The Spaulding-Collier House 13 Sheffield Road

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1 The Spaulding-Collier House 13 Sheffield Road Description, Exterior The Spaulding-Collier House is a well-preserved example of a mixture of late-19 th century styles generally referred to by architectural historians as eclectic. This is by no means a negative term, and is in fact is a credit to the skill and creativity of the house s designers and builders. The styles exhibited in the Spaulding-Collier house include, primarily, the Colonial Revival, but also the Shingle and Arts and Crafts styles as well. All of these styles blend well together and emerged from the same aesthetic during the last quarter of the 19 th century. The emergence of the Colonial Revival style is traced, appropriately enough, to the national centennial exhibition held at Philadelphia in The name of the style is self descriptive, referring to the simple, classically derived architecture prevalent in America before the Revolution. The Shingle style, although often executed in elaborately complex, asymmetrical compositions, was in fact originally named Modern Colonial by its promoters and was intended to be a simplification and paring down of more overblown mid-victorian fashions such as Italianate and Second Empire that immediately preceded it. It is characterized by the use of a rustic, uniform shingle -clad building envelope, which can be observed to a degree in the Spaulding-Collier House. The Arts and Crafts, or Craftsman style in architecture, also constituted a reaction to earlier overelaboration in architecture. Again, the idea was to convey a rustic, natural, pre-industrial or hand-crafted appearance, most often expressed in heavy, exposed structural members. This feature that can be observed in the Spaulding-Collier House in the unembellished modillions, or rafter tails at the cornice. Other characteristic features of each style displayed in the Spaulding-Collier House include its relatively simple rectangular massing under a broad hipped roof (Colonial Revival), contrasting with dramatic projecting elements, most notably a halfround bay in the center of the façade and a deep front porch that wraps around the left side of the house. The rich detailing also falls into the Colonial Revival category. This includes the four elaborate, tri-part Palladian window compositions in two vertical columns at either end of the façade, whose modillions are classically inspired fluted pilasters that support Craftsman shingle-clad window hoods. Another unusual window is located above the entrance in the center of the second floor: an ovoid oculus or circular window finished with four decorative keystones. The porch is supported by dramatically scaled Doric-order columns that rest on battered (or splayed), rustic shingle-clad piers. Although complex and varied, the composition of the façade is skillfully balanced and appealing. The house is finished in the highest quality materials, including a variety of elaborately patterned sash, a slate roof with copper flashing and classically inspired mill work around the window and door openings. The house sits on a flat lot within an

2 extraordinary setting of similarly designed but distinctive suburban houses of the same scale and period in an open, park-like landscape. Interior The interior of the house is richly finished in high-quality quarter-sawn oak (in the hall and parlor) and cherry (in the dining room). The plan is also characteristic of the period of the house in that it is composed of large rooms with broad openings that swing off of a large, central living stair hall to create openness and flow to an almost modern degree (the term living hall was of period coinage and referred to its less formal combined use of sitting and circulation space). Both the front hall and dining room are richly paneled in a Colonial Revival-inspired wainscoting and have elaborate fireplace mantle pieces. The openings into each room are broad and finished in elaborate casework composed of fluted pilasters. The entrance to the living room may originally have had a portiere, or heavy curtain to separate it from the rest of the house. The dining room has pocket doors, which are highly characteristic of period planning and allowed spaces to be both subdivided and broadly opened into each other for large-scale entertaining. Also off the living hall is a curiously shaped room with a half-round, apse -like bay. It is a testament to the quality of the house s construction that the sash in this rounded bay follow the shape of the room, an unusual, difficult and expensive feature to produce. This space was most likely originally a reception room, a common feature in late-19 th century planning that allowed callers to be comfortably seated while presenting visiting cards or waiting for their hosts at a time when telephones were not yet considered the best of manners. It currently functions as a music room to take advantage of the good acoustics provided by its unusual shape. History The Spaulding-Collier House, constructed ca. 1901, has an interesting and varied history. It is part of a carefully planned collection of similarly massed and designed houses carefully arranged in a park-like setting. The developer of this area was a retired ship captain named Phineas Nickerson ( ) who lived nearby at the corner of Church and Fletcher streets. Born in Harwichport, he went to sea at the age of 12 and rose to become commodore of the fleet of the Boston and Philadelphia Steamship Company. During his career with that line he captained the Norman, Spartan, Indian and Grecian, completing 1,200 voyages while no accident of moment nor loss of life entrusted to him ever occurred during his trips along the coast. i After retiring in about 1890 he moved from Boston to Winchester and began investing in and developing real estate. It appears that the panic of 1893, a severe depression that crippled the country for several years, provided Nickerson with an investment opportunity when a syndicate of investors attempting to develop the town s West End, or Flats area (the surrounding neighborhood) went bankrupt, allowing him to buy up much of the land. He initially built a house for himself on Fletcher Street (# 81) but quickly built a second at 92 Church and yet another across the street at #93. Each was designed by a local architect named

3 Robert Coit. Interestingly, Nickerson engaged Coit to design a house similar to 92 Church at #94 for an evidently very close friend, Stillman Snow, who served as Nickerson s first mate on several of his commands and succeeded him as captain of the Parthian, the flagship of the Boston and Philadelphia Line. Many of the houses in Nickerson s development on Sheffield Road, Everett Avenue and in the Flats are known to have been designed by Robert Coit, so there is strong circumstantial evidence, including design and style characteristics, which strongly suggest that the Spaulding- Collier House was by his hand as well. Robert Coit ( ) was well-known and highly prolific both within Winchester and regionally and maintained offices in Boston. He was the architect of dozens of houses constructed for Nickerson as well as the mansion of Samuel Walker McCall, U.S. Congressman and Governor of Massachusetts, , on Myopia Hill, the Winchester Boat Club and, late in his career, the Winchester Public Library. Coit favored designs in the English Arts and Crafts style, but many of his buildings were also executed in the Colonial Revival and, early on, the Queen Anne style as well. Though not particularly innovative, his designs were often well proportioned and balanced and of a high quality. The impact of Coit and Nickerson s work on Winchester cannot be over stated. They had a vast influence on the visual appearance of the town s residential districts constructed between 1890 and 1920, during which the town s housing stock more than doubled ii in a single development campaign envisioned by them. They almost single handedly created the character of the entire west side of town, virtually all of which survives in pristine condition. Nickerson engaged a local builder-carpenter named Dexter Blaikie, who lived nearby on Everett Avenue. During the 1890s he built dozens of similar houses on Everett Avenue, Sheffield Road, and in the neighboring Flats. The high quality of Blaikie s work is evident in many of the area s houses. While much of the land in the area was owned and developed by Nickerson, many lots interspersed throughout were owned by Louville Niles of Somerville and Edwin Ginn as well. Although much is known about Ginn, a nationally prominent publisher of textbooks who lived in a large estate on Bacon Street, little is known of Niles, who owned a great deal of residential and commercial architecture throughout Winchester. Further research may reveal more about the possible financial relationship between the three and more information regarding Louville Niles was. The first owner of the Spaulding-Collier House was Leonard H. Spaulding ( ), a shoe manufacturer with a mill located first in Haverhill (a national shoemanufacturing center), and later in Lowell, which he could easily reach by rail from Winchester. He was noted for the high quality of the shoes produced by his firm as well as several innovations in their manufacture. He was not connected with the well-known sporting-goods manufacturer of the same name, which at the time produced only balls and was a national firm that did not establish itself in Massachusetts until after 1928.

4 When first built, the house was valued in local assessor s records at $8,000. After only three years, Spaulding moved to nearby Everett Avenue. The house was afterward owned by Abram T. Collier ( ), an officer at Shawmut Bank in Boston, and his wife, Addie (d. 1915). During the late 1920s the house was owned by a widow, Jane E. Dodge, who, unusual for a woman of the time, managed her late husband s chemical manufacturing firm, the Egyptian Chemical Company, of Roxbury. During the 1940s the house was owned by Robert S. Clark (b. 1908), a stock broker and his wife, Esther (b. 1899). By 1956, the value of the house had risen only to $9,000, but the assessment on the property had risen from $ (1902) to $ and at some time in the intervening years a garage, valued in 1956 at $1,500, had been added to the property as well. References -Chapman, Henry Smith, History of Winchester, Massachusetts, Town of Winchester, 1976 reprint of 1936 edition. -Winchester Historical Society, Winchester, Massachusetts, The Architectural Heritage of a Victorian Town, WHS, Walker, Geo. H., Atlas of Middlesex County, Massachusetts Walker, Geo. H., Atlas of Middlesex County, Massachusetts , 1916 Sanborn Fire Insurance Atlas -Winchester Directories, Winchester Voting Lists, Town Annual Report, Tax Assessments, Winchester Star, (Nickerson obituary), Jane E. Dodge, Abram T. Collier obituaries.

5 i Winchester Star, June 26, 1914 ii Assessor s Records, Town of Winchester Annual Reports and Chapman John D. Clemson, Preservation Consultant February, 2008