Parker House (Blue Hill, Maine)
Encyclopedia
Parker House was constructed for Col. Robert Parker and his wife, a daughter of Blue Hill founder Joseph Wood, in 1816 (or possibly in 1812), on an upland portion of the Parker land grant of which Parker Pointhttp://wikimapia.org/#lat=44.41&lon=-68.59&z=13&l=0&m=b&show=/10786604/Parker-Point&search=blue%20Hill%20maine was also part. The house was remodeled in 1900 by George A. Clough
for Mrs. Frederick Augustus Merrill, a resident of Boston descended from Mrs. Parker's sister, Edith Wood Hinckley.
Parker House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places both for the quality of its original features and for changes made by Clough in the Colonial Revival spirit. The house contains much original woodwork including several fine fireplaces; Clough's contributions included Tuscan-columned porches and the addition of a (now removed) wrap-around veranda and balustrades on the roofs.
Houses in the classical mode of the Colonial Revival were considered an advancement in taste over those in the earlier, more rustic Shingle-Style, but at this period the style began to have unfortunate associations with retrograde social politics, specifically nativismhttp://www.answers.com/topic/nativism. Under pressure from below by the growing political influence of recent immigrants and from above by the social dominance of Gilded Age nouveaux riches, old families around the dawn of the 20th century tended to insist somewhat on their gentility, and to express their sense of family history in their houses.
The Merrills were no exception. They filled Parker House with oil portraits, one painted posthumously, and with antiques with family provenance, a few of which were wrested from local Hinckley cousins, creating a kind of ersatz ancestral home. Among their acquisitions was a table belonging to Joseph Wood later given to the Blue Hill Historical Society by Mrs. Merrill's granddaughter, Betty Darling Bates. It can be seen at Holt House, the Society's headquartershttp://www.bluehillhistory.org There was also the inevitable spinning wheel, a Peters family heirloom, now banished upstairs.
This sense of created history extended to legends concerning the date of the house's construction, traditionally assumed to be complete by 1812. This would have had to be the case for the tale of Joseph Wood dying in the house in 1813 to be true. The story of workmen nailing on the roof hearing the guns at Castine announcing the commencement of hostilities in the War of 1812, dropping their tools and going off to fight then returning to pick up rusty hammers where they'd fallen is surely apocryphal, being just the sort of tale conjured up at the time to romanticize the heroic spirit of early Americans.
The remodeled house was conceived as a summer place - Clough's French windows were not designed to keep out winter chills - but also as a place in the country. In the spirit of the House and Garden Movementhttp://www.books.google.com/books?id=6JgTkDtAlHYC&pg=PA117&lpg=PA117&dq=%22house+and+garden+movement%22&source=bl&ots=f8iCxoEJ24&sig=CGsHpZi9OVXLOGc9Xi8ghlEK0xg&hl=en&ei=TOGaTs2KOqne0QHt3snmBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22house%20and%20garden%20movement%22&f=false popular at the time Mrs. Merrill kept a dairy cow and laying hens, impossible on Parker Point where the family had previously summered. She also cultivated gladiolus in her garden, entering them at the annual Blue Hill Fair.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/06/blue-hill-fair-maine_n_950686.html Fashionable too were her artistic pursuits. The house contains two oil still-lives by her as well as a set of Limoges china which she painted at the time of her marriage.
Mrs. Merrill's husband was also artistically inclined. A letter from his friend, patient and former professor at Harvard, Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.) thanks Dr. Merrill for the gift of a hand-turned hub, presented as a token of Holmes's famous remark about Boston. The Merrill's younger daughter Ruth followed suit, graduating from the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Ruth's thesis project, a self-portrait, still hangs in the house.
Now nearing its 200th birthday, Parker House and its collections are undergoing restoration with a view toward inclusion in Blue Hill's regular series of charity house tours. Proud of family ties to its grander neighbor, Barncastle
, Parker House will exhibit memorabilia including scrapbooks, portraits and photographs belonging to Barncastle's builders, Effie Hinckley Kline,http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/node/1905028 founder of the Boston Ideal Opera Company and patroness of the arts in Cleveland, and her husband Virgil, John D. Rockefeller
's private lawyer.
George Albert Clough
George Asa Clough was an architect in Boston, Massachusetts in the later 19th-century. He designed the Suffolk County Courthouse in Pemberton Square, and numerous other buildings in the city and around New England. Born in Blue Hill, Maine, Clough trained as an architect at the firm of Snell &...
for Mrs. Frederick Augustus Merrill, a resident of Boston descended from Mrs. Parker's sister, Edith Wood Hinckley.
Parker House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places both for the quality of its original features and for changes made by Clough in the Colonial Revival spirit. The house contains much original woodwork including several fine fireplaces; Clough's contributions included Tuscan-columned porches and the addition of a (now removed) wrap-around veranda and balustrades on the roofs.
Houses in the classical mode of the Colonial Revival were considered an advancement in taste over those in the earlier, more rustic Shingle-Style, but at this period the style began to have unfortunate associations with retrograde social politics, specifically nativismhttp://www.answers.com/topic/nativism. Under pressure from below by the growing political influence of recent immigrants and from above by the social dominance of Gilded Age nouveaux riches, old families around the dawn of the 20th century tended to insist somewhat on their gentility, and to express their sense of family history in their houses.
The Merrills were no exception. They filled Parker House with oil portraits, one painted posthumously, and with antiques with family provenance, a few of which were wrested from local Hinckley cousins, creating a kind of ersatz ancestral home. Among their acquisitions was a table belonging to Joseph Wood later given to the Blue Hill Historical Society by Mrs. Merrill's granddaughter, Betty Darling Bates. It can be seen at Holt House, the Society's headquartershttp://www.bluehillhistory.org There was also the inevitable spinning wheel, a Peters family heirloom, now banished upstairs.
This sense of created history extended to legends concerning the date of the house's construction, traditionally assumed to be complete by 1812. This would have had to be the case for the tale of Joseph Wood dying in the house in 1813 to be true. The story of workmen nailing on the roof hearing the guns at Castine announcing the commencement of hostilities in the War of 1812, dropping their tools and going off to fight then returning to pick up rusty hammers where they'd fallen is surely apocryphal, being just the sort of tale conjured up at the time to romanticize the heroic spirit of early Americans.
The remodeled house was conceived as a summer place - Clough's French windows were not designed to keep out winter chills - but also as a place in the country. In the spirit of the House and Garden Movementhttp://www.books.google.com/books?id=6JgTkDtAlHYC&pg=PA117&lpg=PA117&dq=%22house+and+garden+movement%22&source=bl&ots=f8iCxoEJ24&sig=CGsHpZi9OVXLOGc9Xi8ghlEK0xg&hl=en&ei=TOGaTs2KOqne0QHt3snmBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22house%20and%20garden%20movement%22&f=false popular at the time Mrs. Merrill kept a dairy cow and laying hens, impossible on Parker Point where the family had previously summered. She also cultivated gladiolus in her garden, entering them at the annual Blue Hill Fair.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/06/blue-hill-fair-maine_n_950686.html Fashionable too were her artistic pursuits. The house contains two oil still-lives by her as well as a set of Limoges china which she painted at the time of her marriage.
Mrs. Merrill's husband was also artistically inclined. A letter from his friend, patient and former professor at Harvard, Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.) thanks Dr. Merrill for the gift of a hand-turned hub, presented as a token of Holmes's famous remark about Boston. The Merrill's younger daughter Ruth followed suit, graduating from the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Ruth's thesis project, a self-portrait, still hangs in the house.
Now nearing its 200th birthday, Parker House and its collections are undergoing restoration with a view toward inclusion in Blue Hill's regular series of charity house tours. Proud of family ties to its grander neighbor, Barncastle
Barncastle
"Barncastle", also known as Kline Cottage, is one of the earliest and largest summer cottages in Blue Hill, Maine and remains one of its most visible and idiosyncratic...
, Parker House will exhibit memorabilia including scrapbooks, portraits and photographs belonging to Barncastle's builders, Effie Hinckley Kline,http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/node/1905028 founder of the Boston Ideal Opera Company and patroness of the arts in Cleveland, and her husband Virgil, John D. Rockefeller
John D. Rockefeller
John Davison Rockefeller was an American oil industrialist, investor, and philanthropist. He was the founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.S. business trust. Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum industry and defined the structure of...
's private lawyer.