HOW A SHORT POST BECOMES A LENGTHY POST

My intentions are always sterling---to post a short, concise essay and two or three pictures about something that I hope will be of passing interest to those who are inclined to be interested by such things.  But things always go astray, and before I know it, I've rambled on.  Therefore, as a public service, a demonstration of how my short ideas become long ones:

First, something catches my fancy.  In this case it is a painting by the distinguished interior portraitist, David Payne (1907-1985),  of the drawing room in the Beacon Hill town house of Mr. & Mrs. Ronald Lyman.  The picture was published in House & Garden's New England issue--August, 1937, if I remember correctly.  I like the room very much---architecturally elegant with its crisp woodwork, curving wall, and beautiful Italian statuary marble fireplace, with caryatids supporting a classical frieze.  It is old school New England, stylish and rich, with its Italian sofa, french chairs, damask walls, and at the right, a Bilbao looking glass, no doubt brought back in an ancestor's ship.

Of course, I then should mention that the Lyman House at 40 Beacon Street is one of a pair of brick bow front townhouses designed by the great Alexander Parris, overlooking the Boston Common. Parris was one of the first New England architects to break out of the box with elegant Greco-Federal designs with oval rooms, curved walls, segmental arched ceilings and other details that gave weight to the aspirations of the early 19th century plutocrats for whom he designed.  In his interiors one can see forms which Delano and Aldrich would make seem modern all over again in some of their most elegant designs of the 1920's and 30's.  But already I'm off the subject.  It is worth mentioning that the land on which these houses sit was owned in the 18th century by the painter John Singleton Copley.  The Lyman house was built for hotelier Daniel Parker, and its mirror twin at 39 for Nathan Appleton, whose daughter Fanny married the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow there in 1843.  These houses, in what was the finest location in Boston in their day are quintessentially with the elegant bow fronts that define their neighborhood, yet with their long second story drawing room windows , they also recall Regency London, the unruly Common sitting in for an English square.

 Historic American Buildings Survey, LOC

And there the post could end---but of course, it won't.   A fourth floor was added to the houses in the 1880s.  By 1914, the Appleton house at 39 had become The Women's City Club of Boston.  In 1938, just one year after the painting above was published, the Lyman House was purchased by the Women's City Club and annexed to its neighbor.   And that same year, the house was recorded for the Historic American Buildings Survey, and a photograph of the drawing room, post-Lyman, its damask wall covering in tatters, was taken as it was being renovated.

And there too, the post could end, but wait, I found a picture of the drawing room as it appeared in the Women's City Club era, all  bland good taste, very period room, with 'correct' furniture and safe decorations---gone is the rich cosmopolitanism of the Lyman era.

But one can't end a post without a picture of the exteriors of numbers 39 and 40 can one?  Below is a view of Beacon Street from the Common in taken in 1938.  Number 40 is at the right.  The gray granite building at left center is the Somerset Club, remodeled from the David Sears mansion, also designed by Alexander Parris, who was also architect of Quincy Market. 

Courtesy Boston Public Library Photostream, Flickr

Numbers 40 & 39 Beacon Street, present day view  (Wikipedia Commons)

By this point, I really could end the post, and it would still be of reasonable length, but how can I?  For the House & Garden article also included another David Payne painting---of the Lyman's dining room at Number 40, with yet another handsome mantel, a beautiful Chinese rug, and family portraits.

And, in for a penny, in for a pound, I might as well include a photograph from the Historic American Buildings Survey, of one of the beautiful interior hardware of the Lyman House, early 19th century cut glass, either English or American, and notice the beautiful close grain of the Honduran mahogany doors.

At which point I've decided to include the other interior views I found along the way, including the vestivule, with its inexplicable addition of an 18th century cupboard:

HABS

The hall, with its complex arches and false dome, is as sophisticated  as anything of its era in New England, and recalls, to my mind at least, John Soane.

And as few things make me weaker than early 19th century American classical architecture, this view, with elegant interior fan, and built in bookcases by one of Boston's fine early Federal era cabinetmakers, must be included.

HABS

And of course, this extraordinary Retour de l'Egypte chimney piece must be included, a bit of Thomas Hope in Federalist Boston:

HABS

And the third floor stair hall, with its unexpected coffered dome:

HABS

The Women's City Club, no doubt inspired by the Colony Club in New York, added this trellised dining room, as well as a ballroom and roof terrace.

The 20th century history of the two houses is too complicated to unravel on a simple trip through Google---too many writers, especially of the real estate variety, have garbled, joined and confused the separate stories and identities of the houses.  Many more photographs of interiors exist for both, but for now I have stuck with the Lyman half of the building---after all, even I have to end somewhere, right?

In the early 1990's, the Women's City Club disbanded, and sold the twin houses.  A developer turned them into condominiums, although four of the five Lyman house units were occupied as a single residence by Jack Welch (yes, that Jack Welch) until he moved back to New York.  More recently, the Lyman house has been on the market, selling for 27,000,000, a Boston residential record.

And that, kiddies, is how a Dilettante post gets so long.  And at that, I resisted the temptation to ramble on about what a pleasure it was to visit the houses back in '79, when the WCCB opened the house to the public in an attempt to raise funds.  Also, I resisted the temptation to include a picture of Alexander Parris, who managed to live long enough to have his photograph made, or of his great work, Quincy Market, and I even almost gratuitously included Gilbert Stuart's portrait of Boston Mayor Josiah Quincy, just because I liked the depiction of Quincy Market in the background.   I also avoided a segue into the story of social progressive Helen Storrow, wife of Boston Mayor James Storrow.  It was she who purchased the Appleton House for WCCB in 1914, because I would no doubt have wandered further off track into one of her pet projects, the moving of early American buildings to the Eastern States Exposition Fairgrounds, creating an idealized New England village called Storrowtown, the precursor of many of today's assembled village msueums from Cooperstown to Sturbridge.  And for a brief second I even considered a segue into Daniel Parker's famous hotel and the dinner rolls that bear its name.  But I resisted.  So many tangents, so little time.

But, perhaps you might like to see this Luxist story from 2008, about the sale of the Lyman House.  Click HERE (or if you just want pictures, click HERE.)  And for an earlier Dilettante post about the ancestral country seat of the Lyman family, click HERE

And just for the heck of it, a couple more Lyman interiors:

An earlier drawing room decorative scheme, late 19th century---the mirror, replaced by the 30's with the more elegant Continental one in the Payne rendering, may well be the original for that spot, and the painting hung above reflects earlier taste.  An animal rug growls at the fire.  The French clock remains the same.

Unidentified room with scenic paper

HISTORIC INTERIORS: A Country House Near Boston

Blogging is very self-indulgent.  One gets to think out loud about one's interests, and share the musings with interested readers---who, with their comments, give the blogger new insight into old passions.

I've been thinking a great deal this year about the graceful old Federal houses of New England---those first flowerings of design from our young country, that so well reflect the ideals, political and social, of the founders, and that for so long defined the look of most New England towns.  In particular, I determined to write about a group of country houses, those with the newly fashionable oval rooms in particular, built around Boston between 1790 and 1820.   I don't flatter myself that I have new insight to add to the impressive body of scholarship published about these houses over the last hundred years, but hope that you enjoy my light summaries.

What brings me back to the subject of oval rooms today is a group of late 19th century photographs passed on by a friend---but more about those in a moment...

McIntyre's drawing for the entrance front of the Vale, which looks backwards to the Palladian tradition of Somerset House, more than to the newly fashionable neo-classicism that characterized the Federal style (from Old Time New England, Spring 1952)

McIntyre's drawing of the first floor plan (from Old Time New England, Spring 1952

'The Vale', in Waltham, Massachusetts was designed in the 1790's by the great carver-architect of Salem, Samuel McIntyre, for merchant prince Theodore Lyman.   Lyman began development of his estate in 1793, laying out a park and garden in the informal English style of Capability Brown, with a stream dammed to form an ornamental lake, and glasshouses against a brick wall, in which Camellias and other exotics were grown.

The entrance front in the mid-19th century, showing McIntyre's completed design.  The Greek Revival entrance portico is an early 19th century addition

The house designed by McIntyre, completed in 1798, was based on designs in English builder's pattern books, but executed in wood, the plentiful building material of New England, rather than the stone of Old England.  With his typical mastery, McIntyre translated details like quoins and pilasters, meant to be stone, to wood with high effect, yet the scale (the main block was only fifty feet wide), unlike its English prototypes, was domestic, not palatial.  

The Ballroom as it appeared in the early 20th century.

The composition was Palladian, with a separate kitchen wing connected by a hypen, balanced a few years later by a ballroom wing.   The center hall led directly to an oval room centered on the garden front facing the glasshouses, referred to by the family as the 'Bow Parlor'. 

The Bow Parlor, as it appears today.  The white painted Hepplewhite chairs are part of the original Lyman furnishings

Lyman lived in great style in his new house.  After his death, it passed to his son, and in turn his grandson, Arthur Lyman, treasurer of the Lowell textile mills.   What had been one of the grand houses of the area at the beginning of the century was by now dated and old fashioned, and not suited to the more expansive scale of living made possible by industrial age wealth.  Fond of the old house, Arthur Lyman hired the local firm of Hartwell & Richardson (no relation to H.H. Richardson, about whom more in a minute) to enlarge and remodel the family homestead in 1882.

First floor plan as it appeared before 1883 renovations. Note the long curved interior walk to a privy at top right, forming one side of kitchen courtyard, and at a further extreme, a two-holer in the shed at the upper corner.  An indoor water-closet may be seen left of the bow parlor . (Old Time New England, Spring 1952)

The new plan, with modern interior plumbing, but the outside privy still survives. The staircase has moved to left of Bow Parlor

Their first design was for a complete transformation of the house, and was not executed.  Evidence is strong that Arthur Lyman had second thoughts about how drastically he wished to alter the old family homestead, and the final design, completed in 1883 sought to save some of the character of McIntyre's design, even to the extent of re-using the second floor pilasters by McIntyre to frame the new two story bays that pushed out from the entrance front.  Although respectful by the standards of the time, in fact McIntyre's elegant composition was irrevocably altered and subsumed by the new house.  Inside, mantels were replaced, high wainscots installed, yet the Bow Parlor and the Ballroom both survived untouched, as artifacts of the family's past splendors.

The rejected proposal for renovation (American Architect & Building News)

Hartwell & Richardson's accepted design for the renovation (American Architect & Building News)

Interior details in the 'Colonial' style for the new staircase and parlor (American Architect & Building News)

Mr. Lyman writes to American Architect explaining his desire to preserve as much as possible of the old house

 Which brings us back to the photographs that my thoughtful friend supplied.   She thought I might recognize them (I'm a bit of an idiot savant at recognizing buildings from minimal evidence---emphasis on the idiot part), and indeed I did.   They are 21 views of the interior of 'The Vale' after the Hartwell and Richardson remodeling of 1883.  In the rooms can be seen a mix of 18th and 19th century furnishings accumulated by several generations before a 1930's 'restoration' that sought to do away with many of the Victorian 'colonial' flourishes of before.   Like their ancestor before them, that generation of Lymans preserved the Victorian parlor, with its oak woodwork and fire surround of deMorgan tiles.  Today 'The Vale' is owned by Historic New England.

Please click on pictures to enlarge

The Bow Parlor.  The French style furniture suite is original to the house

Two views of the new family living room in the location of the old kitchen.  The tiles surrounding the fireplace are by William deMorgan

The ballroom looking toward the cross hall

The cross hall looking from the new staircase toward the ballroom

The second floor landing

The Drawing Room.  Two of the White Hepplewhite chairs can be seen

The cross hall toward family living room

Dressing room, opening to entrance portico roof

Two rooms in the nursery suite.  Ever thrifty, the Lymans retained the 1850's ingrain carpeting.

The bedroom above the Bow Parlor

Two views of the master bedroom.

A present day view of the master bedroom, after being stripped of its Victorian decorations in the early 20th century (photo uncredited from Historic New England Website.

Present day view of the garden front.  The central bay of the Bow Parlor remains as McIntyre designed it.

 FURTHER READING:

Before we end today's lesson, it is worth noting that Arthur Lyman's sister, Lydia,  married Robert Treat Paine, a housing reformer descended from a signer of the Declaration of Independence. They lived across the street, on property given them by her father.  When they remodeled the existing house on that property, they hired the other Richardson, H.H. himself, as their architect, and their naturally landscaped grounds were a collaboration with Frederick Law Olmstead.  For that house, click HERE

For previous Dilettante posts about lost Federal country estates in the Boston area, please click HERE,  HERE, and HERE.

For more about The Vale, click HERE for  the Historic New England website