Historic New England
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Historic New England is the oldest, largest, and most comprehensive regional heritage organization in the nation. We preserve and share centuries of New England heritage through historic properties, collections, archives, education programs, and more.
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We preserve and share four centuries of New England heritage through historic properties, collections, archives, education programs, and historic preservation services.
We preserve and share four centuries of New England heritage through historic properties, collections, archives, education programs, and historic preservation services.
Mission: We serve the public by preserving and presenting New England heritage.
Operating as usual
11/17/2020
Tune in tomorrow at 12:30 p.m. as we livestream from our conservation lab to meet Phillip the Pheasant and see our other interesting historic objects! Wednesday, 11/18, is #AskAConservator Day, so if you have any art conservation questions or want to know more about a specific object, comment below and we'll try to give you an answer tomorrow.
Hope to see you tomorrow at 12:30 p.m.!
11/17/2020
Have you binged #TheQueensGambit on Netflix yet? ♟️ The show inspired us to dust off one of our old chess boards…
#TriviaTuesday Likely made in the mid-1800s, this pine wood game board original to Cogswell's Grant marries chess and checkers with its intelligently designed pieces. Notice how it the players can stack additions on top of the checkers pieces to convert them to chess pieces. Which game is older: chess or checkers?
Give us your best guess in the comments, and then check back later for the answer.
11/16/2020
Wednesday is #AskAConservator Day!
Join us this Wednesday, 11/18, at 12:30 p.m. as we Facebook livestream straight from our conservation lab! You'll see a walkthrough of the lab, get a close-up view of some objects undergoing conservation, and have some of your FAQs answered.
Have a question you'd like to ask about historic object and art conservation? Drop it below in the comment section, and we'll do our best to answer on Wednesday.
11/16/2020
On the lookout for a present to give the history-loving person in your life this holiday season? Give them the gift of a Historic New England membership! Plus, for the first time, gift membership recipients will get a free tote bag this year! 🎁 👜
A gift membership gives access to great benefits, including:
• Free admission to our beautiful historic sites
• Free or discounted tickets to virtual and in-person events
• Historic New England magazine
• 10% off all museum shop and greenhouse purchases
Purchase by Tuesday, 12/1, to receive by Thursday, 12/10, or by Tuesday, 12/15, to receive by Friday, 12/25. Visit https://www.historicnewengland.org/get-involved/memberships/gift-memberships/ to purchase a gift membership today. #MembershipMonday
11/13/2020
Tis the season for curling up inside with a good book! 📚 With its shaggy Marcel Breuer chaise lounge, warm sunlight, and books galore, the Gropius House living room looks like the perfect place to hole up for the winter. Tour Gropius House Saturdays and Sundays to appreciate its unique combination of Bauhaus and traditional New England interiors. Visit https://www.historicnewengland.org/property/gropius-house/ for tickets. All guests must wear a mask.
Shout out to IG user readeatsee for today's cozy #FanPhotoFriday!
11/12/2020
Photos: At the Eustis Estate: Fairies in the Foliage
Loving these photos from last weekend's Fall Family Day at the Eustis Estate via The Patriot Ledger! See families enjoying the magical fairy houses, autumnal crafts, and balmy fall weather on the estate's grounds.
https://www.patriotledger.com/photogallery/WL/20201108/NEWS/110809996/PH/1
MILTON — Dozens of families took advantage of the balmy November weather to attend
11/12/2020
💍 With the colder weather already here, we are expanding our micro-wedding options to offer two of our lovely historic indoor spaces for your special celebration. Now, you can hold an intimate ceremony in the Eustis Estate or the Lyman Estate for just $695. All guests must wear a mask and maintain six feet of social distance.
Visit https://www.historicnewengland.org/introducing-micro-wedding-ceremonies-2-0/ for more information.
11/11/2020
#VeteransDay In this photo, over two thousand girls and boys form a "living flag" on grandstands in the Boston Common. (Notice how the flag they form includes just forty-five stars!) These children donned red, white, and blue clothing and sang various songs as veterans who served the Union during the Civil War paraded past.
See more archival images at HistoricNewEngland.org/collections.
📸 Leon E. Dadmun, 1904
11/10/2020
Congratulations to the 2020 community preservation grants awardees! Each year, Historic New England awards one Herbert and Louise Whitney Fund Community Preservation Grant to a small to medium-size heritage preservation organization in each New England state to support projects that save and share their communities’ diverse heritage.
This year, Historic New England awarded grants to these six organizations:
• Westport Museum for History & Culture in Connecticut
• Phippsburg Historical Society in Maine
• Jefferson Historical Society in New Hampshire
• Bristol Historical & Preservation Society in Rhode Island
• Lost Mural Project in Vermont
• Chinese Historical Society of New England - CHSNE in Massachusetts
Pictured below, see the Lost Mural Project's work on cleaning, stabilizing, and restoring the original bright colors of a historic synagogue mural. Additionally, pictured below you can see a painting by local artist Mong Q. Lee that is part of CHSNE's work to begin processing the society’s important collection that documents the history and legacy of Chinese immigration in New England.
Visit https://www.historicnewengland.org/six-community-preservation-grants-awarded-2020/ to read more about each organization and the projects these grants are supporting.
11/10/2020
Join us for a night of chamber music livestreamed from in the intimate and period-appropriate setting for which it was originally written. 🎵 This Sunday, 11/15, tune in for the Handel and Haydn Society’s performances of pieces by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven in the eighteenth-century Lyman Estate mansion.
Visit https://my.historicnewengland.org/6814/11058 for tickets.
11/09/2020
Who wrote the first gay American novel? 🤔 A little-known novel serialized in The Atlantic may hold the answer. A MARSH ISLAND (1885) by Sarah Orne Jewett is significant for being the first novel to explore major, now-familiar facets of a burgeoning modern gay American consciousness.
Learn more about the novel, its themes, and the woman behind it this Thursday, 11/12, at our virtual talk co-sponsored by The History Project: Documenting LGBTQ Boston, “Looking for the First Gay American Novel: A Forgotten Book by Sarah Orne Jewett.”
Visit https://my.historicnewengland.org/6800/novel for tickets.
📸 Annie Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett, 148 Charles St., Boston.
11/06/2020
Hoping this lovely fall scene at Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm brings you some peace today. Don't forget, you can visit the grounds every day from dawn to dusk and see our new horse Captain, plus all the other farm animals.
We have IG user gracehrmclaughlin to thank for capturing some classic New England fall foliage in today's #FanPhotoFriday. 🍂
11/05/2020
Don’t miss the last two Botanical Bliss–themed Virtual Twilight Talks coming up! 🌷
On Wednesday, 11/11, hear about Victorian women’s fascination with all things floral in “Ladies in the Field: The Victorian Pastimes of Botany and Gardening.” https://my.historicnewengland.org/6830/hgo-gardening
Then on Wednesday, 11/18, learn more about Harvard University’s collection of 4,300 glass flower models in “The Glass Flowers: Marvels of Art and Science.” https://my.historicnewengland.org/6830/hgo-flowers
📸 Arthur Shurcliff, 1899
11/03/2020
For #ElectionDay, we found this blue velvet dress in our collection once belonging to Miss Caroline Louisa Williams French of Roxbury and Boston. Originally purchased in 1883 from Mlle. Camille Lipman of Paris, the dress suggests Miss French may have been a suffragist, as one of her relatives wore it to a celebration of the nineteenth amendment’s passage in 1920.
As 2020 is both an election year and the centennial of the nineteenth amendment, we recognize those suffragists who paved the way for expanded voting rights and acknowledge that voter suppression remains an issue that many continue to face today.
11/02/2020
Spend the holidays with Historic New England! Between house tours, open landscapes, and upcoming events, there are plenty of holiday happenings for you and your family to enjoy. ⛄
See the Eustis Estate with Victorian trimmings at our upcoming Victorian Holiday Market, take a guided tour of Gropius House, walk around Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm’s grounds, and more.
Safety remains our priority. All guests must wear a mask. Events have limited capacity and are optimized for social distancing.
For an updated list of open properties and upcoming events, visit https://www.historicnewengland.org/holiday-happenings-at-historic-new-england/.
11/01/2020
Rhode Island Latino Arts
Tune in tomorrow night for this virtual event! In collaboration with Rhode Island Latino Arts, we are documenting the construction of the altar, and photographs will be shared by both organizations.
NOTICE 👉🏼 Due to the unsettled weather forecast this weekend, our Community Ofrenda event for Día de Los Muertos will take place ONLY on Monday, November 2nd. Join us for reflection and light, and come to set up a personal altar on the steps of the Providence Public LIbrary, Downtown PVD. More details: http://www.rilatinoarts.org/DiaDeLosMuertosRI.html
#diadelosmuertos #ofrenda Trinity Repertory Company Providence Public Library
10/31/2020
Happy Halloween from Historic New England! 🦇🎃🍫 Visit HistoricNewEngland.org/collections to see more vintage Halloween postcards.
10/30/2020
❄️ Brrr...Boston is getting its first snow of the season today! #FBF to this photo from the early 1900s of the Boston Common during a snowstorm. Is it snowing where you are today?
📸Halliday Historic Photograph Co.
10/29/2020
If you’re skipping out on trick-or-treating this year, we’ve got a great outdoor alternative lined up for you: this Saturday, 10/31, is the last regular Coastal Growers Farmers Market of the season at Casey Farm! Satisfy your Halloween sweet tooth with delicious fresh fruits, baked goods, coffee, and more. Stop by between 8:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. to enjoy one last installment of our favorite Rhode Island farmers market. 🥕 🍅 🥒
10/26/2020
Historic homes struggle to reopen in COVID-compliant way - CommonWealth Magazine
"'Unlike larger art museums, we have the ability to be more nimble because we’re a smaller operation...We deliberately chose houses we thought would benefit the public the most and where we could safely conduct guided tours,'" said Historic New England's Peter Gittleman, team leader for visitor experience.
How are historic homes coping with #COVID19? Small spaces and proper ventilation make reopening difficult, but some museums, like our own Eustis Estate, were able to hold modified tours. See more from Commonwealth Magazine about how historic house museums are using their grounds and properties creatively during the pandemic.
https://commonwealthmagazine.org/arts-and-culture/historic-homes-struggle-to-reopen-in-covid-compliant-way/
THE YEAR 2020 was shaping up to be a banner year for the Orchard House in Concord, the home where Louisa May Alcott lived and wrote the classic book Little Women. On Christmas 2019, the Greta Gerwig film adaptation of Little Women was released, set in a replica of Orchard House. By February, visits....
10/26/2020
“To the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.” – William Blake 🌳
Learn about some of New England’s best landscapes and the creative minds behind them with our four-part Virtual Twilight Talks series. Join us for the first installment this Wednesday, 10/28, for “Jewel in the Emerald Necklace: The Arnold Arboretum,” an intimate look at one of Frederick Law Olmsted’s best preserved landscapes. https://my.historicnewengland.org/6830/hgo-arboretum
Then, tune in for “Designing Mount Auburn: A Most Pleasing Effect on the Eye” next Wednesday, 11/4, to learn more about Mount Auburn Cemetery and how it pioneered a new American landscape of putting “the garden in the grave.” https://my.historicnewengland.org/6830/hgo-mt-auburn
📸 Funerary monument by Margaret Foley, Mount Auburn Cemetery, c. 1846-1861
10/23/2020
Happy #FanPhotoFriday! We love these blooms from IG user adrianbryceee's recent visit to Hamilton House. Although the interior of the house is closed for the season, Hamilton House's grounds are open to the public every day for free from dawn to dusk, so come and enjoy the beautiful gardens in person. 🌼
10/22/2020
As we learned from #AskAnArchivist Day two weeks ago, archivists preserve and describe historic documents. Revisiting images from the collections to give them context and view them through a more inclusive lens is another integral part of the archival process.
So what do you see when you look at this picture? When it was originally catalogued in our collection, its description started and ended with the basics: the image captures the home of Paul Revere by Henry Greenwood Peabody for the Detroit Photographic Company, c. 1900. But the details—from the Italian signage to the children’s hand gestures—tell a deeper, more nuanced story of life in Boston’s North End at the turn of the century.
To read Library and Archives Manager Cristina Prochilo’s full blog post about this image, visit https://www.historicnewengland.org/more-than-meets-the-eye-updating-archival-image-descriptions/.
10/21/2020
It’s with *unbridled* enthusiasm that we introduce Captain, the newest addition to Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm! 🐴 Captain is a Quarter Horse mix from MSPCA at Nevins Farm and is about twenty years old. He has glaucoma, but he is happy, healthy, and adjusting well to his new home. The farm’s grounds are open from dawn til dusk, so stop by to say hello! (Just be mindful that he is still getting settled and used to new surroundings.)
Older horses like Captain are hard to place because they are not rideable. We are grateful to have the space and hands available to give these animals a comforting place to spend the remainder of their lives, and we couldn't do it without our volunteers and supporters of all kinds. To help us maintain the farm and take care of these animals, please consider donating at HistoricNewEngland.org/give.
📸 by Matthew Muise
10/20/2020
#TriviaTuesday In 1979 #onthisday, President Carter attended a dedication ceremony for a new building in Boston created in President Kennedy’s honor. For what building was this ceremony being held?
Give us your best guess in the comments, and then check back later for the answer.
📸 Verner Reed photographic collection, 1957
10/19/2020
Join us this Thursday, 10/22, for an illustrated online talk that tells the sweeping story of the Lower East Side’s storied Henry Street Settlement and its enduring vision of a more just society.
The settlement house movement, which also included the House of the Seven Gables Settlement Association in Salem, was a Progressive Era crusade dedicated to tackling the problems of poverty by “settling” in and serving impoverished communities at a time of skyrocketing immigration, urbanization, and industrialization. Founded in 1893 by Lillian Wald, the Henry Street Settlement represented her dreams for a better society: one where all have equal access to healthcare, and where divides of ethnicity, race, and class were bridged.
Visit https://my.historicnewengland.org/6800/henry-street for tickets.
📸 House of the Seven Gables, Salem, Mass., Mary H. Northend, c. 1880s
10/16/2020
Tomorrow is the last day Beauport, the Sleeper-McCann House is open this season! We can't wait to see pictures from everyone who got tickets for guided tours, and we look forward to seeing you again next year. Make sure to tag us @historicnewengland and #historicnewengland on Instagram for the chance to be featured on our page. Shoutout to jasonbakerphotography on IG for today's beautiful #FanPhotoFriday!
Remember, members tour all Historic New England sites for free, so a membership can pay for itself in just a few visits. Learn more at HistoricNewEngland.org/Membership.
10/15/2020
GBH Celebrates National Hispanic Heritage Month
As #HispanicHeritageMonth comes to a close, check out GBH's great list of streamable content celebrating the achievements of Latinx actors, musicians, educators and more.
https://www.wgbh.org/hispanic-heritage-month
We’re proud to celebrate the vibrant cultures, art and history of Hispanic Americans with programs featuring the achievements of Latino actors, musicians, educators and more.
10/14/2020
Exciting news: tickets are now on sale for our art exhibition Artful Stories! 🎨🖼️🖌️ The show is now on view in the Eustis Estate and brings together paintings from ten different house museums as well as from Historic New England’s storage facility. As part of the Eustis Estate’s new self-guided tour experience, Artful Stories features works of art made in or about New England spanning more than 200 years. Visit HistoricNewEngland.org/ArtfulStories for an online preview.
Strict health protocols are in place in order to keep everyone safe. All guests must wear a face mask, and there is limited capacity. Advance tickets strongly encouraged.
🎟️ HistoricNewEngland.org/EustisEstate
10/13/2020
Need an excuse to start your holiday shopping early? 🛍️ Make sure you visit this year’s Roseland Cottage Fine Arts and Crafts Festival, this Saturday, 10/17, and Sunday, 10/18! Shop the work of artisans at this two-day, all-outdoor market and peruse wares including jewelry, woodworking, pottery, glass, toys, paintings, clothing, metalwork, and much more.
We have adapted this outdoor event to optimize social distancing and meet Historic New England’s health regulations and protocols. All guests must wear a face mask, and there will be no food for sale. There is limited capacity for the event, and we are using timed entry tickets, so we strongly encourage purchasing tickets in advance. Get your tickets at https://www.historicnewengland.org/visit/events/?keyword=roseland+cottage+fine+arts+festival.
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#AskAConservator Day
Tune in tomorrow at 12:30 p.m. as we livestream from our conservation lab to meet Phillip the Pheasant and see our other interesting historic objects! Wednesday, 11/18, is #AskAConservator Day, so if you have any art conservation questions or want to know more about a specific object, comment below and we'll try to give you an answer tomorrow. Hope to see you tomorrow at 12:30 p.m.!
Wednesday is #AskAConservator Day!
Join us this Wednesday, 11/18, at 12:30 p.m. as we Facebook livestream straight from our conservation lab! You'll see a walkthrough of the lab, get a close-up view of some objects undergoing conservation, and have some of your FAQs answered. Have a question you'd like to ask about historic object and art conservation? Drop it below in the comment section, and we'll do our best to answer on Wednesday.
In need of a fun lunchtime distraction? 🧩 Put together one of our online puzzles based on paintings from our collection featured in our upcoming exhibition “Artful Stories”! Choose between an easy or a hard puzzle (or don’t choose at all and do both) and see how fast you can put it together. https://www.historicnewengland.org/painting-puzzles/ Explore more paintings featured in Artful Stories through our immersive online preview: Eustis.Estate/topic/exhibitions. 🖼️ “Barnyard Scene,” Thomas Hewes Hinckley, 1848
For the last segment of our Lyman Estate Greenhouses walkthrough series, we’re taking you on a stroll through the camellia house. 🌺 The 1820 room was originally built for growing peach trees, but now houses these beautiful flowers. See our 100-year-old collection of camellias, as well as tropical azaleas, orchids, and more. #MuseumFromHome
View of the Salmon Falls River from Hamilton House, Springtime 2020
In need of a #MuseumMomentofZen this Thursday? Enjoy this video of the view of the Salmon Falls River from Hamilton House. The flowing water, the chirping birds, and the springtime air all come together in this one moment of tranquility.
Today’s #MuseumMomentofZen is perfect for orchid fans! This Lyman Estate Greenhouses video walkthrough takes you through the pondhouse and the lower sales house. These rooms house many varieties of orchids, plus plenty of other flowers types, such as kalanchoes and aeoniums.
Today we have a walkthrough video of two more Lyman Estate Greenhouses’ rooms for you. Here you’ll see the second and third grapehouses, filled with flowering plants such as bougainvillea, billbergia, and bottlebrush. (Plus, a lot more plants that don’t start with the letter “B.”)
Join us on a virtual walkthrough tour of the Lyman Estate Greenhouses’ first grapehouse to celebrate #EarthDay! 🌸🌼🌷🌻 While the greenhouses are closed to the public, we hope seeing the spring blooms emerging in this video tour will brighten your day. Stay tuned for more greenhouse room tours!
Although not a piece that will be included in our upcoming “Artful Stories” exhibition, this chair reupholstery video from our conservation lab was too good to not share! This is a treatment of a small chair from Sarah Orne Jewett House Museum & Visitor Center. The wool embroidery had some small holes, revealing the cream-colored fabric of the layers beneath it. Fraying fabric is likely to continue to fray. To fix the issue, conservators custom-dyed cotton patches and inserted them in the holes. Then, custom-dyed nylon net was overlaid across the entire chair seat. By stitching through the nylon net and the patches, the patches both improved the overall look of the chair and stabilized the fabric to prevent further fraying. Come back for more behind the scenes conservation content!
Gilding Swab Cleaning
This spring, our “Artful Stories” art exhibition will open, thanks in large part to the behind the scenes work of our conservators. This week, we're getting a behind the scenes look in the conservation lab at a conservator cleaning a frame. This video shows the process of cleaning "size" (adhesive used to attach gold leaf to the desired area of the frame). On this frame, the size is rabbit skin glue, common to nineteenth century gilding. Rabbit skin glue dries hard, but is still sensitive to water. On humid days, dust can attach to the glue size and discolor it. The only way to clean the frame is to reactivate the original rabbit skin glue layer with new, dilute rabbit skin glue. A conservator dips a large, soft cotton swab into rabbit skin glue solution made in the lab and rolls the swab over the frame's surface to pick up dust and dirt. It also redeposits a new layer of clean glue. Tune in next week for another #ArtfulStories update!
Sealing Cracked Gilding
This week for our “Artful Stories” conservation update, we see frame repairs in action. When cracks appear in the surface of gilding, it becomes vulnerable to further damage. The cracked edges leave the gilding materials exposed to the air and humidity, which can cause flaking due to expansion and contraction. Here, a conservator adds a very small amount of consolidant (a.k.a. adhesive) which wicks into the tiny cracks in the gilding to seal them. This process stabilizes the cracks to prevent flaking. The consolidant used in this video is made of—get ready—diluted fish glue and ethanol! Check back next week for more #ArtfulStories content.
Gilding Spot Testing
This week, for our “Artful Stories” conservation update, we’re taking a closer look at the gilding process. In this video, conservators test a sample of gilding from a gold frame with mineral spirits in a process called spot testing or solubility testing. Many old frames have had multiple repairs, and it can be difficult to tell what material (i.e. paint, wax, adhesive, plaster, putty, etc.) comprises a repaired portion of the frame. However, identifying the material can help conservators figure out how to safely remove it. Here, a conservator scraped off a small sample of a repaired portion of the frame, placed it in a glass dish, and added a few drops of mineral spirits. The sample was then confirmed to be gold-colored wax because it dissolved in the fluid. Check back in next week for another look at conservation efforts in preparation for #ArtfulStories.
Painting Removal in Phillips House for "Artful Stories"
An expansive exhibition like our upcoming “Artful Stories: Paintings from Historic New England” takes plenty of behind the scenes work to make it happen. Historic object conservation plays a vital role in preparing artwork for a show, and it all begins with de-installation. Each painting must be safely transported from its usual location to the conservation lab in Haverhill, Mass. Watch conservators in this video carefully remove “A Country Landscape” (Charles Harold Davis, c. 1890-1920) from Phillips House and safely wrap it in packaging for transportation. In anticipation of our upcoming exhibition “Artful Stories,” we will be sharing different historic conservation methods and treatments across social media. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for more exclusive #ArtfulStories conservation updates.
Good morning from the animals at Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm! The grounds are open daily from dawn to dusk. Stop by and say hello!
Have you seen the trailer for Little Women Movie? That’s the Lyman Estate where Saoirse Ronan and Timothée Chalamet are dancing as Jo and Laurie, about a minute in. We’re thrilled to be one of the Massachusetts locations for the Greta Gerwig-directed adaptation. See it in theaters this Christmas! https://youtu.be/AST2-4db4ic
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Historic New England operates thirty-seven historic properties open to the public. Open hours and prices vary, so please visit HistoricNewEngland.org. Many of our properties also have their own pages, which we invite you to follow.
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