The Grange” by John Hubbard Sturgis, 1862-1866
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Redesign of “The Grange” by John Hubbard Sturgis, 1862-1866 MARGARET HENDERSON FLOYD I ot only are the histories of many parlor are comparable in elaboration and in great Colonial and Federal houses importance to these other contemporane- N in New England genealogically in- ous structures, which are among the finest tertwined, but their architectural motifs remaining domestic designs of the period. echo one another. In particular, a compara- The great house of early eighteenth- tively short period of intense building ac- century America, in the cases of the tivity in the late 1730s produced for the Royalls and Thomas Hancock, was an Boston area an unprecedented number of emulation of smaller contemporary En- domestic designsof a fully developed High glish country residences by the wealthy Georgian style which are interestingly in- provincial. For Ogden Codman, Sr. (fig. terrelated. The second building campaign 93), the reacquisition of the Codman House between 1732and 1739at the Royall house in 1862 appears to have been a symbolic in Medford, for example, brought that ear- gesture. The new appellation “The lier seventeenth-century establishment to Grange” only serves to underscore Og- the form we know today.’ The Vassal1fam- den’s vision of his role as one of the landed ily, with whom Dr. Charles Russell fled to gentry. Peer houses west of Boston would Antigua at the time of the Revolution, was then have included “The Vale” of Theo- related to the Royalls, who had also made dore Lyman, whose family had been estab- their fortune in the West Indies.2 lished in that American Palladian house in The house of Thomas Hancock on Bea- Wahham (designed by Samuel McIntire of con Hill (1737-1740) was unusual for the Salem) since 1793.5In the same town, Gov- Boston area in that it was constructed of ernor and Mrs. Christopher Gore had also stone. It was of great prominence by virtue built an elaborate domicile, “Gore Place,” both of its location overlooking Boston in 1804,spurred on no doubt by the interest Common and its later historical associa- Mrs. Gore had taken in John Codman’s tions with the signer of the Declaration of campaign of 1797 and 1798 in Lincoln. All Independence. The Hancock House was these were landscaped country seats, legendary for the sophistication of its ex- based on English models6 (See Emmet, terior ornamental detail, executed in this issue.) carved stone imported from the Connecti- cut River Valley, and the elaboration of its interior carving.’ At the same time, the Margaret HendersonFloyd, an assistantprofes- sor in the Department of Fine Arts, lIdIs Uni- wooden Boylston House in Brookline, versity, has indexed and researchedthe Sturgis Massachusetts, a seventeenth-century Papersunder grantsfrom WellesleyCollege and structure, was enlarged to create an the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard. She completed L-shaped country house with equally fine her doctoratein Art and Architectural History in the American and New England Studies Pro- ornamental paneling.4 The Russell housein gram, Boston University, and is now writing a Lincoln was erected in 1739-1741.Its plan monograph on the work of John Hubbard and the surviving paneling in the southeast sturgis. 48 Old- Time New England Already in the 1850sthere was arising a before the death of his mother) would ap- renewed interest in eighteenth-century pear to have enhanced the genealogical architecture, evidenced in Boston in the symbolism of “The Grange.” When their design of the Arlington Street Church father, Charles Russell Codman, died in (1858), modeled on eighteenth-century En- 1851, none of the orphaned children had glish and American prototypes.’ A specific attained majority. lo The loneliness of debt to Peter Harrison’s King’s Chapel, Richard, only ten at the time and ward of Boston (1749), was voiced by Arthur Gil- his half-brother, Charles Russell Codmau, man, architect of the Arlington Street is a theme in his reminiscences.r’ At age Church, who also led a movement in the fifteen, he was grateful when Charles and late 1850sfor education of the public on the his new wife made a home for him following virtues of eighteenth-century design. Gil- their marriage. Possessingneither mother man, a charismatic writer and lecturer, was nor father, Ogden Codman, Sr. (fig. 86) ap- a major intellectual force in mid- pears to have viewed “The Grange” as nineteenth-century Boston architecture.8 symbolic of family continuity and perma- His concern for the preservation of the nence, as did Ogden, Jr. (fig. 102).** This Hancock House produced several articles proclivity is also evident in Frances Anne on that subject, raising contemporary es- Codman (fig. 81), who, in 1856, at the wed- teem for eighteenth-century design.9 ding of their half-brother Charles Russell to The unusual family situation of the three Lucy Lyman Paine Sturgis in England, met surviving Codman children (Frances Anne Lucy’s brother John Hubbard Sturgis (fig. or Fanny, born in 1837; Ogden, born in 27), the architect, whom she married in 1839; and Richard, born in 1841, four years 1858, thereby making the Codman and Sturgis children of the next generation double cousins.13 By the 1850s an international frame of reference characterized both the Codman and the Sturgis families. Charles Russell Codman, father of Fanny, Ogden, and Richard, had been orphaned at nineteen and spent the first half of his life in Europe, collecting the paintings, furnishings, and art objects which ornamented his Bulfinch-designed home at 29 Chestnut Street (fig. 70), which was established at the time of his marriage in 1836 to Sarah Ogden of New York. Richard, according to his own account, was greatly influenced by contact with that home and credited his father’s art collection with creating the interests which later led him to a career as an interior decorator of some importance from the 1870s onward.r4 Although Richard was the only Codman sibling of the three who revealed artistic sensitivities, Fanny’s marriage to John FIG. 27. JOHN HUBBARD STURGIS (ca. Hubbard Sturgis in New York in 1858 1880). H.S. Mendelssohn, London, photogra- brought an architectural affiliation into the pher. (Boston Athenaeum, Sturgis Papers.) Redesign of ” The Grange” 49 FIG. 28. “THE GRANGE,” LINCOLN, MASSACHUSETTS (ca. 1866). (SPNEA Archives.) FIG. 29. THE BOYLSTON HOUSE, BROOKLINE, MASSACHUSETTS (1737), ca. 1860, showing the family of Henry Lee in the foreground. (Photograph courtesy of Dr. and Mrs. E.P. Richardson.) 50 Old- Time New England family. It would appear that John’s inter- architectural firm in Boston, Bryant and ests and his European background may Gilman. The fii was swamped with well have been a force behind Richard’s commissions, specifically for the comple- ultimate move into the related field of inter- tion of the Arlington Street Church, the ior decoration, following the devastating Boston City Hall, and a series of elaborate loss of the family fortunes in 1872 at the mansions along Arlington Street and time of the Boston Fire.is Commonwealth Avenue in the developing Ogden Codman returned from a trip to Back Bay, which itself had been designed India in 1862, four years after the wedding by GilmanzO of his sister Fanny, to acquire the Codman With the return of John and Fanny, the family homestead in Lincoln. He moved families turned out en masse to create quickly toward putting down roots there domestic commissionswhich would estab- with his own marriage in 1861 to Sarah lish John professionally as quickly as pos- Bradlee of Boston. Already internationally sible. During this time he worked not only based, Ogden’s life, as Fanny’s, was also to with Bryant and Gilman but also on his incorporate extended periods of travel. own, providing designsfor a fine series of Not only were the years following the Civil seasidecottages for members of the family War spent in Europe, but after his own and others. Beginning with “Sunnywa- lossesin the Boston Fire, he took his family ters” in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massa- to live at Dinard, an American resort col- chusetts, for his older brother Russell in ony in France, from 1875to 1884. where his 1862, he also designed a home in Cotuit, son Ogden, Jr. grew up essentially an ex- Massachusetts, for the Charles Russell patriate.r6 Ogden, Jr., in his turn, was later Codmans, and a seaside house, “Land’s one of a group of expatriate Boston intel- End,” on Ledge Road, Newport, Rhode lectuals of the 18!3Os,many of whom were Island, for Sam Ward, his father’s business related to the Sturgis family and the Cod- associate.*’ This last house was later to be mans.” Yet even at the end of his life, in acquired by Edith Wharton, a cousin isolation in France in the twentieth cen- through the New York Newbolds, and tury, Ogden, Jr. continued to be absorbed completely reworked by her and Ogden in his studies of local Massachusettstown Codman, Jr., as the demonstration piece histories. His interest and lengthy corre- for their book, The Decoration of spondence concerning early Boston build- Houses.22 ings, which in the 1880s he had begun to The redesign of “The Grange” for admire and depict with measureddrawings Ogden Codman, Sr., however, was the and photographs,continued to provide him largest and most important of John’s early roots while in exile.‘* (See Metcalf, this commissions (fig. 28). It was clear that issue.) Ogden was soliciting additional clients for The lives of Fanny and her husbandJohn his brother-in-law during this period, for in Hubbard Sturgis also developed on a trans- letters from the early 186Os,Thomas New- atlantic basis over the thirty years of their bold petulantly expressed desire for plans marriage until John’s untimely death in for a house and his admiration of John’s England in 1888.