A look into the decorative lives of four bachelors from the early twentieth century.
Celebrating the exotic and the ordinary
I first encountered the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities in the 1970s, when I was a graduate student at the University of New Hampshire. Wanting to learn more about the material world of seventeenth-century New England, I signed up for an architectural tour led by Abbott Lowell Cummings. It must have been in the fall. I remember …
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The legacy of Henry Davis Sleeper
December 2009 | November 1915. On “one of those autumn days when the darkness comes so suddenly that one seems to bump one’s head against it,” a small party departs from an unnamed city. Wrapped in furs and nestling into blankets, they huddle in the back of the open car to ward off the chill. Soon paved roads give way …
The Hidden Magic of Henry Davis Sleeper’s Beauport
December 2009 | Beauport, with its labyrinth of small rooms, layers of objects, and false doors, is a playhouse and a place that exists as a dream. The small rooms change shape, lead one to another without a quickly understood plan or even a simple hallway. There are doors, windows, paneling, tables, chairs, and art taken from long-gone houses, different …
Great Estates: Roseland Cottage in Woodstock, Connecticut
Beginning in the second quarter of the 19th century, the Gothic revival style took hold in the United States, impressing upon domestic and public structures a romanticized rendering of medieval life. Inspired by the movement abroad—primarily in England—the revival was first championed in the United States by Alexander Jackson Davis, a designer whose influential books included Rural Residences, which was, …
Great Estates: Hamilton House in South Berwick, Maine
Summer is the perfect time to explore lesser-known historic house museums, and Hamilton House in South Berwick, Maine—one of Historic New England’s thirty-six sites and a National Historic Landmark—is one such gem. Situated on a bluff that overlooks the Salmon Falls River, the house and grounds offer an idyllic retreat, and, as the slideshow below demonstrates, is an inspired setting.Built …