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Coffin House

1678 establishments in the Massachusetts Bay ColonyHistoric New EnglandHistoric house museums in MassachusettsHouses completed in 1678Houses in Newbury, Massachusetts
Museums in Essex County, Massachusetts
Coffin House, Newbury, MA
Coffin House, Newbury, MA

The Coffin House is a historic Colonial American house, currently estimated to have been constructed circa 1678. It is located at 14 High Road, Newbury, Massachusetts, and operated as a non-profit museum by Historic New England. The house is open on the first and third Saturday of the month from June through October. The house began in 1678 as a simple structure of two or possibly three rooms on land owned by Tristram Coffin, Jr, son of Tristram Coffin, who had left the area for Nantucket by this time. About 1713 the house was more than doubled in size, with new partitions added. In 1785, two Coffin brothers legally divided the structure into two separate dwellings, each with its own kitchen and living spaces. The property remained within the Coffin family until acquired by Historic New England in 1929. Although the house was traditionally dated to 1654 (by Joshua Coffin, author of the 1845 history of Newbury), recent scientific studies have provided more accurate estimates. In 2002, the Oxford Tree-ring Laboratory analyzed wooden beams from the structure and ascertained that donor trees were felled in winter 1676–1677 and 1677–1678 for the original structure, and winter 1712–1713 for the addition. This revised dating means that the Coffin House may no longer be the earliest example of the principal rafter/common purlin roof, although even so it is certainly one of the oldest extant examples. In 1785, two of the brothers of the Coffin family legally divided the house into two separate dwelling areas. The last Coffin-surnamed resident of the home was Lucy Coffin. Coffin House is owned by Historic New England.

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Coffin House
High Road,

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Latitude Longitude
N 42.8 ° E -70.8633 °
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High Road 14
01922
Massachusetts, United States
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Coffin House, Newbury, MA
Coffin House, Newbury, MA
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Swett–Ilsley House
Swett–Ilsley House

The Swett–Ilsley House (c. 1670) is a much extended Colonial house located at 4 High Road, Newbury, Massachusetts, United States. It is now owned by Historic New England, formerly the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA), and operated as a study museum. The house's original section was built in 1670 by Stephen Swett, one of Newbury's first settlers, on a south-facing single-room plan with chimney bay. Under various owners, the house remained more or less unaltered until about 1720, when it was enlarged by addition of a second single-room household (with its own door) north of the original block. A new roof—made in part with salvaged rafters of the older roof—was built over the whole, changing the ridge pole direction from an east–west to a north–south axis. The chimney, then located at the northwestern corner of the main block, was retained, but its upper stack was probably modified at that time. The house underwent a series of additions during the 18th and 19th centuries when it also served as a "tobacconist business," a chocolate mill, and a tavern. It was further extended to the north, although its irregular lot required that the eastern wall stopped two feet before the western wall. The original chimney was demolished, and a new central chimney was added to serve the 1670 and 1720 portions of the house. In 1756, the house's irregular shape was somewhat squared when the purchase of land to the north yielded an opportunity to build a final northern addition of single-room plan with stair-hall and separate chimney. The building achieved its present form with the construction of a kitchen lean-to at the western end of the house, containing one of the largest fireplaces of the period, with three beehive ovens. In 1911, the house was purchased by SPNEA, its first architectural acquisition. With advice from restoration architect Henry Charles Dean, SPNEA removed layers of lath and plaster to reveal original timbers, early 18th-century paneling, and one of the largest fireplaces in New England. Restoration stopped when funds were exhausted, before any long-gone original features like diamond-paned casements were recreated, resulting in a house with an unrestored 18th-century exterior and a partially restored interior reflecting both the 17th and early 18th centuries. After restoration, the house was rented to a series of tenants, who operated a tea room there until 1965 when the house became a study museum.

Cushing House Museum and Garden
Cushing House Museum and Garden

The Cushing House Museum and Garden (circa 1808), also known as the Caleb Cushing House, is a Federal style mansion with a fine garden located at 98 High Street, Newburyport, Massachusetts, United States. It was a home of diplomat Caleb Cushing and is a National Historic Landmark. The house is a center entrance four-story brick mansion in the Federal style, with entrances at both the front and sides, and two chimneys on each side. In shape it is a flattened cube, with five windows arranged symmetrically across both front and sides. Its main entry is crowned with a modest fanlight, echoed by a fan-shaped wooden motif atop the window above it. On the grounds, visitors will find a nineteenth-century garden, fruit trees, a privy, cobbled yard and carriage house. Within the house are fine collections of silver, furniture, portraits, clocks, needlework, antique fans, hatboxes, nineteenth century toys, and more from New England, Asia, and Europe. The China Trade Room displays early China Trade decorative arts including four Chinese coastal Hong paintings. An extensive clock collection includes examples made by local master clockmakers David Wood and Daniel Balch. In the canopy bedroom stands a carved seventeenth-century Dutch cradle and a three-sided crib. Many oil portrait paintings hang in the house, including a Cecilia Beaux portrait of Margaret Cushing and 1801 paintings by John Brewster, Jr., of Newburyport's Prince family. The museum also maintains a collection of area maps, photographs, and genealogical references. It is now the home of the Historical Society of Old Newbury and guided tours are offered between Memorial Day and Columbus Day. The house was declared a National Historic Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, and included in the Newburyport Historic District in 1984. The house is deemed nationally significant for its association with Cushing, a 19th-century diplomat whose defining achievement was the Treaty of Wanghia, negotiated in 1844 with the Qing dynasty of China. This treaty was the first in which the United States secured equivalent rights to those of traditional colonial powers (in this case, the United Kingdom).