebuilt in wood, with the exception of the two original brick front rooms on the first floor.

Brewer-Young House (1884)

by Dan//Colonial Revival, Houses, Longmeadow

Brewer-Young House

The Brewer-Young House in Longmeadow is a Colonial Revival mansion built in 1884 as a residence for Rev. Samuel Wolcott. The house was next occupied, in 1889, by State Senator George Brewer, who covered the exterior of the house with brown shingles. It was sold, in 1922, to Mary Ida Young, wife of Wilbur Fenelon Young, the inventor of the liniment Absorbine. Young had the brown shingles removed.

The Mount (1902)

by Dan//Colonial Revival, Houses, Lenox, Neoclassical

The Mount

Edith Wharton‘s first book, The Decoration of Houses (1897), written with Ogden Codman, Jr., was very influential as a guide to interior design. The work was a reaction to the Victorian style of heavily curtained and cluttered rooms, instead emphasizing the style of the harmonious and simply proportioned classical rooms of Europe. The main house of Wharton‘s country estate in the Berkshires, called the Mount and located in Lenox, was built in 1902 and displays the principles she had advocated in her book. The house, designed by Wharton with assistance from Codman, was inspired by the seventeenth century English estate, Belton House, but the Mount‘s design also drew strongly on classical Italian and French architecture. The gardens and grounds were also designed by Wharton, with the kitchen garden and drive being designed by Wharton‘s niece, Beatrix Jones Farrand.

Wharton and her husband, Edward, lived in the Mount from 1902 to 1911. The house was later used as a girls’ dormitory for the Foxhollow School, and the site of Shakespeare & Company. In the 1980s, the property was bought by Edith Wharton Restoration, which has restored the grounds and much of the house. The house was opened to the public in 2001, but in 2008 the institution, which had spent millions to acquire the surviving half of Edith Wharton’s collection of books, defaulted on loans and faced foreclosure. Please help save the Mount by visiting and spending money there! There is an online video available of Bob Villa taking a tour of the Mount. Below are some pictures and descriptions of some of the rooms at the Mount and the gardens: Continue reading “The Mount (1902)”

First Church of Christ in Longmeadow (1768)

by Dan//Churches, Colonial Revival, Longmeadow

First Church Longmeadow

Where today there is a flagpole on Longmeadow Green, the town’s first church, built in 1716, once stood. By 1764 it was decided that, owing to the great number of repairs the building needed, a new church should be constructed. It was built on the Green in 1767-1768 and in 1769, the old meeting house was torn down. The new church was remodeled in 1828 and in 1874 it went through even more drastic changes, being moved from the Green to its present site and again being remodeled. The First Church of Christ‘s white pillared front portico was added in 1932, modeled on Boston’s Arlington Street Church.

New England Grange Building (1938)

by Dan//Colonial Revival, Organizations, West Springfield

New England Grange Building

The New England Grange Building is located on the grounds of the Eastern States Exposition in West Springfield. It was built through the cooperation of the six New England state Granges (part of the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry) and was dedicated on September 21, 1938, just before the Hurricane of 1938 struck the fairgrounds. The Connecticut State Grange website has a section with more information about the building.