Bulfinchs’ Design for the State, House

By HAROLD KIRKER

L MOST seventy years ago, Ellen elevation shows the restoration to be sub- Susan Bulfinch, granddaughter stantially accurate; the plan demonstrates A of the architect of the Massachu- the correctness of the assumptions that setts State House, wrote that because of galleries were not planned for the legis- “a strong desire . . . to examine the orig- lative chambers and what is now the inal plans of the building, a diligent Governor’s office was formerly the Coun- search has been made for them at various cil Chamber. More important, the plan times, but without success.“1 The ques- demonstrates the error of the generally tion was crucial in 1896 as that year a accepted belief that the north or rear fa- government committee had been appoint- cade exactly duplicated the south front ed to arrange for the preservation of the facing the common. The great Bulfinch building. The task of establish- was not specified for the north front but ing the relationship between the existing rather the motif of the main fasade was structure and the original conception was repeated with pilasters and balustrades. given to Charles A. Cummings, who, Despite the apparent loss of the archi- like Miss Bulfinch, was convinced that tect’s elevation and plan, Mr. Cum- the architect’s plans had not been pre- mings had much material to aid him in served. This assumption was incorrect; the restoration authorized in 1896. The Bulfinch’s “Elevation and plan of the Massachusetts Archives contain papers principal Story of the New State House relating to the designs Bulfinch submit- in ” turned up in the Phelps Stokes ted in 1787 and again in 1795 as well as collection and is reproduced here for the tradesmen’s itemized bills. There are first time with permission of its present contemporary pressaccounts of the build- owners, the Trustees of the New York ing, numerous references in journals and Public Library.’ Unfortunately, there is early histories, and several paintings and no specificinformation as to when or how prints dating from the early years of the Mr. Stokes acquired his drawing; nor is nineteenth century. As the north front there any evidence on the drawing itself was impossible to restore and there was to indicate provenance. The actual date no question of exactly reconstructing the of the drawing is also uncertain, although interior, the task even without the Bul- it is assumed to be the design Bulfinch finch elevation and plan was not excep- submitted in 1795 rather than the one tional. he made shortly after returning from The earliest view of the State House Europe in 1787. is a water color of about 1805 by an un- The elevation and plan of the State known artist in the Bostonian Society.’ House in the Stokes collection resolve The rendering is crude but the view is most of the questions that have been noteworthy as the only one to show the raised regarding the original design. The main fa$ade in relation to the Beacon Hill

43 44 Old-Time New England

Memorial Column B&inch designed in All these early nineteenth-century views 1790 as well as the original fence and show the State House before the construc- gateposts, topped with wooden urns and tion of the basement above ground but carved pine cones. As this earliest repre- after the was covered with copper sentation shows the lantern glazed, it. is by Paul Revere. assumed Bulfinch’s plan for an open cu- Perhaps the best pictorial source was pola was scrapped at some time during the drawing made in I 827 by Alexander construction. A copy of a slightly later Jackson Davis of the main facade and the water color by John Rubens Smith in the east end of the State House. Davis, a Boston Public Library shows not only the friend of Bulfinch and partner in the ar- openings in the western rim of the drum chitectural firm of Town and Davis, de-

“PLAN OF THE PRINCIPAL STORY OF THE NEW STATE HOUSE IN BOSTON,”

BY CHARLES BULFINCH Courtesy of The New York Public Library, I. N. Phelps Stokes Collection. but, like the contemporary woodcut by scribed his representation as “the finest Abel Bowen, gives clear evidence that specimen of lithography in the class of there were five windows on the west end yet produced on this side of and that those on the third floor were cut the Atlantic.“7 At any rate the Pendleton into the entablature almost to the cornice.4 brothers were sufficiently satisfied to pay Charles Place found this “impossible to him $225 for this and other drawings, reconcile with Bulfinch’s taste,” even and, after correcting his inaccurate treat- though there is precedent for it in Ren- ment of the windows, proceeded to mar- aissance building and the practice became ket what has become the most famous rep- common with Greek Revivalists.’ The resentation of the building. Evident in authenticity of the Bowen woodcut is Davis’ view are the granite “piazza” testified to by the Philadelphia engraver and wall built by the William Wood Thackara, who visited year before the lithograph was made. Boston in I 820 and made a similar print.’ These representations were the major Bulfinch’s Design for the MassachusettsState House 45 sources used by Cummings in the resto- because he failed to find a bill for them ration, and given their general accuracy, among the carefully itemized accounts. it is difficult to understand why such devi- These are not shown in Bulfinch’s eleva- ations were permitted as the additional tion nor are they evident in the Bostonian pilasters between the windows in the por- Society water color. The Davis and Pen- tico, the continuance of the balustrade dleton lithographs clearly define four pairs around the roof, and the elimination of of pilasters at either end of the line of lunettes over the doors opening on to the windows in the porch, but none of the porch. old prints show the unfluted pilasters Th e question of what the north front which someone has seen fit to tack up be- originally looked like was academic from tween the middle windows in the same the point of view of the restorers, for that range. fasade had been changed first in 1831 Not even the drawing in the Stokes when Isaiah Rogers constructed the “Fire collection settles the vexing question as Proof Edifice” and finally in I 889-1894 to whether Bulfinch intended the brick when Charles Brigham did the present surface of the State House to be plain or wing in yellow brick to match the paint- painted. The architect’s personal prefer- ed brick of the Bulfinch building. Still ence for painted brick is evident in several the scholars argued, most of them accept- earlier projects, such as the Tontine Cres- ing the seeming evidence of the chromo- cent and his own house in Bulfinch Place. lithograph of 1855 by G. G. Smith, which Unfortunately, the architect did not des- shows the north front exactly duplicating ignate materials in his elevations by using that of the south facade overlooking the the traditional colors but simply lined in common. This opinion went largely un- his design with sepia ink on a light wash challenged until twelve years ago when background. The problem is compound- Leroy Thwing made a study of the con- ed by discrepancies in contemporary evi- struction of the State House from the de- dence. Thus the Bostonian Society water tailed bills in the Massachusetts Archives.’ color shows the State House a plain, red Finding bills for “I2 large pilasters for brick, a fact attested to by the observation the back of the house” but none for col- of a visiting Englishman around I 81 I .’ umns similar to those of solid pine stipu- At the same time a fireboard of about lated for the south facade, Mr. Thwing 18 I 2 in the Bostonian Society suggests correctly assumed that what was taken the building was painted light yellow or for a porch in the Smith view was in re- gray, and this too is borne out by pub- ality a repetition of the design of the main lished testimony.1” So far as can be deter- front in pilasters. Thwing was also right mined, sometime after 1825 the State in questioning the authenticity of the pi- House was painted yellow and it remained lasters in the porch on the south facade such until well into the present century. 46 Old-Time New England

NOTES

l Ellen Susan Bullinch, The Life and Let- Topographical and Historical Description of ters of Charles Bulfinch, Architect (Boston, Boston (Boston, I 8 I 7). x896), p. 112. 5 Charles Place, Charles Buljinch, Architect 2 This is one of two Bulfinch drawings in and Citizen (Boston, 1925), p. 79. the collection and is listed in I. N. Phelps s See OLD-TIME NEW ENGLAND, L (Jan.- Stokes and Daniel C. Haskell, A#~~icun His- March, 1960), 61. torical Prints (New York, t982), pp. 61, 65. r Quoted in William Dunlap, History of the The other. the elevation and plan of the Joseph Rise and Proaress of th Arts of Design in tfu Coolidge House in Cambridge Street, is-repro- United StatesY(NewvYork, I 834), II, 409-410. duced in Abbott Lowell Cummings, “Charles B&inch and Boston’s Vanishing West End,” * “The Bulfinch State House,” OLD-TIME OLD-TIME NEW ENGLAND, LII (Oct.-Dec., NEW ENGLAND, XL11 (Winter, 1952), 63-67. 1961), 45. s E. Mackenzie, View of the s Reproduced in Harold and James Kirker, of America (Newcastle, x819), pp. ro8-104. Bulfinch’s Boston (New York, 1964), plate to. lo Caleb Snow, A History of Boston (Bos- 4 Bowen’s woodcut is in Charles Shaw, A ton, 1825), p. 323.