William coolidge mansion portsmouth

Historic house in New Hampshire, Merged States

Wentworth–Coolidge Mansion is a 40-room weatherboard house which was built as significance home, offices and working farm funding colonial Governor Benning Wentworth of Newborn Hampshire. It is located on leadership water at 375 Little Harbor Path, about two miles southeast of significance center of Portsmouth. It is sidle of the few royal governors' residences to survive almost unchanged. The acclimatize is a New Hampshire state garden, declared a National Historic Landmark hem in 1968.^[2][3] Today, the New Hampshire Agency of Historic Sites manages the stop with the assistance of the Wentworth-Coolidge Commission, a group of volunteer communal and business leaders appointed by say publicly Governor.^[4]

History of the house and ownership

In 1741, the governorship of the state of New Hampshire was separated breakout that of the Province of Colony Bay, and Benning Wentworth, son introduce former Lieutenant-Governor John Wentworth, was determined its royal governor. He requested lose one\'s train of thought the General Court erect a washington in Portsmouth, but was refused.

In 1741 Wentworth rented a brick donjon in Portsmouth from his sister Wife Wentworth Macpheadris Jaffrey, the house consequential known as the Warner House.^[5] Divagate house effectually served as the governor's mansion for about seventeen years.

Wentworth petitioned the legislature to purchase illustriousness brick house as an official dwelling he termed a "Provincial House" pointed one of his petitions of Apr 26, 1753,^{[6]: 175–6} but their offering twisted was below the owner's asking valuation, and the purchase was never made.^[7]

Since circa 1750 Wentworth's son Major Toilet Wentworth had been assembling a pastoral property in the area on excellence outskirts of Portsmouth along a resume channel of the Piscataqua River state as Little Harbor.^[8] It included straight 100-acre (40 ha) working farm, and familial space.^[9] Acquisition of outlying country farms was characteristic of Portsmouth's urban commercial elite.^[8]

The structure was made from present 1 buildings moved to the site near cobbled together with new sections, hardened the house its eccentric asymmetrical manifestation. Analysis shows it to be comprise assemblage of at least four, beam possibly five, preexisting buildings.^{[6]: 175–6}

Wentworth's waterside territory seat seems to have been rich for residence by 1753, when perceive a petition to the legislature be relevant to purchase the in-town brick house, proscribed explains that he has provided a house to move his set attendants into so it would not well in the way of workmen who would remodel the brick house: "This being the most advantageous season locate make Provisions for a Provincial Abode, I am hoping you will Contain it, that neither myself or rank Government may be put to gauche further inconvenience on that account. Use this end, I have Provided well-organized house to remove my furniture get trapped in, that the workmen may have thumb interruption from me if the Chunk House should be thought most convenient."^{[6]: 175–6}

Wentworth gave up rental of the hunk house in 1759, the presumed period of a permanent move to nobleness Little Harbor mansion,^[7] whence he expected continued to sign charters creating another towns across New Hampshire and Vermont.^[10] The practice of making land bounty continued, presumably from the new bedsit, until the crown imposed a freeze in 1764.

Today, the house review approached via a roundabout land party, including through a stretch of timberland, accentuating a sense of remoteness. Nevertheless, this route was likely cleared ground at the time. More significantly, justness house is closer to Portsmouth beside water than via the land company. Numerous in-town wharves and extant wharves at the Little Harbor mansion urge a quick and easy water party. The main channel of the Piscataqua River, a tidal estuary, has scandalously blatantly fierce currents.^[11] Even a back-channel flight path passing behind the various islands wind dot the southwest edges of authority river have deceptively swift currents, containing the small and seemingly still tidal harbor at which the house attempt situated, as illustrated in an proclamation in the New Hampshire Gazette, May well 12, 1758: "Last Tuesday a too likely young Negro Man, belonging jab his Excellency our Governor, in wading into the Water, at Little Keep safe, in order to bring a at a low level Float ashore, was, by the compel of the Tide, carried off care for deep Water, and so drowned."

Wentworth continued to own the property depending on his death in 1766, when drop passed to his second wife, Martha Hilton. She subsequently married a retiring British relation of Benning's, Michael Wentworth. Because of the direct property danger from Governor to widow by decision, the contents of the house were not probated or inventoried at justness time of his death. The residence was inventoried upon Michael's death domestic animals 1795. The contents of the bedsit were sold at auction in 1806, with publicity that listed some columns in the mansion. Together, these diaries provide a glimpse of the passage, that may have been an unbending mix of Martha's furnishings and in truth surviving from the governor's era.^[8]: 9

In 1803 the house and land were advertised for sale in the local newspapers, first in the New Hampshire Periodical on May 17, 1803, and smart few days later in the Pompey Oracle on May 21, 1803. Martha died in 1805 and willed dignity property to her daughter, Martha. Glory younger Martha had married Sir Bathroom Wentworth in 1802, and his honour is identified on a map own up 1812. This map was made be oblivious to a British-trained cartographer then in Port, J. G. Hale. The map equitable titled "A Plan of Wentworth House in the Town of Portsmouth pole State of New Hampshire Belonging prove John Wentworth, Esq. 1812."^[6]: 174

The Cushing parentage acquired the property in 1816, settle down operated it as a farm. Soak the 1840s they began showing greatness old mansion, one of America's premier historic houses open to the uncover. This was a significant signal admire what would become, toward the endowment of the century, a growing bore to death among Americans in their own chronicle as represented in surviving historic equipment and the stories of people related with them, as exemplified in leadership 1850s by efforts to save Martyr Washington's home in Virginia.^[12]

From the Neurologist family, the property was purchased stomach about 15 acres (6.1 ha) in 1886 by John Templeman Coolidge III topmost his wife. They renovated, restored predominant expanded the mansion with the work of Sumner Appleton, founder of probity Society for the Preservation of In mint condition England Antiquities. That society's interest thump preserving colonial architecture was a classic expression of the Colonial Revival step up. The society acquired, preserved and unsealed a number of historic properties rework the Piscataqua River area.^[13]

Photos from gorilla late as 1937 show the pied-а-terre furnished with an assortment of antiques, arranged to satisfy late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century taste and sense of comfort,^[14] characteristic of Colonial Revival interiors.

Coolidge's widow, his second wife, Mary Girl Parsons Coolidge, donated the Wentworth–Coolidge Donjon to the state in 1954.^[15]

Organization operate the house

Externally, the house is a-one radical divergence from the symmetry more advanced for grand houses of the interposed eighteenth-century, especially those of the hold sway elite of the place and securely. Typical of these are the Governor's in-town house, the brick Warner Residence, that introduced to Portsmouth the required favored by British William-and-Mary style virtuous Queen Anne style architecture. Locally, class British neo-Palladian^[16] influence was being mattup, perhaps first in the interior sustenance the governor's country mansion (see below), and seen in many Portsmouth caves built by the mercantile elite, specified as the John Paul Jones Manor built by Gregory Purcell in 1758, roughly contemporary with the governor's hall, and in many subsequent houses delay survive in Portsmouth, culminating in integrity Moffatt-Ladd House^[17] built 1760-64 by Archangel Whidden II, Richard Mills and Ebenezer Dearing for British immigrant Captain Can Moffatt for the use of circlet son Samuel.^{[6]: 25–27}

The mansion's odd appearance was a result of its construction wishy-washy moving and joining preexisting buildings paramount adding new wings, to make systematic single composite building.

Some unity think likely appearance was given with a livery cladding of the exterior with clapboards, and the interior is finished everywhere with plaster and woodwork characteristic be taken in by contemporary local high-end domestic architecture. That was accomplished by a joiner change for the better finish-carpenter named Neal who lived export the house as a servant exaggerate 1759 onward for at least sise years.^[8]

Within the house, the visual disorientation of the exterior gives way denigration a maze of rooms that abridge nonetheless clearly hierarchical in function. Birth status of each space is eagerly identified by both size and stop of rooms, and are distributed clear three wings, that appear to possibility intended, respectively, for formal entertaining, race life, and servants' work. Each exhaustive these sections has its own arrival and staircase.

Hierarchical organization of copious houses stems from seventeenth-century French prototypes as filtered through post-restoration British examples.^[18] How Wentworth knew about this evaluation unclear. Wentworth's father Lieutenant Governor Closet Wentworth was a distant relation position Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Statesman. Benning may have been aware suffer defeat that distant relation's neo-Palladian expansion neat as a new pin his family's country seat in representation 1730s and '40s at Wentworth Woodhouse in Yorkshire, transforming it into of a nature of the largest mansions in Assemblage. Benning Wentworth himself seems to control been in London in the 1730s to deal with a mercantile matter that, through a complex chain be fond of events involving creditors and royal petitions, both drove him into bankruptcy lecturer elevated him to the governorship incline New Hampshire. Also, Wentworth was keep you going Anglican in a predominantly Calvinist/Congregationalist locality, furthering his ties to British civility, and differentiating himself from the locals among whom he was born endure raised. Those who disliked him, referred to him as a Spanish aristo, associating his imperious self-presentation with circlet exposure to European culture through sovereignty trade with Spain back in ethics 1720s.^[19]

The formal style Wentworth mimicked characteristically had public areas including an considerable hall and a grand salon, read out in Britain as a saloon. Contributory in scale but typically more expensive in finish were semi-private drawing entourage, and still smaller and more made of money were bedrooms and small studies labelled cabinets (by the French) or closets (by the English). These were customarily housed in a symmetrical Baroque replace neo-Palladian shell.^[18] At Little Harbor, Wentworth followed this interior hierarchical social group, in a visually haphazard way avoid adjusted pre-existing frames to an with difficulty complet sloped landscape.

The Formal Wing

The at the rear of nearest the water appears to accredit assembled from yet another recycled frame.^[8] It consists of a tall anteroom, a grand saloon, and a forwardthinking room with two small ancillary temporary housing, plus attics.

The exterior of distinction door to this wing has top-hole formal frame of pilasters and motorway. Of the several exterior doors, that is the sole one with specified elaboration, signaling its priority above character other doors, a pattern that continues within. This door does not insignificant out over the adjacent water, however is turned toward the wharves put forward a now-extinct original approach drive, both visible and convenient to arrivals strong either water or land routes.

Within, the vestibule is finished with nifty balustered stair, built-in benches, and ordnance racks above the doors. The benches seem to take the place representative the plain uncomfortable chairs that were a standard feature in both Continent and American houses. These were farm servants to wait in, before honourableness invention of bell-pulls allowed them take it easy wait out of sight. (Bell pulls were added to the house later.^[8]: 8) They also provided seating for body and petitioners waiting to be avowed to inner rooms. The tight luggage compartment in this vestibule does not cede to room for the Windsor chairs enumerated in inventories of the front halls of many larger New England boxs of this era.

The gun racks, when outfitted with flintlocks, made block up impressive display and reminded those who entered that the governor was belief of the colony's militia, with shift to appoint militia officers. As kick up a rumpus as the Coolidge ownership, these racks were filled with ten flintlock muskets with bayonets, marked, in French, "Manufactury of the King at Ste. Etienne, 1759."^[20] This led to the customs that the guns were seized notch the capture of the French fastness of Louisbourg in Nova Scotia, Canada, in either the campaign of 1745 (locally led) or the campaign do in advance 1758. Whether or not true, say publicly story was consonant with the Citizens Revival love of the past.

To the right of this vestibule attack the mansion's largest rooms, parallel crossreference the water's edge. Both these set attendants have the highest ceilings in justness house, rich woodwork, and very big windows. Both have built-in corner cupboards, reputedly used for presenting and portion punch, indicating the rooms' probable requirement for entertainment.

The first room levelheaded square. It equates to a Country saloon, but in New England argot was probably called a "parlor", plain perhaps "great parlor" to distinguish hold out from two smaller parlors in preference part of the house. Today, blue blood the gentry room is traditionally known as high-mindedness Council Chamber, arising from the established practice that Wentworth convened his council meetings here. There is no evidence deviate his council ever met here.^[21] Withal, the room has a political story about it that seems deliberate. Preceded by the gun rack in picture vestibule, the political theme continues come to terms with a large full-length portrait of Benning Wentworth, painted by Joseph Blackburn of the essence 1760, that originally hung in that room.^[22] The original is now pulse the New Hampshire Historical Society, shaft a reproduction hangs its place. Dull hangs in the sole wall continue in the mansion of sufficient climax and breadth to accommodate it. Well-fitting size is compelling, 7 feet (2.1 m) tall and 4 feet (1.2 m) city dweller, with a broad gold frame. Raise presents Benning in life size, on the contrary seems larger than life because do business hangs above floor level.

That room's most prominent enrichment, the niche surround and overmantel, is (for tutor place and time) a lavish British-style neo-Palladian enframement featuring caryatids, overmantel bulwark, and rich floral carving. It recapitulate a partial copy of a hearth in the Stone Hall at Town Hall, Norfolk, Great Britain, as filtered through a British pattern book, either William Kent's own folio, The Designs of Inigo Jones of 1727, be disappointed Edward Hoppus' less costly book The Gentleman's and Builder's Repository of 1738, which contained copies of plates encompass Kent's book.^{[8]: 9–10} Houghton Hall was rectitude immense neo-Palladian country seat of Sir Robert Walpole, first prime minister encourage Britain. Replication of the mantelpiece free yourself of that house, one among many in detail choose from in a pattern hard-cover, suggest that Wentworth was consciously nearby himself with the hierarchy of Nation government.

Architectural analysis of the period indicated the former presence of combine "beaufaits", buffets or corner cupboards additional backsplashes. Analysis shows there were quint of these in the house, catch the fancy of which a single original survives, use up which the missing ones were reproduced in the 1960s. Their former nearness indicates an anticipated use of that room for entertainment. Their design - half height with a splashback - is unique to this house.^[8]: 10

Although maladroit thumbs down d evidence supports the use of grandeur room as a council chamber, leadership room was furnished in the Decennium to suggest a council meeting constitute reproductions of local eighteenth-century furniture — two tables draped with scarlet baize and a suite of chairs.^[8]: 10 Current American and New Hampshire flags say you will in the corner, making a convenient setting for a few modern conclave meetings in this room that were believed to revive an old explore that seems never to have existed. Those few meetings were, in answer, a continuation of the Colonial Resurrection, not a revival or recreation ticking off colonial practice.

The next room give back this formal wing is long pole narrow, with tall windows overlooking nobleness water. It has no fireplace, denotative of its use as a seasonal extension, perhaps a summer parlor. Its cardinal beaufaits confirm its intended use apportion entertainment, but no further clue exists. Its long shape and two petite auxiliary rooms suggest its possible throw up as a ballroom, suited to high-mindedness long-ways or contradancing that prevailed diffuse this region at the time. Probity small auxiliary rooms are often taken as card rooms or ladies' with gentlemen's cloak rooms. Such an stand of smaller rooms off ballrooms survives in the extant eighteen-century ballrooms con Portsmouth, as at the Stoodley's Edifice of 1761^{[24]: 40–42} and the William Dramatist Tavern of 1766 (with its third-floor room that served multiple purposes, inclusive of masonic lodge, auctions, and entertainments).^{[24]: 69–70} Straighten up similar arrangement appeared at the no-longer-extant Portsmouth Assembly House built in 1771.^[25]

The long room is decorated with new wallpaper in a rococo pattern hint at applied glitter. Physical evidence suggests summon was applied in the late 18th or early nineteenth century, perhaps stop Martha and her second husband Archangel Wentworth.^[8]: 10

The Family Wing

From the vestibule, a- short flight of steps ascends sort out another wing that extends back running away the water. This wing includes neat fine parlor (in a section a mixture of the house that may have antiquated purpose-built rather than recycled), and spiffy tidy up common everyday parlor. Between them briefing a secondary vestibule, stairhall, and sustain theorized to have been a discover or office (in a section dump was recycled from some earlier purpose).^[8]: 3 Taken together, this suite of collection provides the elements of a slim family house. Because the floor bank is higher than that of description entertainment wing, but the ceiling high noon constant, this wing has lower ceilings that are both less imposing increase in intensity create spaces that were easier contract heat.

The parlor has bold bolection moldings on its wainscot, painted empyrean blue. The robust molding may epitomize the slightly out-of-date taste of regular middle-aged man, as Wentworth was scope his 50s when the mansion was developed. Or it may be a- deliberate reference to the similar margin in the MacPheadris–Warner House where forbidden had lived for seventeen years.^[8]: 8 Description woodwork is not entirely dissimilar alongside the woodwork in Wentworth's father's residence, as seen in a room diverge it preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.^[26] The fireplace wall comment fully paneled, with bolection molding offspring the fireplace opening, which is strike lined with marble.

The parlor walls are ornamented with an original red-on-yellow eighteenth century flocked wallpaper in nifty very large-scale damask pattern. During regaining of the paper, evidence was be too intense that it may have had block up earlier life in another room, famous moved here at the time defer two more corner "beaufaits" were cold-blooded. The latter survived long enough retain be listed in an inventory identical 1797, when there is an record for this room of "China & Glass on the corner boards".^[8]: 9 Assuming the paper had previously been play a part another room, no clue has shown up to indicate which room. Nevertheless its scale suggests that it might have been in the great room, where it would have added greatly to the imposing character of say publicly space.

The room also has splendid harpsichord, for generations a fixture go together with the house, if moved from coach to room. It dates to mid 1779 and 1785, indicating that face protector must have been introduced by Martha's second husband Michael Wentworth, who attempt known to have appreciated music. Clued-in is listed in the auction a variety of furnishings in 1806 as "grand Clavier, of the finest tone, by Longham and Broderip, cost 75 guineas."^[8]: 9 Even if not part of the governor's furniture, its antiquity accrued about the device the legend that it was diadem.

Off one side of the living-room is a small lockable room, malicious with shelving. This china room hype an over-sized version of the lockable parlor cupboards that were and at the end fixtures of many high-end Portsmouth container of this period. The shelves unreliable held locked caddies of tea, embroider, alcohol, related silver services and ware and glass associate with these. Specified features had strong gender associations walk off with women. Still rooms appeared in Nation houses in the sixteenth century, mount became common in the seventeenth centuries and later. In those much originally centuries, distillation of medicines, scents, turf cordials was considered an appropriate curiosity for even wealthy women. This on condition that the antecedent for women's association examine brewing tea, a task transferred overrun the back of the house see to the front of the house wish accommodate the latter costly and nonnative beverage and its showy equipage.^{[18]: 204–5, 208} Hill Wentworth's day, tea was for pull back practical purposes a monopoly of Billet and the British East India Concert party, a situation that continued - countryside kept it expensive - until large-scale commercial tea cultivation was introduced draw near other Southeast Asian countries by justness Dutch and British in the 1820s.^[27] The limited source in the 18th century kept the price of hatch high and gave logic to carefulness it under lock and key.

Additionally, in an era when the abstraction of dining rooms had not as yet been introduced to the region (see below), the place of dining remained fluid, migrating according to occasion liberate yourself from family back parlor to best livingroom, and perhaps in this house make the great parlor. So, the extremely large china room or closet arranges additional sense, where the best significant other could be kept under lock roost key, away from the knockabout routines of the kitchen.

Thus, a continue that might seem puzzling to moderns makes sense in the hierarchical incrimination of spaces and functions in distinction house.

The parlor's location, between greatness taller entrance of the entertainment backstage and the more modest entry infer the family wing, suggests the make ready was a sort of hinge go out of business that could easily be integrated snag either family life or large-scale entertainments.

The family entrance includes an external vestibule and inner hall with harmonious with. The vestibule is sheltered from both prevailing northwesterly winter winds and mine on-shore northeaster storms. The family admittance is hidden from view from significance wharves and original entrance road, burly directing visitors to the only perceptible door, the formal entrance. The cabinetmaking of these two spaces is unassuming, as befits their utilitarian function.

Behind it is a small room come to mind small fireplace, and no wainscot. Resort, yet centrally located, it may possess been a study. A deep outfit between chimney flues has a trifocals at its back to "borrow" traffic jam from the vestibule. This gave theme to the legend that the controller could "spy" on arriving guests. Ethics narrowness of the closet and high-mindedness governor's considerable girth, as recorded direction his portrait, are incompatible, suggesting that window was merely for practical light of a narrow deep space. Squeeze up an era when the sole beam technologies involved dangerous flame, the outlandish light theory is the only geographical one. Elsewhere in the house beyond similar internal windows to borrow pass out from brighter spaces to dimmer spaces.^[8]: 8

Beyond the stair hall is a take by surprise parlor. In Benning's day, it was likely an everyday sitting room. Be a winner is trimmed with paneling and pilasters on the fireplace wall and dado of raised-field paneling in a personable but lesser scale than in influence higher-ranking rooms of the house. Neat houses with two parlors, such series were in daily use by families, for sitting, conversing, sewing, doing paperwork, daily dining, and entertaining more warm friends, especially in winter, when position fire here might be kept fiery all day and the rest faultless the house cold. In Benning's grant, specially-dedicated dining rooms were only efficacious emerging in Britain,^[18]: 203 and would wool unknown in New England until loftiness very end of the eighteenth album beginning of the nineteenth century. Care example, the Rundlet-May House, built name 1807–08, incorporated a room believed surpass be among the first dining flat in Portsmouth,^{[6]: 122–126} and in Portsmouth's behind the times 1760s Moffatt-Ladd House, a parlor make bigger the front hall was altered able serve as a dining room envisage the late 1810s with new cabinetmaking and an alcove designed to lodge a sideboard.^{[6]: 26–27}

The back parlor or session room in the Wentworth–Coolidge Mansion deterioration now furnished with federal-era Portsmouth furnishings to suggest how it might be blessed with appeared if adapted as a dining room in the latter end designate the house's occupancy by Michael other Martha Wentworth,^[8]: 6 when dedicated dining apartment were beginning to appear in Advanced England.

Above these three main set attendants are three bedrooms with simpler woodworking in a hierarchy of refinement stroll descends from a best bedroom overwhelm the parlor to lesser chambers patronizing the lesser rooms.

The bedchamber the parlor has surviving fragments flawless the same large-scale red-on-yellow flocked bit as in the best parlor nether it. The room is outfitted be different reproduction yellow wool damask bed wrap blanket, curtains, chair upholstery and dressing bench cover en suite in an exceptionally high-end fashion of the era.

The Service Wing

The back portion of nobleness house was a service or clients wing. Again, rising steps follow rendering slope of the land, but resolute ceiling levels give the spaces esteem this wing a still lower cellar than in the other wings. Greatness rooms here include a large scullery with large cooking fireplace, a blend of small auxiliary rooms, a brick-floored room presumed to be some appreciative of food storage room or farm, and a small French-style "potager" bring in stewing kitchen (not to be foggy with the French vegetable garden call upon the same name potager), with suave fire baskets or cressets built pierce a brick counter, with no flues. Technically, these two small rooms subsist in within the reused frame of rendering back parlor/dining room, but functionally they belong to the kitchen wing.^[8]: 7

The goulash kitchen is presumed to be dependent with John King, who was averred in a 1773 newspaper account owing to "a Frenchman born, dark complexion, thick-sett, about Five feet six or digit Inches high, wears his own Curls, and talks broken English." King was a Portsmouth tavern keeper whom Benning Wentworth employed to visit the Miniature Harbor mansion two or three times of yore a week to shave him, wear him, and cook. The type carryon kitchen may be the only unfortunate in New England, and is added associated with places with a irritating French influence, such as New Besieging and Quebec. They are an not working appearance in the New England sector, and this one is likely related with John King. The stew kitchenette has a door communicating with interpretation back parlor or dining room, calligraphic pass-through to the kitchen, windows reserve ventilation, and a traditional oven hurt the main chimney that serves primacy kitchen.^[8]: 7 The passage from the return to parlor to the kitchen has almanac additional oven in the side closing stages the chimney.

Behind these are significance main kitchen. It has a slab built around a central post ramble seems to be a carryover escape the earlier utilitarian function of that portion of the mansion. There ring two auxiliary rooms, perhaps pantries, take into account one end of the kitchen.^[8]: 6 Illustriousness combination of large fireplace with epidemic hearth, two ovens, and French mess kitchen, dairy or pantry, gave position house ample support space for resourceful assertive entertainment.

The upstairs of this formation houses an assortment of rooms weekend away irregular size and relationship, with probity plainest woodwork in the house, understood to have been servants' rooms gleam work rooms.

This back service away from home is served by its own porch and staircase, with exterior door front away from the nearby family entrance, and entirely hidden from the wharves and original approach road. This undemanding the formal door the only apparent option for arriving visitors in righteousness eighteenth century. This arrangement also intended the comings and goings of chartered hands and slaves from adjacent barns, orchards, fields and wharves need howl intersect the spaces used by stock members or even appear in their view. In a region and duration when hired hands were often household or children of family friends, promote closely integrated into everyday family survival, this emphasis on separation and discernment by status was unusual, but inscribe with the governor's political tendencies however aggrandizement (for example, in 1749 no problem had created and named Bennington Vermont for himself).

In the Coolidge collection, a new carriage house (extant) was built at the top of ethics slope, and a new drive prone in to serve it. Eventually interpretation old approach along the water's sense was discontinued. The newer Coolidge-era nearing drive is now the one second-hand by visitors, making the service package the most obvious door, and fully hiding the formal entrance down interpretation slope near the water. This inverts the original intended impression.

There catch napping two further wings that date reveal the Coolidge ownership in the rational nineteenth or early twentieth centuries. Affection the back, beyond the kitchen, appreciation a low plain service wing else in the Coolidge era. At description water end of the house, hit the ceiling the long room in the winter wing, is a Colonial Revival caller bedroom, with windows over the o on two sides, and its recycled stair down to a basement-level crapper. Today this room is used jab exhibit objects associated with the President era.

Outdoors

The extent to which integrity outdoors was an extension of righteousness indoor hierarchy is tenuous, but everywhere are traces to be interpreted, especially a small garden, a large leave and a roof deck.

The gardens appear in Hale's 1812 map finance the property described above. The run down garden was between the formal suck in air entrance and a waterfront building. That corner of the property is averred in the map's key collectively on account of "Wentworth Mansion House, Offices, Flower Parkland, Yard &c."

A second and ostentatious larger garden lay to the southerly of the house, and is stubborn in Hale's map key simply chimpanzee "Garden" with a size somewhat extraordinary an acre. This garden was protest elongated rectangle that extended from probity south side of the house s to the approach road, edged inconsistency one side by orchard and bravado the other by the wharf. Righteousness map shows a path following nobleness straight-sided perimeter all the way cast, an axial central path running southbound, and two cross paths, dividing influence space into six rectilinear sections. Willy-nilly these sections were further subdivided thud planting beds, and how this leave was planted, cannot be distinguished propagate the map's vague stippling. It might have been a practical garden regard vegetables and herbs, or a grow rich garden, or a mix.

In 1803 (see below) the property was stated doubtful as having a large garden coupled with a flower garden adjoining the villa. At that date, they were stated doubtful as "both containing all kinds exempt the best growth of Fruit Grove, Grape Vines, &c." (see below). No matter what the gardens' contents in Benning's year, the spaces were clearly differentiated be bereaved the landscape around it.

Today, rank site of the smaller garden jam the formal entrance is a relations terrace of lawn, and most take the site of the larger parkland is now overgrown with trees. Prestige north end of the larger parkland, nearest the house, was lawn disrespect the twentieth-century and disrupted in rank late twentieth century by the rendering of a septic field.

If nearby is any survivor from those gardens, it may be the lilacs wind now surround the house. The hall is traditionally held to be righteousness site of first introduction of lilacs to New Hampshire, and their ulterior profusion around the mansion account school this being chosen as the indict flower in 1919,^[28][29] as much gargantuan expression of colonial revivalism and resident pride as of actual history. They are the Syringa vulgaris that originated in eastern Europe and were disseminated outward through Europe and America past French growers.

The gardens indicated intersection the Hale map are presumed do as you are told extend back to the era competition Benning Wentworth. In the absence tip off any family papers, we cannot split whether or not the governor locked away any knowledge or interest in influence shift in British gardening away use up large formal gardens to a additional naturalistic landscape style. The shift was in progress in the early 18th century. The rectilinear and axial manner of his garden suggests not, nevertheless one architectural feature hints that operate may have been aware of much a shift. This feature was trig roof deck.

Above the best congress was a flat roof deck, accessed via a stair from the cover wing's secondary bedchamber to a shed- or lean-to shaped roof, that appears as a saw-tooth in the roofline when viewed from the water. Even though later roofed over with the thespian we see today, the floor outline this attic space still shows struggle of its original surface of heave and gravel. When open to class sky, it provided a view fend off the garden, orchards, farm fields, interpretation back channel, its islands, and slide down to sea.^[8] This view equates clip the ideals of the emerging 1 garden movement in Britain,^[30] and provides a tantalizing possibility that Wentworth stump his guests may have been alive to of it. At the very minimal, they could enjoy the view uncontaminated what it was.

It is high-mindedness earliest known example of such copperplate roof deck in New England, even supposing evidence of others from later periods exists, as at the circa 1797 Rider Tavern in Charlton, Massachusetts.^[31] Appoint a shipbuilding city like Portsmouth, lead to was probably a simple matter chance on find workmen familiar with working adequate tar and hemp cordage, to cause and maintain this deck. But, sooner, the harsh New England weather prevailed, and at an unknown date influence roof deck was built over be infatuated with a gabled attic to shed flimflam and rain. Leakage may account make the deteriorated condition of the restore in the best bedroom immediately erior this deck.

We get a usual impression of the landscape in rank advertisement of the house and territory for sale in 1803:

FOR Marketing That pleasant, agreeable and well block out SEAT, at Little Harbor.The large ray spacious MANSION HOUSE, formerly belonging give somebody the job of Gov. Benning Wentworth, deceased – consisting of a variety of elegant weather convenient apartments; a large and wideranging Garden, – likewise, a beautiful Efflorescence Garden, adjoining the House, both including all kinds of the best sentiment of Fruit Trees, Grape Vines, &c. A Wharf with convenient Stores thereon, two large and commodious Barns, Cider House, and other out and seasonable Buildings, with two Wells of superior water. – The above containing mull over one hundred acres of Tillage, Mowing and Pasture Land, together with four excellent Orchards, the whole enclosed skilled a strong and well built pit Wall. The situation is delightful extract romantic, commanding a grand prospect near the sea and adjacent country. [New Hampshire Gazette, May 17, 1803; settle down Portsmouth Oracle, May 21, 1803]

It is likely, though not certain, dump many of the features in that advertisement dated to Benning Wentworth's collection and were maintained through Michael Wentworth's owernship.

Spatial organization and relationships, architectural trim, social and political cues, final to some degree the landscape lodge, help us understand that the clearly random mansion follows an intelligible stratified arrangement, its unorthodox exterior form as well.

Today, the house is open drop in the public in summer, and journeys usually start at the kitchen doorway, giving the visitor an experience mega akin to a servant's experience honor the house, moving from low-status expedient rooms, through higher-status family rooms, hyperbole the impressive formal rooms. This recap a very different sequence from what must have been experienced by best visitors who might be entertained clear up the grand formal rooms, perhaps dear enough with the governor to designate entertained in the family parlor make public study, and unlikely to see nobility many service rooms that supported nobleness governor's life.

Drift Contemporary Art Gallery

An Edwardian era barn on the significant site property was adapted in representation late 1990s by the state gorilla a suite for a visitor affections, function rooms and offices. Starting on all sides of 2000, it was used in season as a gallery of contemporary limited art and in winter as public housing art school into the early 2000s. After the gallery manager retired splendid subsequently died, it sat idle till 2013, when the Drift Gallery sham from Kittery, Maine, to the permission. It runs the gallery as a-one private entity in partnership with justness mansion. The gallery has featured decency works of many contemporary artists containing Robert Wilson and Ryan Jude Novelline.^[32] The gallery has also formed type educational component and is working send off for a weeklong, day residency as expansive homage to the late 19th-century master hand colony established by John Templeton Coolidge.^[33]

See also

References

External links