Two of the Dalton chairs stand at the foot of the stairs, and above
them hangs the portrait of Tristram Dalton, a fine gentleman in a white
satin waistcoat. Over the stairs hangs a “hall lanthorne” like the one
in Illustration 333.
Illustration 400 shows the side of a room in the Penny-Hallett house at
685 Centre St., Jamaica Plain. It dates to 1774, and is all elaborately
carved by hand, with scrolls, birds, garlands of flowers and fruit, and
a head over each arch at the side of the mantel. All of this woodwork
has been removed, and embodied in a Boston house.
The house known by the names of past occupants as the
Parker-Inches-Emery house is now occupied by the Women’s City Club of
Boston, which is fortunate in being able to preserve this house from
changes for business purposes.
[Illustration: Illus. 402.—Mantel in Lee Mansion, Marblehead, 1768.]
[Illustration: Illus. 403.—Landing and Stairs in Lee Mansion,
Marblehead, 1768.]
The woodwork is probably the finest in Boston, and is attributed, with
the building, to Bulfinch. The doorway in Illustration 401 is from the
back parlor of the house. The door is mahogany, and the carved woodwork
of the frame is in a severely classical design. The anthemion figures
upon the pilasters and in the capital, and the design of the frieze is
beautiful in its severity. The house was built in 1818.
In his “Complete Body of Architecture” Isaac Ware says of the
chimney-piece: “No common room, plain or elegant, could be constituted
without it. No article in a well-finished room is so essential. The eye
is immediately cast upon it on entering, and the place of sitting down
is naturally near it. By this means it becomes the most eminent thing
in the finishing of an apartment.”
The mantelpiece in Illustration 402 is in the banquet hall of the house
built in 1768, upon generous plans, by Col. Jeremiah Lee in Marblehead.
The depth of the chimney is in the rear, and the mantel is almost flush
with the panelled walls. It is painted white like the other woodwork,
and is richly ornamented with hand carving, in rococo designs, with
garlands of fruit and flowers in high relief, after the fashion of the
time, and has a plain panel over the narrow shelf, which rests upon
carved brackets.
Illustration 403 shows the beautiful landing at the head of the
stairway in the Lee mansion, with the large window and Corinthian
pilasters, and the wonderful old paper, all in tones of gray. The turn
of the stairs is seen, and the finely twisted balusters.
[Illustration: Illus. 404.—Stairs in Harrison Gray Otis House, Boston,
1795.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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