The Province House and the Preservation Movement

Fay Campbell Kaynor The Province House and the Preservation Movement

Grander and more elaborate than any other building known in the American colonies,Boston s’ seventeenth-centuvyProvince House was demolished in 1922 to make way for a theater. As they documented the building amid wreckers ’ rubble, early preservationistswondering about its original appearance puzzled over howfar conjecturemaygo beyondfact, a tension present in historic preservation to this day.

oston’s enthusiasm for a century after the first settlement of Bos- change has repeatedly built ton, indicates the prosperity of trade,” and unbuilt beloved street- Whitehill remarked.’ scapesand famous struc- For two and a half centuries, the tures. Of the city’s ill-fated Province House stood at the crossroadsof buildings,B the Province House, residence traffic and of governments-untouched by of seven royal governors, was the most the great downtown fires, the city’s waves prestigious. Architectural historian Abbott of rebuilding, and even the street battles of Lowell Cummings called it “one of the the Revolution. Then in 1922, its physical most ambitious houses erected in seven- location and its historical importance teenth-century New England,” and histo- placed it at a new crossroads-the inter- rian Walter Muir Whitehill invoked it as a section of urban development and the measure of Boston’s seventeenth-century young discipline of historic preservation. vitality. “Such a building, coming only half Obscured by a coat of stucco applied

Old-Time New England Fall 1996 Page 5 in 1851 and by the intrusion of late nine- Tremont Street. The purchase meant that teenth-century buildings on every side, the kings’ successiverepresentatives would the Province House had generally been no longer have to officiate from the barn- forgotten by the time that newspapers like Towne House.4 Neither would they were chronicling its last days in late May need to continue renting residences for 1922. By the first of June, people passing their terms of office. along Washington Street were witnessing Following the colonys’ purchase of its actual destruction as the wreckers ’ ball the Province House in 1716, the building proceeded to clear the half-acre of prime was improved in minor ways intended to real estate on which it sat.* In order to enhance the ambience of royal ceremonies make way for a concrete office building and and the aristocracys’ receptions and balls. movie theatre, all structures-including the Ornate iron fence railings were installed at one-time residence of royal govemors- the front entrance and tapestries hung in had to be removed. the drawing room. A mason was hired to set ninety-eight Dutch tiles around the PETER SERGEANTS’ HOUSE second-floor reception room fireplace.And Built in 1679 by affluent citizen and former in 1727, extensive changes were ordered London merchant Peter Sergeant, the by the House of Representatives-“viz, dwelling that later became known as the That the Great lower Room in the Front Province House was embellished with the be wainscotted; after the best and newest latest stylistic refinements of houses of Fashion, that the Ceiling in that Room be the English gentry Influencing its charac- lowred, and the doors altered, That the ter was the ready supply of English arti- windows be altered and sash Lights made sanswho were at that time arriving at the throughout the House, the Windows to be Boston docks3 In 1716, the provincial gov- Cased several of them with Seats . . . That ernment, needing a residence for the royal the Lanthom or Cupola on the Top of the governor, paid twenty-three hundred House. . . be well and sufficiently repaired pounds and took possessionof Sergeants’ and made strong.“5 house. Such an imposing Jacobean resi- After the Revolution, however, when dence, with its fifty-one-foot-long facade, the house ceasedto be British property, the was a rarity in the colonies. And of the Massachusetts legislature saw fit to fund nearly eight hundred dwellings in the port only the most necessarymaintenance. With of Boston at the time, it was the choicest. the 1798 completion of the new (Bulfinch) Situated on Marlborough (now Washing- State House, the way was open for the state ton) Street at its intersection with Milk to divest itself of the Province House, and Street, it was conveniently close to the har- in 1811, after Caleb Strongs’ adminis- bor and the markets of Dock Square. It tration, it was deeded to the Massachusetts had a seventy-five-foot-square lawn at its General Hospital as endowment. There- front door, and behind the house tiered after, the property continued to be leased gardens and orchards reached westward to with no constraints for its protection and

Page 6 Fall 1996 Old-Time New England Fig. 1. Ink and watercolorview of the Province House drawn by Peter Orlando Hutchinson, 1837. Hutchinsons’ drawing, the earliest known detailed view of the building, shows the full three-storyfront-what 7%omas 7ileston

Waterman called “the eighteenth century aspect”-and the houses’ end chimneys, clearly a seventeenth-centuryfeature.

The structuresgrand’ chimney stack had been chopped ojmore than a century earlier. Photograph courtesy Devon

County Council Libraries, Exeter, England. with profit as the priority. It housed tav- Olympia Theatres, Inc. Six years later the erns run by Benjamin Crombie and theater company planned a new building Thomas Wait (circa 1835-50; fig. l), to replace the Province House.6 Ordway’s Opera House (185Os),an amuse- Midway in the mansion’s decline, ment hall (circa 1860), and a lodging house Nathaniel Hawthorne had written his and tradesmen’s shops (1860s to 1920s). “Legends of the Province House” (1838 In effect, the structure had come to be 39), later published as Twice-told Tales.Each regarded simply as unused floor space, of these stories-“Howe’s Masquerade,” a situation similar to the scenario at “Edward Randolph’s Portrait,” “Lady Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia, used in Eleanor’s Mantle,” and “Old Esther 1848 as an auction house. In April 1916, at Dudley”-depends upon legends told to the termination of its ninety-nine-year lease the narrator by a fictitious elderly gentle- to David Greenough, Massachusetts man lounging in the inn’s tap room. General Hospital sold the property to Together, the stories convey a sense of

Old-Time New England Fall 1996 Page 7 the cruel times endured under what the one-time domicile of earls and gover- Hawthorne called “the scourge of disease nors had become “a rabbit burrow . . . and the stately and gorgeous prejudices of divided into tiers of small offices and the tottering past.” Because of the con- workshops.“8 tinuing scarcity of solid information about the house, the “Legends of the Province APPLETON AND THE PROVINCE House” have an importance far beyond HOUSE CAMPAIGN their merit as stories, and historians con- In 1900, the Province House was so incor- tinue to try to separate threads of truth porated in a block of decadent Victorian from Hawthorne’s fiction. tenements that it was visible only to the “Howe’s Masquerade” begins as the most discerning eye. But to antiquarian narrator explores a narrow passagein the William Sumner Appleton, viewing it row of Washington Street shops lined up in that year from the south window of where a lawn shadedby two giant elms had Lloyd’s optical shop down the alley, it was once extended from the stepsof the Prov- “one of the most remarkable houses of ince House to the twin guardhouses at the which there is record in America.” In typi- curb. Readers learn that at the far end of cally conservative terms he declared, the passageand behind a contorted iron “Except in size, [the house] must have been balustrade stands the three-story Province as satisfactory in its own way to a visiting House. Within the house, the one-time Englishman of quality as a home in ballroom is darkened by the shadow of England.“9 Appleton unabashedly put it surrounding buildings, its paneled wain- in a category superior to the diminutive but scoting defaced by a coat of dingy paint. similarly styled “Bacon’s Castle” in Surry At the top of the great staircase-“a feature County, Virginia, a revered English-rooted of grandeur and magnificence”-the spa- American landmark (fig. 2).‘O cious chambers of former times have been This was as professional a statement “cut up by partitions and subdivided into as anyone could have made at the time little nooks” to make lodgers’ rooms. In because, before the 1926 start of the the garret the narrator discovers the “pon- Williamsburg restoration, preservation was derous white oak framework so much entirely in the hands of amateurs. There more massive than the frames of modern were no official preservation programs on [ 1830~1 houses.” This makes particularly the national, state, or local levels, and the sad the narrator’s news that “although the few preservation efforts to that date, includ- timbers are said to be as sound as ever . . . ing Pamela Cunningham’s at Mount it is contemplated to gut the whole.“’ Vernon, each had invented its own proce- The remark fairly accurately prophe- dure. The number of requests Appleton sied the fate of the house. In 1864 a fire in received to serve as a consultant on the the house nearly accomplished the gutting, treatment of old housesindicated the grow- and the years that followed were a period ing need for the professionalism that took ofneglect and defacement. In fact, by 1900, shape in the following decade. Ironically,

Page 8 Fall 1996 Old-Time New England preservation movement in America. His focus on the architectural significance of buildings came to replace earlier romantic and patriotic incentives. And although the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities had been founded in 1888, Appleton was the first antiquarian to define preservation goalsin regional terms. Dedicated and energetic, Appleton simultaneously supported local projects such as the Paul Revere House restoration, gave advice to historical societies, consulted (always free of charge) with owners of old houses, increased his knowledge by visiting such history-oriented enterprises as George Sheldon’s period rooms at Old Deerfield, kept in touch with the preservation movement in Europe, and corresponded with people who were forming preservation policy at the national level. His founding of the Society for the Pres- ervation of New England Antiquities in 1910, midway in the battle to savethe Prov- Fig. 2. Bacons’ Castle, Surry County, Virginia; photograph ince House, allowed Appleton to speaknot by John Barrows courtesy Colonial Williamsburg Founda- simply as an individual but as the repre- tion, Williamsburg, Virginia. sentative of a group. There was certain clout in the fact that SPNBA could boast- the professional presencethat characterized in slightly more than a decade-a the preservation movement in the 1930s membership of nearly three thousand per- depended heavily on the knowledge, the sons, fourteen properties, and a vital quar- wisdom, and the organizational skill of terly magazine.r2 declared amateurs. According to preserva- Between 1900, when he first noticed tion historian Charles Hosmer, Appleton, the Province House, and 1922, when it was though his private income made him tech- demolished, Appleton’s concern for the fate nically an amateur, “came the closestto proof the structure expressed itself in a non- fessional status” of anyone.” stop barrage of inquiry, suggestion, edu- Appleton’s scholarly view of history cation, persuasion, and diplomacy that and of buildings as an unparalleled means was to become the hallmark of his distin- of understanding the pastwere perspectives guished career as a pioneer preservation- that, in effect, made him a catalyst in the ist.13 Appleton’s efforts at the Province

Old-Time New England Fall 1996 Page 9 House-first through preservation, then tion progressed and more and more of the through salvage,and finally through docu- old building was uncovered, it became mentation-filled -the pages of more than absolutely certain that Boston was losing one hundred letters, including several to one of the finest memorials in the coun- Governor Channing Cox. When not writ- try. . . . Some people who are competent to ing letters and reports,Appleton was photo- judge have stated that they consider it graphically “embalming” every accessible would have been [a historic monument] fragment of the edifice and soliciting still superior even to Mt. Vernon. No house of more photographs from the city’s news- this period built of brick in the grand style paper reportersI exists anywhere in an American city.“16 Appleton’s activism at the Province Appleton explained that among the features House may have begun during his college making the house unique in New England years when he noticed that Boston was the third-floor fireplace-“an added newspapers published occasional feature touch of luxury,” he noted, “proving Ser- articles on the house as the locus of British geant to be a man of great wealth and posi- operations at the time of the Revolution. tion whose house might well differ from By the autumn of 1904, with his Harvard all others [in the colonies] in ostentation bachelor’s degree and one postgraduate and comfort.” Appleton’s use of the house course in American architecture as his only as evidence of Boston’s stature in colonial preparation for an asyet unidentified career, times was as telling as his evaluation of the Appleton had approached restoration building itself. He called the house architect Joseph Everett Chandler about “another indication of the relative impor- examining and measuring portions of the tance of Boston, a town of such culture as Province House-some hidden under tin to rank second only to London as a pub- sheathing and some covered with clap- lishing center in the British Dominions at boarding. It had been many decades since the time.“” the house had stood free of other build- One of the most strategic letters in ings. What remained of the original struc- Appleton’s Province House preservation ture convinced Appleton and Chandler that campaign went to Charles Foster, treasurer “the splendor of the house in every detail of the MassachusettsGeneral Hospital, into was unsurmised.“15 Nevertheless, in the whose hands the property was to return in climate of public complacence before the 1916. The letter was written in December inception of historical commissions and the 1914, four years after SPNEA was formed National Trust for Historic Preservation, and eight years before the Province House the opinions of the erudite Appleton and was demolished. Setting out to gain the Chandler went unheeded. hospital trustees’ attention, Appleton first Two decades later, when the final sought to capture Foster’s civic conscience remains of the house had been removed, by educating him about the structure’s Appleton attempted to express the enor- architectural context. He listed the Tufts mity of the loss. “As the work of demoli- and Wade housesin Medford, the Spencer-

Page 10 Fall 1996 Old-Time New England Pierce House in Newbury, and the Peaslee building. And although some associates House in Haverhill as the only brick con- tried to invent ways to help Appleton sal- temporaries to the Province House in the vage parts of the house through an “adopt Northeast. He pointed out the fact that they a memento” strategy,even the plan to rep- were the brickwork of the generation licate the major fireplace at the State House immediately following the original settlers. faltered and died. The only ostensible result He knew of only two other New England of all of these ambitious plans was the offer examples of stepped chimneys-New- ofAppleton’s friends to store parts-bricks bury’s Spencer-Pierce House and the and nails at the Milton home of architect (stone) Whitman House in Guilford, Con- Philip Spaulding and clapboards at land- necticut.rs “In view of the fact that [the scapearchitect Warren Manning’s house in Province House] and lot were presented North Billerica.20 by the state,” he wrote, “it would seem a A few efforts before Appleton’s time graceful compliment to do as much as had resulted in some hit-or-miss salvaging. possible . . . to preserve for the public the In 1867, the museum of the Essex Insti- most important building connected with so tute in Salem had accessioned a Province long and distinguished a line of royal gov- House “balluster.” In 1876 the carved arms ernors.” Foster was easily convinced and of England and the incongruous gilded cooperated in every way possible, appris- Indian weathervane that once surmounted ing hospital directors of the serious conse- the cupola had been depositedat the Massa- quences of demolition at the hands of any chusetts Historical Society’s quarters. Still buyer they might find and doing what he earlier, following extensive 1851 alterations could personally to assistthe preservation- to the Province House, the porch had been ists. His efforts in the end proved fruitless sold to writer and collector Ben: Perley on both scores.19 Poore for use at his West Newbury estate, At the same time that Appleton was Indian Hill. Also at Indian Hill, Poore had soliciting Foster’s support, he was pro- had installed the entire room of paneling posing to financiers, historians, architects, assumed to be from the council chamber and planners one idea after another for sav- (fig. 3). Interest in period rooms being in ing components of the building. But pro- its infancy, installations such as Poore’s had hibitive cost stood in the way of each plan. not previously been subjected to criticism. Appleton’s proposal that the great north But in 1920 two of Appleton’s friends chimney be reconstructed at the south end questioned the integrity of the Indian Hill of the new building was never fulfilled. installation: Chandler and art historian Governor Cox’s proposal to finance the Fiske Kimball argued that the woodwork’s preservation of Province House relics was aestheticeffect was destroyedby the room’s quashed in the legislature after the inappropriate dimensions. Appleton and structure’s new proprietors falsely prom- George Francis Dow, who created interi- ised that two and possibly three of the fire- ors at the Essex Institute’s museum in places would be preserved in the new Salem before he joined the SPNEA staff,

Old-Time New England Fall 1996 Page 11 Fig. 3. The Province House woodwork as installed at Indian Hill, Ben: Perley Poores’ estate in West Newbury,

Massachusetts. Courtesy SPNEA Library and Archives. shared Kimball’s and Chandler’s con- lature cleared the window heads,” while viction that architectural features were an Appleton expressed a suspicion that the essential aspect of the display of living paneling might have been “cut down to fit.” quarters.*’ Indeed the Indian Hill room was little help Uncertainty about the authenticity of to those attempting to determine the the arrangement of Province House appearance of the council chamber at the paneling at Indian Hill was particularly Province House.** frustrating to Kimball, who was inspired The discoursethat it inspired,however, to draw a representation of the paneling as like other aspectsof the battleto savethe Prov- he thought it would originally have ince House, was indirectly to inform a gen- appeared in the council chamber. Working eration of preservationists. Yet in 1922 from a photograph of the Indian Hill Appleton was the soleperson to havethe con- installation (later destroyed by fire), cern, the persistence,the free time, and the Kimball remarked at one point that if the optimism to concentrateon savingthe house. council chamber fireplace mantel at Indian He conceived of practically every initiative Hill was the original it “didn’t leave room and was undismayed when he receivedonly for the tile Hawthorne mentions.” Regard- faint support from such strongholds as the ing windows, he assumed that “the entab- Leagueof MassachusettsHistorical Societies,

Page 12 Fall 1996 Old-Time New England which merely drew up a resolve expressing what they were losing.“26 He could credit “sympathywith the effortsto preservea unique that generation with nothing but the excel- archaeologicalmonurnent.” Appleton knew lent drawings of the house done by John however, that he had the loyal support of a H. Sturgisjust before demolitiona In con- circle of sympathetic associateswhom he trast, Appleton’s multifaceted approach referred to as “our friends at the Historical went so far as to invent a new tradition for Society” or “the Bostonian Society people.” the city: he proposed an annual ritual in And he could depend on a core of informed which the governor, escorted by his staff SPNEA members. Volunteering countless and council, would enter the new hours of time on Province House research “Province Building” and light a ceremonial in the nemesis year of 1922 were men not fire on the grand hearth in the (rebuilt) directly involved in on-site work but who fireplace.28 Appleton called “our architects”~handler, Juxtaposed with Appleton’s unflag- Dow, Kimball, the Mow11and Rand architec- ging commitment was his recognition tural firm, SPNEXs museum curator Philip (after 1916) of the fact that “the building Spaulding, SPNEA member Henry Phillips, was doomed from the moment the con- architect Frank Chouteau Brown, landscape tract for the new building was signed.“29 architectWarren Manning, attorney Richard Yet even as demolition got under way, Hale, historian Walter Kendall Watkins, and Appleton was down in the pit in conversa- architectWilliam Cordingley? tion with Jack Craddock of the wrecking In June 1922, Appleton’s two decades crew. To Appleton’s dismay, Craddock of efforts on behalf of the Province House reported to him that, on the previous night may have seemed to have accomplished when the remains of the south wall had nothing. At the time, no one including crumbled, his men had noticed some large Appleton could see the eventual effect on brick quarter circles-brickwork unlike the preservation movement and on some anything the crew had seen in their thirty of the individuals who were to fill its ranks. years ofwork on historic buildings. At that Appleton could only state that “it has been eleventh hour, Appleton saw the razing of just like burying an old friend.“24 More the Province House as an archaeological philosophically, he opined that “it is only epiphany and looked for someone suited through the process of losing some good to the task of recording, in measured draw- things that it is possible to arouse enough ings and a written report, whatever might interest to bring about the preservation of become evident in the ruins. others.“25He believed, for instance, that a lesson should have been learned at the time WATERMAN AND THE PROVINCE of the senseless 1863 loss of the John HOUSE RECORD Hancock House on Beacon Hill. “The gen- At the suggestion of William Cordingley, eration which let the Hancock House go,” Appleton contacted twenty-two-year-old he pointedly remarked, “had the whole Thomas Tileston Waterman, apprentice in house in perfect condition and could see the nearby office ofchurch architect Ralph

Old-Time New England Fall 1996 Page 13 Fig. 4. William Sumner Appleton(lef!, and Thomas Tileston Watermanconferring at the Province House demolition site, 1922. Courtesythe BostonianSociety, Boston, Massachusetts.

Adams Cram. Waterman, whom Appleton less draftsman to arrive and would then describedsoon thereafter as “a capableboy,” stand around while he photographed and had been spending his lunch hours sketchednewly exposedbrickwork in what prowling the old sections of Boston.3o remained of the actual Province House- Enamoured of old-world craftmanship and the truncated north end wall and sections of all things English, Waterman gladly of the eastfront. When the midnight drafts- made himself available (fig. 4). In turn, the man put his sketch pad and camera under demolition foreman agreed to allow the his arm and bolted up the embankment, Province House walls to remain standing the impatient engines were already snarl- after all surrounding material was removed ing at his heels. so that they could be inspected and The resulting record-inventory, recorded. As part of the agreement, the measured drawings, photographs,and writ- foreman was to notify Waterman whenever ten description of the seventeenth-century any previously hidden part of the structure components-achieved the type of docu- was uncovered. This promise, in light of mentation fostered by the Boston Society the wreckers’ twenty-four-hour work ofArchitects’ survey of buildings, the White schedule, meant occasionalhalting ofwork Pine Series of Architectural Monographs, at two or three o’clock in the morning to and the later Historic American Buildings allow the foreman to telephone Waterman Survey” For Waterman, involvement in at his Louisburg Square lodgings. Work- composing that record started him on his men in the pit would wait for the breath- well-known career in architectural his-

Page 14 Fall 1996 Old-Time New England tory. 32 The Province House provided him with his first close look at what he described as “red, water-struck brick laid in English bond [and] . . _hard burned brick of even dark colors . . . with decorative string coursesof molded, pol- ished, and glazed brick laid in Flemish bond.” It was an opportunity for Waterman to make use of knowledge acquired in boyhood reading, and of a vocabulary that could accurately describe the north- wall chimney as “pierced at the base by a forty four-inch deep opening . . . the arched head extend[ing] the full depth of the reveal, forming a segmental Fig. 5. The sixfireplaces exposedduring demolition of the Province barrel vault which sprang from House north wall. CourtesySPNEA Library and Archives. a projecting impost course.“33 Waterman identified six into three of his four published works, into stepped flues in the chimney wall. They several references in his last (unpublished) were enclosed in a massive stack that had text, into the design for the fireplace in the been chopped off in the 1727 flattening of master bedroom in the Governor’s Palace the roofand hidden, in more recent times, at Williamsburg, Virginia, and into recom- by excrescences(fig. 5). At its base,the stack mendations he made in his consulting work measured fourteen and a half feet by forty- at Henry Du Pont’s Wmterthur Museum.34 five inches. As clapboards were removed, As demolition progressed, the inte- it became evident that the great stack had rior of the shell was found to be as pro- once stood free of the gable wall above the vocative as the exterior. The scale and second floor, in Waterman’s words, “to elaborateness were beyond anything allow for the geometric pattern of the cop- known in America. In spite of deteriora- ing . _ . [while] ascendingindependently for tion and many layers of alterations, ele- the remainder of its height . . . [where] it ments of original framing were intact, was apparently capped by six tall lozenge- including eighteen-inch-square horizontal plan [diagonal-shaped] stacks.”Mention of supporting timbers which possibly indi- Province House brickwork, which never cated the original arrangement of the east ceasedto impress Waterman, found its way

Old-Time New England Fall 1996 Page 15 (front) windows. Working from this evi- the city dump. The effort to preserve the dence, Waterman asserted nearly three Province House, however, has kept the decades later that the facade had once had house alive in the minds of scholars a medieval asymmetry “with the door off intrigued by the fact that there is no seven- center and the right-hand windows more teenth-century depiction of the house. widely spaced than those at the left . . . Three of the earliest views-the Burgis- significant of the transitional character of Price view of Boston, which appeared in the building, more Tudor than Stuart.” He 1725 and 1743 in England; portraitistJohn speculated further, “Here was, perhaps for Smibert’s 1738 “View of Boston,” perhaps the first time in this country, a plan with a the first noncartographic American land- double depth of rooms.” Judging from scape;and a 1770 Paul Revere Boston scene what remained of the building, he hypoth- including Marlborough Street-show the esized that “acrossthe front, the great-room area in which the house was situated but plan familiar to England and the Southern at too great a distance to provide detail. colonies, existed with two rooms and Depicting the Province House itself, Peter [with] a stair hall in the rear.n35 Orlando Hutchinson made an ink- Within the altered rooms and hidden and-watercolor view in 1837 (see fig. 1). behind twentieth-century partitions, five of Benson Lossing’s engraving of the house the original fireplaces--some with plastered was made from a sketch drawn about jambs and some with herringbone-pattern 1840. Leslies’ IllustratedMagazine printed an backs-were perfectly preserved. Bits of 1864 view of the house in flames. And original plaster and painted ornamentation Samuel Adams Drake’s 1900 book on old actually remained attached to the fireplace Boston landmarks included an illustration surround in the first floor’s front room. that combined features of the Price and Scraps of tile indicating that expensive, Lossing views.37 imported blue-on-white tiles had once Other types of images became pos- decorated fireplace jambs in the second- sible after measurements of the building floor (east) chamber hinted at the former were taken in May and June 1922. First grandeur of the room. One afternoon, were Waterman’s measured drawings of the Appleton found a note on his desk with north and eastwalls (fig. 6). Then, although some fragments of elegantlycarved bole&on first urging Appleton that it might be bet- moulding36from the chamber’s fireplacesur- ter to “push the description of the building round. In the note Waterman alluded to “the into its last state of revelation,” Waterman fine room [that such moulding] must have proceeded to draft some conjectural views enriched,” words that probably expressed indicating his idea of the original appear- everyone’s increasing sense of awe as the ance of the house. Putting aside his feel- house revealed its past. ings about “the impossibility of making an While the last remnants of grandeur elevation of the north wall of any value or were being documented, trucks were tak- interest,” he drew a conjectured north wall ing the structure’s 250-year-old bricks to (fig. 7). A major impetus for envisioning

Page 16 Fall 1996 Old-Time New England Fig. 6. Waterman’s measureddrawing ofthe ProvinceHouse north wall, 1922. CourtesySPNEA Library and

Archives.

Fig. 7. Watermans’ conjecturaldrawing of the north (chimney) wall, 1922. CourtesySPNEA Library and Archives.

Old-Time New England Fall 1996 Page 17 this wall was a photograph of the west cor- of guesswork necessary in drawing a rep- ner of the south wall (which, everyone resentation of the north wall.38 agreed, would have matched the north Waterman next portrayed the east wall) showing that the original gable cop- (front) facade in a conjectural view. ing was curved (fig. 8). Taken by Philip Although the checkered history of alter- Spaulding at the start of demolition min- ations to the front required a greater use utes before the wall fell, it was the only of imagination, Waterman’s first attempt photographic record of a curved brick gable was executed only a few weeks after the in Boston. In the SPNRA 1923 annual demolition. Indicating the degree of pub- report, Appleton elaborated on this feature: lic interest aroused by the demolition, the Massachusetts Society, Sons of the Revo-

As the work of demolition got under way, a lution commissioned sculptorJohn Francis wholly unprecedentedquantity of molded brick Paramino to cast Waterman’s drawing in of various shapesand sizeswas disclosed.As bronze, and the plaque was ceremoniously this brickwork was out of place,the nature and mounted (with Appleton’s cooperation) use were a matter of conjectureuntil the nine months later on the building that destructionof the gablewall in the southwest replaced the Province House (fig. 9). The corner. . Here was enclosed a curved brick view combines a full three-story front- coping which masked the straight line of the what Waterman called “the eighteenth cen- gable and the edge of this coping was formed of tury aspect”-with chimneys rising at the three varieties of molded brick. ends as in the seventeenth century. Inter- estingly, the same elements are combined The other primary feature in Water- in Peter Orlando Hutchinson’s 1837 waterman’s drawing-the clustering of chimney color (see fig. 1). Waterman’s plaque sur- stacks-was archaeologically determined vives as the only formal memento of the by the placement of flues in the walls. This Province House in downtown Boston.39 evidence, when integrated with proof of the A second conjectural view of the curvilinear end gables,reduced the amount mansion’s front by Waterman’s pen

Fig. 8. 7he’ curvedcoping of the

ProvinceHouse south wall, exposed

during demolition.Courtesy SPNEA

Library and Archives.

Page 18 Fall 1996 Old-Time New England floor something comparable to the finest of country houses.” There was further support for Waterman’s inclu- sion of front gablesin Appleton’s June 3, 1922, “Notes on the Province House Chimney” which reported “the unmistakable marks” of front gables which he and Waterman had seen when the wreckers exposed the plate. This report refers to “a pair of gables,” whereas Waterman’s study of medieval English buildings persuaded him that the span of the roof would aesthetically have demanded three. Appleton caused considerable con- fusion for later generations in stating in his April 1923 annual report that “the former presence of two or three gables on the front of the house was definitely established and very likely these two [too?] were masked with brickwork with curved copings like those on the main or end gables.” More evidence regarding the front Fig. 9. Bronze tablet designedby Waterman, castbyJohn gables is mentioned in Waterman’s Francis Paramino, and commissionedby the Massachusetts 1922 report, which statesthat “above Society,Sons ofthe Revolutionfor the building that replacedthe the second floor windows were found ProvinceHouse. CourtesySPNEA Library and Archives. fragments of the plate badly decayed, but showing evidences of what were appeared in 1927 after he had made two probably mortises for the front gable wall visits to England (fig. 10). The inked ren- rafters.” And a letter from Appleton tells dering shows a two-story house with mas- of “some interesting spiked ironwork at one sive chimneys at both ends standing free corner seen when the front plate of the ofthe end gables.The apertures on the first house was exposed, and in another place, a two floors, including the doorway, are off suggestion of a mortise hole.“40 center in accordance with Waterman’s In most respects, Waterman’s east opinion of the interior plan. And there are front view matches Appleton’s written three centered dormers, a feature which, report-“The main house was two stories asAppleton explained in his notes, “would in height; the third story coming in under have given ample headroom in the third the slanting roof: . . . The steep pitch of the

Old-Time New England Fall 1996 Page 19 Fig. 10. Waterman’s conjecturaldrawing, neverbefOre published, ofthe east Cfront)wall ofthe Province

House. CourtesySPNJZA Library and Archives. roof... in its two stories of height, about seem to have been endorsed by William equalled the height of the main two stories Cordingley, who drew up a similar inter- of the house below.” The drawing goes pretation. Appleton, suspiciousofanything beyond this description only in its addition that relied on surmise, withheld judgment of classical columns at the entrance, the on both drawings. Cordingley’s and asymmetrical placement of doors and win- Waterman’s attempts to portray the seven- dows, and the elaborate design of the dor- teenth-century front of the house remained mer gables.This last feature, deduced from in the SPNEA files without either com- the decorative features (“three varieties of ment or publication.41 molded brick”) of the end gables, would

Page 20 Fall 1996 Old-Time New England DOCUMENTATION AND CONJECTURE ited the site during the demolition, had With enough exposure, the Province conferred with Appleton, and had made a House might become what Appleton pro- conjectural drawing. 46His opinions with claimed it to be-a subject of interest for regard to the original form of the house, “all the wondering eyes of modern Ameri- however, are best represented in a draft of can architects and antiquarians.“” But in an essayhe wrote more than a decade later. 1922, those at the center of the architec- In it, he hypothesized that the house was tural study of the house numbered only built forty years before Sergeant owned it. three besides himself There was Boston But there are no 1920s references to such a native William Cordingley, whose career theory having been discussed.47 had begun at the architectural firm of Cram Fiske Kimball, more deeply involved and Ferguson. In his free time, he had although not apparently present during the served as architectural consultant at the razing, was the most vocal spokesman. His circa 1746 Shirley-Eustis House. Possessed May 14, 1923, letter, written in response of what Appleton called “the most effec- to Appleton’s report, lectured on the tive imagination in architectural matters sequence of structural alterations. Kimball that I ever came across,” Cordingley was reasoned, on the basis of expenditures called upon by Appleton to critique every- approved by the House of Representatives, thing from Waterman’s measured drawings that the province made no large-scalealter- to theories about the original form of the ations between the 1716 purchase of the building.” Then there was Fiske Kimball, house and the major outlay of funds in an imposing and ubiquitous presencein the 1727. He linked the 1727 changes to “the field of art history, director of the Phila- form familiar to us in the earliest surviving delphia Museum ofArt, and one ofthe first 19th century views.” Kimball assertedthat historians to publish a scholarly text on the the House of Representatives’ order “that evolution of American architecture. Hav- the Lanthorn or cupola on the Top of the ing examined the Province House a few House. . . be well and sufficiently repaired yearsearlier, Kimball had sufficiently famil- and made strong” indicated the date at iarized himself with its history to qualify which the front and rear walls were raised as a judge of subsequent opinions.+’ The to create the third floor and the roof flat- other figure was the young Tom Waterman, tened. Although not specified in accounts, draftsman apprentice with nothing to his supposedly the year 1727 would also have credit but a feel for early buildings, a pas- been the time for carpenters to have added sion for sleuthing, and a strong commit- the entrance columns “so difficult to imag- ment to Appleton and his projects.45 ine in 1679.” Kimball reiterated these Of these three, Cordingley might be reminders in a formal report.* expected to have left the greatest legacy of The contribution of Waterman, the wisdom bearing on the effort to deduce the third figure involved with the study of the original design of Peter Sergeant’s house. Province House, was expected to be the He had recommended Waterman, had vis- archaeological report. But he assumed a

Old-Time New England Fall 1996 Page 2 1 second role as a draftsman who had stud- House, Nancy Halvorsen Schless showed ied medieval buildings and who was herself to be one of those who accepted inclined to take what was known a step far- Waterman’s ability to conceptualize. “A ther by intuiting the missing information. conjectural restoration [by Waterman] of The first product ofthis inclination was the the north wall,” she wrote, “reveals that it bronze tablet version of the Province was articulated by a massive end chimney House showing seventeenth-century end in combination with an exuberant gable chimneys and the eighteenth-century composed of a seriesof convex curves rep- three-story front. These two features could resented by steps.“52 have existed simultaneously for only the nine years between the adding of the third UNRAVELING THE HOUSES’ full story (1728) and the clapboarding of DESIGN HISTORY the ends (1737), and there is no extant view Nearly three decades after the Province of the house from that period.49 House demolition, Waterman made note There is an equal lack of evidence to of Dutch and Flemish influences on early support Waterman’s second drawing of the American dwelling design, but these influ- front in its supposed seventeenth-century ences were not definitively tied to the form with three elaborate dormer gables. Province House until the 1972 publication But Waterman’s was to be a career that of studies done by Schless. The search acceptedthe risks in hypothesizing. Speak- had begun as early as 1885, when Dutch ing to this dilemma a decade later, he said a scholark W. Weissman had pulled together word about his conjectural drawing of the various strands of architectural influence Page family’s monumental residence, by connecting Northern Renaissance Rosewell, in Gloucester County, Virginia.M models in Germany and what was called In his 1932 book on tidewater Virginia, “Pont Street Dutch, an alien aspect of the Waterman explained, “Of Rosewell, as it ‘Queen Anne’ in contemporary England.” stood before the fire, little resembled the In 1961, H. X van Gelder carried Nether- original structure. In the restoration [con- landish gable treatment acrossthe English jectural drawing] here given, an attempt has Channel when he wrote, “No scholar _ . . been made to complete the missing parts disputesthe fact that Northern Renaissance of the fabric in order to give the main house design was transmitted both by books of its proper context.“51 During Waterman’s ornament, prepared and published in lifetime, his colleagues generally accepted Antwerp from the mid-sixteenth century his decisions about how far conjecture on, and by Netherlandish craftsmen should go beyond fact. The history of the recurrently employed after that in various Historic American Buildings Survey, parts of northern Europe.” And in 1978, written three decades after his death, Henry-Russell Hitchcock offered the remarks on “Waterman’s] understanding “Dutch” house of 1631 at Kew Gardens as of buildings and their graphic analysis.” an example of an early Stuart building with And in a 1972 article on the Province a central cross-gable (that is, a range of

Page 22 Fall 1996 Old-Time New England gabled dormers) that indicated the begin- forth in 1922. But Appleton encouraged ning of Netherlandish influence in and all possible input-verbal, written, and around London.% graphic-from those working with him It remained for Schlessto identify the and from all the others who were looking Sacristans’ 1588 house in the Dutch town over their shoulders, and he received it in of Deventer, Overijssel, as the prototype a manner that was a monument in itself: brought by Dutch emigrant artisansto East Always claiming to be a layman in archi- Anglia in the last half of the sixteenth cen- tectural matters, he listened to, and learned tury and then to link the style to the Prov- from, the people he assembledaround him. ince House. Likewise, the south gable at In instanceswhen his team could not give Fen Ditton (1633) in Cambridgeshire, she him definitive answers, he declined to asserted,circumscribed “an outline almost advance a premise of his own. Governing identical to that at the north gable at the his actionswas a restraint basedon his con- Province House.“54 Supporting Schlesss’ ception of his role. He seemed determined theory, Abbott Lowell Cummings has not to stray from his main purpose-the pointed to English renderings of Dutch protection of early American buildings and motifs that arrived in Boston through the their transformations. late seventeenth-century immigration of But he did have certain convictions. artisansfamiliar with urban English build- He admonished, for example, againstpurist ings. He has cited the unexcelled brickwork or “static” (single-period) restorations. His of Province House contemporaries in 1935 statement to Waterman-“My own Bostons’ North End-the Moses Pierce experience is that the lessalteration I make Hitchborne House and the Ebenezer [to buildings being acquired by SPNEA], Clough house on Unity Street-as exem- the better I like it in the long run”-was a plifying this craftsmanship. The result, for perspective,though not popular at the time, Boston, was a breaking with American that influenced the trendsetting National building tradition.55 Park Service restorations at Morristown, Absent from the Dutch examples, New Jersey, then being executed under however, is the grouping of flues in an Watermans’ direction. Waterman, besides impressive vertical climax reminiscent ofa informally applying Appletons’ convictions, giant pitch pipe, as was built at the Prov- officially represented Appleton in 1947 on ince House. Schless ascribed this motif the National Council of Historic Sites and to English builders alone and postulated Buildings (precursor to the National Trust that Londons’ massed chimney flues were for Historic Preservation.)The ripple effect first united with the Dutch curvilinear of Appletons’ views was most discernible gable in the American colonies. This con- in Waterman, because Waterman was so clusion assignsto the Province House (and youngwhen he and Appleton first met. But the smaller Bacons’ Castle) the distinction Fiske Kimball, fifteen years Appletons’ of being at once medieval and innovative. junior, was another who carried Appletons’ Many of these ideashad not been put ideas into advisory board decisions at

Old-Time New England Fall 1996 Page 23 Colonial Williamsburg, the Octagon, other than the statement that “five [sic] Monticello, and Stratford.56Andover time, dormers were built on the roof” It there- Waterman and Kimball, like others who fore appears that what prevented publi- worked with Appleton, influenced the cation of the conjectural drawings in staffers under them. Appletons’ Province House file was, rather The world, however, remained in than the presenceof differing opinion, sim- ignorance about the 1922 Province House ply the absenceof conclusive data. project. Plans to publish the reports- Fifty years later, with Appletons’ archaeological, historical, and graphic- questions still unanswered, Old-Time New went unfulfilled in Appletons’ lifetime. He England published the Province House was always waiting for newly acquired documentation. Only one thing had knowledge of the original structure that changed:the preservation movement, hav- would either exonerate or disprove Water- ing “come of age,”was in a position to judge mans’ conjectural drawings. Cummings the work of its pioneers. Publication of the has suggestedthat this reluctance to pub- 1922 SPNEA files was as much a tribute to lish arosefrom an actual difference of opin- William Sumner Appleton as to Peter ion among the specialistsas to whether the Sergeants’ magnificent (and still mysteri- east wall, as it stood in 1922, was the wall ous) house. & of the original seventeenth-century house or an eighteenth-century reconstruction.57 Fay Campbell Kaynors’ historical and Yet, with the exception ofthe dating of col- biographical articles have appeared in umns at the main entrance, the records regional magazines, and her biography reveal no sign of disagreement. Kimball of Thomas Tileston Waterman waspub- did not criticize Watermans’ graphically fished in Winterthur Portfolio. She expressed premises such as the medieval is a graduate of Randolph-Macon asymmetry and the front gables. Con- Womens’ College in lrirginia and a na- versely,none of the features that Waterman tive of Massachusetts. ascribedto the house in drawings or reports contradicted any of Kimballs’ information. NOTES And Cordingleys’ few recorded comments are restricted to minor technical sugges- Abbott Lowell Cummings, “Editorial tions about Watermans’ measured draw- Preface,” Old-Time New England 62, 4 ings. His 1934 essay on the Province (Spring 1972): 86; Walter Muir Whitehill, House, which presented his speculation TopographicalHistory ofBoston (Cambridge, that the house could have been forty years Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard older than commonly thought, suggeststhe University Press, 1959). 59. rationale for changesthat he believed Peter The Boston Evening Transcript was promi- Sergeant might have made in 1679. nent among Boston newspapers in Cordingleys’ premises, however, showed covering the Province House story. no divergence from Watermans’ drawings Examples are “Province House Doomed

Page 24 Fall 1996 Old-Time New England to Make Room for Movies,” Oct. 11, Province House and Its Occupants.”

1920, part 4, 1, and “Clear Historic Another chronology of the Province

Ground,” Mar. 27, 1922, 1. Newspaper House is included in Bruner/Cott and

tiles at SPNEA, the Bostonian Society, Associates Inc., “Study Report on the

and the Massachusetts Historical Province House Steps” (Bruner/Cott and

Society contain many related news Associates, Cambridge, Mass., June 1989).

and feature items. Other names for the house included

Abbott Lowell Cummings, “The Begin- Government House, Province House

nings of Provincial Renaissance Architec- Tavern, Wait’s Tavern, Crombie’s Tavern,

ture in Boston (1690-1725)-Current Ordway Hall, the Morris Brothers, and

Observations and Suggestions for Further Pell and Trowbridge Opera House.

Study,” Journal of the Society of Architectural 7. Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Howe’s Masquer-

Historians 43, 1 (March 1983): 43-53. ade,” Twice-told Tales (Boston: Houghton,

Cummings headed the SPNEA and was 1890), 627. The tales were first published

editor of Old-Time New England from in 1842.

1955 to 1983. 8. R. A. Douglas-Lithgow, “The Province

The Towne House was located at the House, Boston,” The Massachusetts

intersection of King and Cornhill Magazine 3, 3 (luly 1910): 199-203.

(Washington) streets. 9. William Sumner Appleton, corresponding

For documentation of improvements, secretary of the Society for the Preserva-

see vols. 1 and 8, Journal ofthe House o/ tion of New England Antiquities, 1923

Representatives(Boston: Massachusetts annual report, SPNEA Archives.

Historical Society, 1919). The 1716 items 10. SPNEA attempted to buy the Bacon Castle

are in 1:16, 105, 167; the 1727 items drawings from architectural historian and

are in 8: 100,359, 387. Also see Walter draftsman the Reverend Donald Millar;

Kendall Watkins’s 1927 report, “The see WSA to FK, May 19, 1922, and WSA to

Province House and Its Occupants,” Donald Millar, May 5, 1922. Two seven-

in the Province House files, SPNEA teenth-century brick houses, Greenspring

Archives (hereafter cited as Province and Fairfield (destroyed in 1806 and 1897,

House files). Watkins’s report was respectively) were larger than the Province

shortened and printed without notes in House due in part to their rural (Virginia)

Old-Time New England 62, 4 (Spring settings. Appleton’s quoted statement

1972): 95-104. See also Fiske Kimball appears in WSA to Charles H. Taylor,

(hereafter cited as FK) to William Sumner Boston Globe, June 13, 1922.

Appleton (hereafter cited as WSA), July 3, 11. Charles B. Hosmer, Jr., PreservationComes

1924, for discussion of the room used for ojAge (Charlottesville: University Press of

council meetings. All correspondence Virginia, 1981), vol. 2, chap. 11. It is ironic

mentioned in this essay, unless otherwise that professionalism came into being in the

noted, is in the Province House files. preservation field in part through govern-

For changes in use, see Watkins, “The ment agencies formed under the depres-

Old-Time New England Fall 1996 Page 25 sion programs of Franklin Delano chusetts,” New England Quarterly 64, 4 Roosevelt; Appleton always put his faith (December 1991): 594-608. in private control of landmarks. 14. See, for example, WSA to Edwin Grozier,

12. Sheldon’s first period room (1879) at the Boston Post, May 4, 1922. Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association 15. Joseph Everett Chandler to WSA, Nov. 17, museum was one of the earliest such 1904, William Sumner Appleton Scrap- exhibits in America. On Appleton’s book, 1904-5, Appleton Family Papers, keeping abreast of this field, see the vol. 81, MassachusettsHistorical Society; Memorial Hall Visitor’s Register, WSA, SPNEA annual report, 1923. WSA t Deerfield, Mass., May 1912. See also o Foster, Dec. 31, 1914, refers to the

Proceedingsof the Fifty Sixth Convention, MA Chandler drawings. Appleton may have (1923): 103-4 for Appleton’s agreement initially contacted Chandler in his capacity with the AIA pertaining to the methodol- as a member of the “Committee on Old ogy of recording old buildings. For the Province House” of the Massachusetts start of Appleton’s interest in public Society, Sons of the Revolution, to which policy, see his proposed legislation he had been appointed in April 1904. See prohibiting the removal of old buildings Frank H. Carruthers to WSA, Apr. 14, and the protection of “what there is of 1904, William Sumner Appleton Scrap- our heritage” in WSA to Robert F? book, 1903-4. Appleton and Chandler Bellows, Williamsburg Advisory Board, began to work together on restoration of Dec. 4, 1935. For the status of the the Paul Revere House in 1905. Biographi-

SPNEA, see Hosmer, Preservation Comes of cal information on Chandler can be found

Age, 1:134, and SPNEA annual reports. in Hosmer, Presenceof the Pmf.

13. Appleton (1874-1947) received the B.A. at 16. WSA to Charles H. Taylor, Boston Globe, Harvard in 1896 and lived his entire life in June 13, 1922. the Boston area. On Appleton’s life, see 17. WSA, SPNEA annual report, 1923.

Charles B. Hosmer, Jr., Presenceof the Past 18. WSA to C. H. W. Foster, Dec. 31, 1914.

(New York: Putnam, 1965), 237-59. See 19. For Foster’s interest in Appleton’s efforts, also Bertram K. Little, “William Sumner see Chas. Foster to WSA, Jan. 4, 1915,

Appleton,” in Keepers of the Past, ed. offering his file of the relevant city plats Clifford Lord (Chapel Hill: University of as an aid to research on the history of North Carolina Press, 1965), 215-22. See the house.

also Hosmer, Preservation Comes of Age, 20. For manifestation of public interest, see including the quote on professional status Amory Eliot to WSA, Dec. 3, 1907; Henry (2:866). For differing views about the A. Phillips to WSA, Mar. 4, 1911; Charles values that motivated the preservation Burrage to WSA, Mar. 15, 1911; Phillips to

movement, see Hosmer, Presenceof the Past, Mr. Bolton, Mar. 6, 1911; W. R. Comer to

300, and James M. Lindgren, “A Constant WSA, Dec. 21, 1911; Richard Hale to Incentive to Patriotic Citizenship: Historic WSA, Dec. 28, 1914; Allan Forbes to WSA, Presentation in Progressive-Era Massa- Apr. 29, 1915; Warren Manning to Max

Page 26 Fall 1996 Old-Time New England Shoolman, Mar. 5, 1920; Warren Manning Wmterthur, Del. For the influence of

to George U. Cracker, May 5, 1920; H. A. George Francis Dow on period rooms at

Phillips to WSA, Dec. 19, 1920; WSA to Old Deerfield, see David Proper, “The

Wm. Cordingley, Mar. 10, 1921; William L. Fireplace at Memorial Hall, Deerfield,

Mow11 to WSA, Mar. 21, 1921; Warren Massachusetts: ‘Picturesque Arrangements;

Manning to Mark Angel, Apr. 6, 1922; Tender Associations,“’ Foodways in the

Walter Gilman Page to WSA, Sept. 28, Northeast, vol. 7 of Dublin Seminar for New

1923; and R. G. Hubby to WSA, Dec. 5, England Folklife (1982): 114-29. For

1929, which refers to “the forthcoming references to Province House interiors, see

number of your society’s pamphlet George Francis Dow, Everyday Z$ in the

[which, I understand] will contain an MassachusettsBay Colony (Boston: SPNEA,

article on the Province House.” In fact 1935), 24,46. For information on the life of

none of the information about the Fiske Kimball (1889-1955), see Joseph Dye

Province House amassed in this period was Lahendro, ‘American Renaissance Histo-

published until SPNEA published a special rian” (MA. thesis, University of Virginia,

issue of its journal about the building; see Charlottesville, 1982) and Hosmer,

Old-Time New England 62,4 (Spring 1972). PreservationComes 0jAge.

21. For biographical information on George 23. For an example of support, see Alan

Francis Dow (1868-1935), see “George Forbes, “The Last Ball in the Province

Francis Dow,” in Lord, ed., Keepers ofthe House with Some Interesting Informa-

Past, 215-22, and Hosmer, Presenceofthe tion in Regard to the House,” in Some

Past and Preservation Comes of&e. Interesting BosroonEvents, ed. Alan Forbes,

22. For correspondence about Indian Hill, (Boston: The State Street Trust Company

see WSA to John Foster, Dec. 31, 1914; Monograph Series, 1916), 41-43. For the

Herbert Browne to WSA, June 27,1922; Bostonian Society’s involvement in the

and FK to WSA, July 3, 1924. See also plan to save the brick “archway” (not then

Josephine I? Driver, “Ben. Perley Poore recognized as part of the chimney) by

of Indian Hill,” EssexInstitute Historical incorporating it in the new building, see

Collections89 (January 1953): 10-12; “Keep Archway of Province House,”

Elizabeth Stillingcr, “Ben. Perley Poore, Boston Herald, May 6, 1922.

Antiques as Old-time Atmosphere,” The 24. The quotation is in WSA to H. A.

Antiquers (NewYork: Knopf, 1980), 27-34; Phillips, May 22, 1922; see also WSA to

and the special SPNEA issue ofdntiques, H. A. Phillips, June 7, 1922, explaining

March 1986,622-25. For archaeological the failure, and WSA to Robert Bellows,

standards applied in paneling installation at Dec. 4, 1935, on protective legislation.

Winterthur Museum, see Thomas Tileston 25. WSA to Warren Manning, Apr. 8, 1922,

Waterman (hereafter cited as TTW) to also addresses the saving of artifacts.

Henry F. duPont, Dec. 8,1938, and duPont 26. See WSA to Phillips, June 7, 1922, for the

to TTW, May 23, 1939, Henry Francis quote about Hancock House.

duPont Wmterthur Museum Archives, 27. For Sturgis’s drawings, see Architecture 54,

Old-Time New England Fall 1996 Page 27 5 (November 1926): 333-36. Appleton’s pocket. WSA to TTW, Apr. 6,

28. Appleton’s report on the north chimney, 1923, and May 24, 1927; TTW to WSA,

June 3, 1922, 6, 12, presents the idea of May 23, 1927; and TTW to WSA, Mar.

the annual ceremony. 20, 1944, demonstrate Waterman’s

29. See WSA to Phillips, June 7, 1922, on the continued involvement.

fate of the house. 33. Thomas Tileston Waterman, “The Province

30. On Cordingley’s importance to Appleton, House Demolition,” Old-7Ime New England

see WSA to William Cordingley, Mar. 10, 62,4 (1972): 107-13. Like Waterman’s

1921, and May 18, 1922. The quotation drawings, this report, written in 1922, was

appears in WSA to Cordinglep May 19, not published until this special number was

1922. Appleton had apparently forgotten issued. Although informal histories have

that he had corresponded with Waterman stated that the brick in the walls was

(WSA to Waterman, May 5, 1920) when imported from Holland, there is no sign of

Waterman wrote to him about a threat- in-house discussion about the source of the

ened Myrtle Street house. See Manning bricks. Waterman’s 1922 sketch of sample

to Mark Angel, Apr. 6, 1922, on the bricks (eight by four inches) identifies them

cooperation of the wreckers with SPNEA. more closely with English statute bricks

31 . Russell F. Whitehead and Frank Chouteau (eight and a half by four inches) than

Brown, eds., The White Pine Seriesof with Dutch bricks (typically seven by three

Archifertural Monographs,vols. 1-13 (St. Paul, inches).

Minn.: The White Pine Bureau, 1917-27). 34. Waterman, Domestic Colonial Architecture of

Volume 14 of this series was titled white Tidewater Virginia (New York: Scribner,

Pine Monograph Serieson Early American 1932), 22,33; Mansions of Virginia (Chapel

Architecture(New York: Russell F. White- Hill: University of North Carolina Press,

head, 1928); volume 15 was Monograph 1945), 55 (on the Governor’s Palace

SeriesRecording the Architectureof the American fireplace) and 102; Dwellings of Colonial

Coloniesand the Early Republic (New York: America (Chapel Hill: University of North

Russell F. Whitehead, 1929). For the history Carolina Press, 1950), 261. On the

of HABS, see “Introduction,” Historic Province House fireplace and chimney,

America: Buildings, Structures,and Sites see also TTW to Henry Francis duPont,

(Washington D.C.: Library of Congress, Apr. 27, 1938, and Mar. 6, 1947,

1983). The Province House was recorded in Winterthur Archives. For biographical

the HABS files in 1934 soon after the information on Waterman (1900-51). see

creation of HABS and Waterman’s Fay Campbell Kaynor, “Thomas Tileston

appointment as architectural director. Waterman, Student of American Colonial

32. Appleton’s recommendation of Waterman Architecture,” Winterthur Portfolio 20, 2/3

for a Guggenheim fellowship in 1932 (Summer/Autumn 1985): 103-47, and

recounted Waterman’s participation at Hosmer, Preservation Comes ofAge.

the time of the Province House demoli- 35. Waterman, Dwellings, 256. Regarding

tion, for which he was paid $48 out of possible placement of the entrance to the

Page 28 Fall 1996 Old-Time New England great room, see WSA to Henry Phillips, photograph and ascribed to Nathaniel

June 7, 1922: “Mr. Cordingley has Shurtleff. The next renderings were four

advanced the theory-and he is the first small, informal sketches of the conjec-

person to do so, as far as I know-that tured earliest form of the house made by

Peter Sergeant’s front door may have been William W. Cordingley in the 1930s. The

at the South end of his front wall where only known recent attempt to portray the

there is an opening distinctly narrower Province House is Frederick Detwiller’s

than the others. This would be in line rendition in Detwiller, “The Evolution of

with the precedent we found at the the Shirley-Eustis House,” Old-Time New

[North End] Tremere House,” built in England 70, 257 (1980): 17-30.

the seventeenth century. Conjectural 38. TTW to WSA, May 19, 1922, advises

drawings (in the SPNEA archives) by concentrating on the latest form. See

Waterman and Cordingley are based on also SPNEA annual report, 1923. For

this theory. Kimball’s blueprint floor the quote, see Appleton, “The Province

plans (also in the SPNEA archives) made House, 1922,” Old-Time New England 62,

shortly thereafter show this arrangement. 4 (Spring 1972): 88. On the importance

36. “Bolection” refers generally to decorative of the photograph to future scholars,

moulding, usually projecting or raised see WSA to Phillip L. Spaulding, Feb.

from the surface, above or around a panel. 25, 1924.

For the quote, see TTW to WSA, undated 39. The plaque (twenty-nine by twenty-one

note, Province House file. inches) is now mounted on MacDonald’s

37. A copy of the Hutchinson view, owned by Restaurant, Washington Street, opposite

the West County Library in Devon, the square between Woolworth’s and the

England, was displayed in the 1995 “From Old South Meeting House. See Massa-

Colony to Commonwealth” exhibit at the chusetts Society Sons of the Revolution

Old State House. Samuel Adams Drake to WSA, Apr. 15, 1923. See also “Bronze

claimed that the illustration in his Old Tablet Marks Site of the Old Province

Landmarks and Historical Personagesof Boston House,” Boston Globe, June 4, 1923. See

was Lossing’s view with Price’s roof and TTW to WSA, Sept. 22, 1922, on “the

cupola added and with front lawn and eighteenth century aspect.”

trees included “by guess work.” See also 40. Evidence of front gables is discussed in

“Story of the Province House Fire Oct. Appleton, “Notes on the Province House

25, 1864,” Frank Leslies’ Illustrated Chimney, June 6, 1922,” 6, Province

Newspaper, Nov. 26, 1864, 157. News- House files. Also see WSA to Wm.

paper articles were illustrated with Cordingley, May 18, 1922, which

various caricatures based on the early mentions “spiked ironwork,” and WSA to

views and signed by Kilborn, Halliday, R. G. Hubby, Dec. 18, 1929, which states,

Manning, and others. Of unknown date “I am satisfied from the evidence

is a model of the nineteenth-century uncovered in the original plate part of

form of the house shown in an SPNEA which was still in place that there were

Old-Time New England Fall 1996 Page 29 front gables.” Both letters also include a 44. On Kimball, see Lahendro, “American

discussion of the front gables. WSA to Renaissance Historian,” and Hosmer,

Phillips, June 7, 1922, discusses Prereruation Comes ofAge. For the text of

Cordingley’s asymmetry theory. Kimball’s 1920 lectures at the Metropoli-

41 Appleton, “Notes on the Province House tan Museum of Art in New York City, see

Chimney, June 6, 1922,” 6, Province Kimball, Donrertic Architectureofthe American

House files. See also Waterman, Dwellings, Colonies and ofthe Early Republic (New York:

261, for his opinion (nearly three decades Scribner, 1922). Kimball’s blueprints of

later) about the presence of columns at the floor plan, dated June 27, 1924, and

the front doorway. Presumably it was Kimball’s elevations of the council

because they were not included among chamber walls are in the SPNEA Archives.

later expenditures that Waterman 45. In addition to his Province House

concluded, “An entrance porch with Ionic drawings, Waterman’s drawings (1922-27)

columns apparently was original and must of other houses or components of interest

have been one of the first examples of the to Appleton were the first items in

use of the classic orders in this country.” SPNFA’s graphics collections.

42 Appleton, “The Province House,” Old- 46. “Billy Cordingley’s ideas on the Province

Time New England 62,4 (Spring 1972): 88. House,” Aug. 3, 1923, SPNEA Archives.

43. Cordingley (1886-1965) was born in The sketch indicates that Cordingley

Brookline and graduated from Harvard differed from Appleton in believing, as

(1907) and Harvard Architectural School Waterman did, that the earliest form of

(1910). In Boston, he was connected with the Province House could be deduced

the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum from what was known.

as well as with Cram and Ferguson. His 47. See Cordingley Papers deposited at

interest in SPNEA led to his acting as SPNEA Archives in August 1996.

architectural consultant for the Shirley- 48. Kimball, “The First Remodeling of the

Eustis House Association. After a brief Province House, 1728,” Old-Time New

tenure with the city of London, he England 62, 4 (1972): 93-94. See also FK

opened an architectural office (1914) in to WSA, May 14, 1923.

Mendham, N.J., where he was respon- 49. A carpenter’s 1737 bill for raising

sible for some church architecture and scaffolding “att the North (and south)

was active in historical organizations and end of the house, nailing spars to the

town government. His correspondence brick wall to clapboard on” is cited in

with Appleton extended into the 1930s. Watkins’s report,“The Province House

On Cordingley’s talent, see WSA to and its Occupants.”

Phillip Spaulding, June 7, 1922. On 50. On Rosewell, see Waterman, “English

differences of opinion between Appleton Antecedents of Virginia Architecture,”

and Cordingley, see WSA to Cordinglep Proceedingsof the American Philosophical

July 26, 1930, and Hosmer, Preservation Society 80, 1 (1939): 61.

Comes of Age, 999. 51. Waterman, Domestic Coloniul Archik-crure of

Page 30 Fall 1996 Old-Time New England Tidewater Virginia, 88. English building is Bacon’s Castle in

52. Nancy Halvorsen Schless, “The Province Virginia. . . . The only known mansion

House: English and Netherlandish Forms of the eastern seaboard that could compare

in Gables and Chimneys,” Old-Time New with them was the Province House in

England 62, 4 (April-June 1972): 115. See Boston.”

also Charles E. Peterson, “The Historic 54. Schless, “The Province House,” 117.

American Buildings Survey: Its Begin- 55. Cummings, “The Beginning of Provincial

nings, n in Historic America-Buildings, Renaissance Architecture in Boston.” Two

Structures and Sites, 7, 8, and Charles earlier related studies of Dutch influence

Peterson to author, Dec. 23, 1994, which are Cummings, “The Foster-Hutchinson

states, “In his field, I’d trust Tom House,” Old-Time New England 54,3

Waterman’s conjectures before anybody (January-March 1964): 59-76, and

else’s.” Waterman’s conjectural drawings, Schless, “Dutch Influence on the

beginning in Boston with the Dock Governor’s Palace, Williamsburg,“]ournaI

Square House and the Province House, ofthe Society OfArchitectural Historianr 28, 4

finally numbered thirteen in addition to (December 1969): 254-70.

the “restored elevations” shown through- 56. See Hosmer, Preservation Comes ofAge,

out his book, The Domestic Colonial 2:998-1000 for information on in-house

Architecture of Tidewater Virginia. SPNEA debates on restoration, 954 on

53. A. W. Weissman, Het Amsterdamsche “the anti-reconstruction approach, first

Woonhuic van 1500-1800 (Amsterdam, espoused by the SPNEA,” and 1006-18

1885); H. V Van Gelder, Guide to Dutch for an National Park Service restoration

Architecture (The Hague, 1961); Henry- policy. See also WSA to Tm, Feb. 13,

Russell Hitchcock, Netherlandish Scrolled 1935, for an example of Appleton’s

Gables of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth influence on Waterman and NPS policy.

Centuries (NewYork, 1978), chap. 11. On 57. See Cummings, “Editorial Preface,” 85,

Dutch and Flemish gables on this side of for mention of Appleton’s desire for more

the Atlantic, see Waterman, Dwellings, 205- evidence and his consequent delay in

11. See also Waterman, “French Influence publishing an article on the Province

on Early American Architecture,” Gazette House. WSA to TTW, Mar. 3, 1927, refers

Des Beaux-Arts, ser. 6, 28 (1946): 87-112, to the need for comparing Waterman’s

for descriptions of curvilinear gables built “article” with Watkins’s report “in order

by Huguenots from the Low Countries. to make sure everything hangs together

See also Waterman, “Some Early Buildings correctly.” WSA to Mrs. Robert S.

of Barbados,” 7’he Art Bulletin 27,2 (June Gardner, Jan. 21, 1927, states the hope of

1945): 146, which discusses similarities having “a truly good article on the house

between English Jacobean houses and two before long.” Waterman’s question, “Are

curvilinear-gabled Barbados dwellings, you ever going to publish The Province

probably dating to the mid-seventeenth House?” was reiterated twenty-two years

century. “The only closer counterpart to later in TTW to WSA, Mar. 20, 1944.

Old-Time New England Fall 1996 Page 31 This map, drawn byjoel Allen on October4, 1804, showsthe locationofthe SciotoCompany s’ “Yankeesettlement,” a sixteen-thousand-acretract on the WhetstoneRiver. Thefamilies of Abner Pinney and Levi Buttles both emigratedto the Ohio tractfrom Connecticutthat year; Pinney died in late November.Map courtesyOhio Historical Society.