The silver paint on the ceiling softly glowed. The ipads also have videos of restoration artists at work, historic photos of the family’s life in the home and vivid descriptions, such as this one about the dining room: “Gold-colored paint applied to textured walls created a surface that glittered in the dancing light of the gas chandelier. Packed with information about the family and the house design, features and landscape, the iPads are particularly useful because their photographs make clear exquisite details sometimes difficult to see in the relatively dark home. While guided tours will be offered twice a day, most visitors are expected to explore on their own with the help of wall and table-mounted iPads. The original furniture remains in the dining room and master bedroom, which are the only spaces visitors view from behind a barrier.
#Eustis estate museum and study center upgrade#
Over several years, the nonprofit preservation society has spent $5 million to upgrade the infrastructure, restore the gilt-covered arches, return the walls to their original rich red and gold colors, and refurnish the house with Oriental rugs and other period pieces.
“They never painted it, and that’s why the wood retains this wonderful patina.” “Even when natural woodwork had gone out of style, the later generations appreciated what their grandparents valued,” Gittleman said. It’s also exceptional that the extraordinary carved woodwork - oak, butternut, black walnut, cherry, ash and mahogany - that defines the house is untouched. The home also is unusual because four generations lived there, until the family sold it in 2012 for $7.1 million to Historic New England. Modern amenities included an elevator for moving coal and wood, a state-of-the-art cast iron stove, soapstone sinks, a copper water heater, a telephone, speaking tubes for communicating with servants, tin-covered copper tubs and gravity-fed toilets. “They were young and stylish and forward-looking,” Gittleman said. When architect William Ralph Emerson designed the home in 1878 for newlyweds William Ellery Channing, a mining engineer, and Edith Hemenway Eustis (whose families lived on adjacent properties), it was considered modern and artful, starting with the striking exterior of crimson, orange and black stones. “It has been our longtime dream to have space to share our collections,” Gittleman said. On view now in the second-floor bedrooms is the exhibit “Curator’s Tour of Mementoes: Jewelry of Life and Love.” The house also serves as a long-awaited gallery for Historic New England to exhibit some of the 120,000 objects it owns. Every space is ornamented in some way and there’s pattern upon pattern.” “Everywhere you look, there is woodwork with highly stylized nature motifs. “The house is extraordinary and opulent,” said Gittleman, leader of visitor experience. And it is a rare, well-preserved example of the Aesthetic Movement, a popular late-19th-century style that celebrated the value of art in home design and life. Though just miles from Boston, it sits at the end of a long tree-lined driveway on 80 acres of fields and woods. We want people to get to see the rooms from the perspective of the family and bond with the house.”īordering the Blue Hills Reservation, the 18,600-square-foot Victorian mansion is unlike any of the 37 other Historic New England homes. “People are so used to going to historic homes and being unable to sit down or touch anything or explore on their own. “We’re reinventing the experience of visiting an historic home,” said Peter Gittleman of Historic New England, which opened the estate to the public just a few weeks ago. MILTON - The Eustis Estate in Milton is historic for many reasons – including the invitation to visitors to sit on the furniture, wander freely and explore with iPads.
0 kommentar(er)
