Wentworth-Gardner House | |
Location | 140 Mechanic Street, Portsmouth, New Hampshire |
---|---|
Coordinates | 43°3′42″N70°44′20″W / 43.06167°N 70.73889°W |
Built | 1760 |
Architectural style | Georgian |
Part of | Wentworth-Gardner and Tobias Lear Houses (ID79000319) |
NRHP reference No. | 68000012 |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | November 24, 1968 [1] |
Designated NHL | November 24, 1968 [2] |
Designated CP | October 30, 1979 |
The Wentworth-Gardner House is a historic mid-Georgian house built in 1760 and located at 50 Mechanic Street in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, United States. The house is operated as a museum by the Wentworth-Gardner Historic House Association. It is one of the finest extant examples of high-style Georgian architecture in New England, and played a role in the architectural preservation movement of the early 20th century. [3] It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1968. [2] [4]
The Wentworth-Gardner House is a 2+1⁄2-story wood-frame house that was built in 1760 by Mark Hunking Wentworth, one of New Hampshire's wealthiest merchants and landowners, as a wedding present for his son Thomas. [3] The exterior of its main facade is flushboarded with corner quoining, giving it the appearance of masonry construction. The side walls, and those of the rear ell, are clapboarded. The main facade is five bays wide, with its center entry framed by a Colonial Revival surround added during restoration in 1916–18 by Wallace Nutting. It has a hip roof, with a modillioned cornice. Three dormers pierce each of the front and rear elevations, with the central dormer featuring a segmented-arch pediment, while the flanking ones have triangular pediments. [5]
The interior of the house follows a typical Georgian central-hall plan, with four rooms on each floor, two on either side of the central hall, all having access to one of the two interior chimneys. The hall is particularly broad and elegant, featuring an elliptical arch with keystone, supported by Doric columns. The cornice is particularly elaborate, with modillions and egg-and-dart molding. The stairs rise on the left-hand side, with elaborate turned balusters, and panelled and scrolled step ends. The upper hall continues the rich decorative woodwork found in the lower hall, with Ionic pilasters and a molded architrave. [4]
The southeast front parlor is the finest room in the house, with a fireplace surround highlighted by full-height Corinthian pilasters and a wooden entablature. All of the downstairs rooms have detailed woodwork in the cornice, panelled folding shutters that can be recessed into deep window jambs, and tile surrounding the fireplace. [4]
The dining room, located on the first floor in the southwest corner of the house, contains circa 1818 handblocked wallpaper from the Joseph DuFour Company in Paris, France. This wallpaper depicts a Greek festival called La Festival Grecque. The wallpaper is not original to the house, and was installed by Wallace Nutting during his renovations. [6]
Wallace Nutting, an antiquarian, purchased the house in 1916, and undertook its restoration. In 1918 he sold it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which considered moving it to New York City for display, but this plan was eventually abandoned in favor of in situ preservation. [3] The house was administered by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA, now Historic New England) until it was turned over to the present owner in 1940. [5]
The house was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1968. [1]
The home's first resident, Thomas Wentworth, received the house as a wedding present from his parents when he married Anne Tasker, who was from Marblehead, Massachusetts. Thomas received his degree from Harvard in 1761 and made his living as a merchant like his father. Only a few years after moving into the house, Thomas died of an illness in 1768, leaving behind his wife and five children. [7]
This house is normally open for tours Thursday-Monday between mid-June and mid-October; admission is charged. The Wentworth-Gardner House is available for wedding photography.
Portsmouth is a city in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, United States. At the 2020 census it had a population of 21,956. A historic seaport and popular summer tourist destination on the Piscataqua River bordering the state of Maine, Portsmouth was formerly the home of the Strategic Air Command's Pease Air Force Base, since converted to Portsmouth International Airport at Pease.
Wallace Nutting was an American minister, photographer, artist, and antiquarian, who is most famous for his landscape photos of New England. He also was an accomplished author, lecturer, furniture maker, antiques expert and collector. His atmospheric photographs helped spur the Colonial Revival style.
The Asa Gray House, recorded in an HABS survey as the Garden House, is a historic house at 88 Garden Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts. A National Historic Landmark, it is notable architecturally as the earliest known work of the designer and architect Ithiel Town, and historically as the residence of several Harvard College luminaries. Its most notable occupant was Asa Gray (1810–88), a leading botanist who published the first complete work on American flora, and was a vigorous defender of the Darwinian theory of evolution.
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Wentworth–Coolidge Mansion is a 40-room clapboard house which was built as the home, offices and working farm of colonial Governor Benning Wentworth of New Hampshire. It is located on the water at 375 Little Harbor Road, about two miles southeast of the center of Portsmouth. It is one of the few royal governors' residences to survive almost unchanged. The site is a New Hampshire state park, declared a National Historic Landmark in 1968. Today, the New Hampshire Bureau of Historic Sites manages the site with the assistance of the Wentworth-Coolidge Commission, a group of volunteer civic and business leaders appointed by the Governor.
The Wentworth Lear Historic Houses are a pair of adjacent historic houses on the south waterfront in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Both buildings and an 18th-century warehouse were owned by the Wentworth Lear Historic Houses and were operated as a house museum. Only the Wentworth-Gardner house is a museum. They are located at the corner of Mechanic and Gardner Streets. The two houses, built c. 1750–60, represent a study in contrast between high-style and vernacular Georgian styling. The Wentworth-Gardner House is a National Historic Landmark, and the houses are listed as the Wentworth-Gardner and Tobias Lear Houses on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Vernon House is a historic house in Newport, Rhode Island built in 1758 for Metcalf Bowler. The house is an architecturally distinguished colonial-era house with a construction history probably dating back to the late 17th century, with alterations made in the 18th century, possibly by architect Peter Harrison. During the American Revolutionary War this house served as the headquarters of the Comte de Rochambeau, commander of the French forces stationed in Newport 1780–1783. The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1968.
The Jonathan Hamilton House, also known as the Hamilton House, is a historic house at 40 Vaughan's Lane in South Berwick, Maine. Built between 1787 and 1788 by a merchant from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, this National Historic Landmark is a little-altered and high quality late Georgian country house. Acquired by preservationist friends of South Berwick native Sarah Orne Jewett at the turn of the 20th century, it is now a historic house museum owned by Historic New England, open for tours between June and October.
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Hillside, also known as the Charles Schuler House, is a mansion overlooking the Mississippi River on the east side of Davenport, Iowa, United States. It has been individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1982, and on the Davenport Register of Historic Properties since 1992. In 1984 it was included as a contributing property in the Prospect Park Historic District.
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