Visiting the Prescott House Museum in Boston

Today is Museum Day Live, sponsored in part by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC.  I had perused the list of participating museums and picked out a couple in Boston which I had never heard of, then settled on the William Hickling Prescott House Museum on Beacon Hill.  Around noon my niece met me at 55 Beacon Street, overlooking the Boston Common, and we were ushered inside.  We became a group of about 25 — quite a motley crew — for the first tour (I believe they planned to offer four hour-long tours today).

This Beacon Hill house has been home to three families: in 1808, it was built by James Smith Colburn, a wealthy Boston merchant, who also built an identical house next door (these are considered twin houses).  The second owner, American historian William Prescott, lived in the house from 1845-1859 and customized it to his taste.  After his death, his widow lived here for the next ten years until she sold it to her nephew, Franklin Gordon Dexter.  The Dexters also made extensive renovations to the house, and it remained a family home until 1939.  For the next five years, the property languished until the National Society of the Colonial Dames purchased it in 1944.  In 1964, after extensive restoration, the house was designated a National Historic Landmark and was opened to the public.

Our tour began on the first floor, in the oval room which was the original dining room.  The room’s bow-front windows are original, and are one of the distinguishing marks of the Federal style, popularized by the American architect Asher Benjamin, who designed the house.  At the risk of over-simplifying, the dates for the Federal period are 1780-1820; based on classical forms, the style is simple and symmetrical.  Federal architecture was a sign of urban prosperity, reflecting the growing wealth of the new nation.

This oval room includes period furniture, but the pieces are not original, which is not surprising, given that for generations, this was a home, not a museum, and the families who lived here renovated and decorated with abandon.  At the back of the room, three dresses from the extensive NSCDA costume collection are on display.  Again, they did not belong to the women who lived here but are representative clothing worn during the time periods of the three wives (following the periodization of British history, probably Georgian, Victorian, and Edwardian).

Next we trooped through the foyer.  The foyer, the docent told us, is the entrance to the house and therefore the place where you’d “put your best foot forward.”  The original foyer was plain, but was renovated over the years to become more ornate.  It now has a marble floor and a beautiful, wide staircase, which was installed so that a daughter could make a splash when she entered the house on her wedding day.  The overhead lamp in the foyer is original and would have burned whale oil when it was first installed (it is now electric).

On the third floor, we viewed the master bedroom.  Unlike our bedrooms today, this room was used extensively by the family.  They often ate their evening meals in the room (lunch was the main meal of the day, not dinner) and entertained close friends here. The plank floor, shutters, and fireplace mantel in the room are original, but the furniture is not.

The second owner, William Prescott, was born into an old Boston family (ever hear of the Battle of Bunker Hill? Prescott’s grandfather, also William Prescott, commanded troops there).  Our William Prescott entered Harvard at age 14, which was not unusual back in the day.  Though parts of this story may be apocryphal, it’s rather well-established that during a food fight in the dining commons, Prescott was hit in the eye with a roll.  He lost sight in that eye, and then started losing sight in other eye; today he would be considered legally blind.  However, he did graduate from Harvard, and shortly thereafter, during a period of recuperation, he embarked on the European Grand Tour.  A few years later, he decided to devote himself to literature and history, rather than law.  He became fascinated with Spain and soon published a study of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.  He continued his historical work with studies of Latin America; his two most well-known works are History of the Conquest of Mexico, published in 1843, and History of the Conquest of Peru, published in 1847.

As a scholar and writer, Prescott made extension additions to the house, adding both a study to the third floor and a library to the second.  In one sense, the study was customized to accommodate his failing eyesight, in that it has large windows at the back to let in the light.  At his writing desk, he used a noctograph, a device that holds paper in place and allows for legible writing in the dark. Prescott also made extensive use of secretarial help to prepare his manuscripts for publication; adjacent to his study was a small study for his assistant.

When the property passed to the Dexter family ten years after William Prescott died, another round of renovations was in order, as the new owners were young and wealthy.  Mr Dexter converted the second-floor library into a formal dining room.  The windows are an outstanding feature, as are the mirrors — not looking glasses, they were designed to reflect light and brighten the room.  Above one of the dining room doors hangs a plaque commemorating the joining of the Prescott-Linzee swords.  Therein lies a sweet story: one sword was carried by the American Colonel Prescott at the Battle of Bunker Hill; the other was carried by his opponent, the English Royal Navy Captain John Linzee.  William Hickling, grandson of that American colonel, married Susan Amory, niece of John Inman Linzee, Captain Linzee’s son.  William Thackeray, he of Vanity Fair fame, noticed the swords when he was a guest at the Prescott’s home and mentioned them in his novel The Virginians.  The swords themselves are now owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society.

The last room we visited was the parlor, which has one flat window and two bow windows.  The mantel in this room is original but most of the furniture are period pieces.  In addition to the spinet which would be found in most drawing rooms, the Prescott family owned a Babcock box piano, which is a fascinating musical instrument (Alpheus Babcock of Boston was one of the great innovators in the modern history of the piano).  Prescott descendants donated the instrument to the Society so that it could be displayed here.  While we looked around the room, the docent had us try to imagine what it would have been like to live in the house two hundred years ago.  The view from the parlor windows onto the Common would have been much the same, but most of the tall buildings surrounding the house now would not have been built yet.  In fact, in 1808, most of the Back Bay was mudflats and salt marshes which would be under water at high tide, and one would have been able to look out from this house, situated on what was the Shawmut Peninsula, onto the Charles River.

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