Wentworth–Coolidge Mansion facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Wentworth–Coolidge Mansion State Historic Site |
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The mansion in 2013
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| Location | 375 Little Harbor Road, Portsmouth, Rockingham County, New Hampshire |
| Website | Wentworth–Coolidge Mansion State Historic Site |
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Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion
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| Built | 1750 |
| Architectural style | Colonial |
| NRHP reference No. | 68000011 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | November 24, 1968 |
| Designated NHL | November 24, 1968 |
The Wentworth–Coolidge Mansion is a large, 40-room house made of wood. It was once the home and office of Benning Wentworth, who was the colonial Governor of New Hampshire. He also ran a farm here.
This historic house is located right on the water in Portsmouth. It's special because it's one of the few homes of royal governors that still looks almost the same as it did long ago. Today, it's a New Hampshire state park and was named a National Historic Landmark in 1968.
Contents
A Governor's Home: History of the Mansion
In 1741, New Hampshire got its own governor, separate from Massachusetts. Benning Wentworth became the first royal governor. He wanted a special building for the government in Portsmouth, but the local leaders said no.
So, in 1741, Governor Wentworth rented a brick house in Portsmouth. This house, now called the Warner House, served as his home for about 17 years. He tried to buy it as an official governor's residence, but the price was too high.
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While living in the brick house, Wentworth started giving out land grants to create new towns. The government meetings often happened in taverns around Portsmouth. A new government building wasn't ready until 1762.
Around 1750, Wentworth's son, John Wentworth, started putting together a large property outside Portsmouth. This property, along a water channel called Little Harbor, included a 100-acre farm and a place to live. Many rich people in Portsmouth had country farms like this.
The mansion itself is quite unique. It wasn't built all at once. Instead, it was made by moving existing buildings to the site and joining them together with new parts. This is why the house looks a bit uneven and unusual. Experts believe it's a mix of at least four, or even five, older buildings.
By 1753, the house by the water was comfortable enough for Wentworth to live in. He likely moved there permanently in 1759. From this new home, he probably continued to sign papers creating new towns in New Hampshire and Vermont.
Today, you reach the house by a winding land route through a forest, which makes it feel far away. But back then, this area was likely open farmland. The house was also much easier to reach by water from Portsmouth. There were many docks in town and at the mansion. The Piscataqua River has strong currents. In 1758, a newspaper reported that one of the governor's servants lost his life in the water near the house due to the strong tide.
Governor Wentworth owned the property until he passed away in 1766. It then went to his second wife, Martha Hilton. She later married Michael Wentworth, a distant relative of Benning's. When Michael passed away in 1795, the house's contents were listed. These lists give us a peek into what was inside the mansion.
In 1812, a map showed the house still standing close to the water. It had a very large garden, acres of orchards, and fields for cows. The road was similar to today's, but it went right to the water's edge.
The Cushing family bought the property in 1816 and ran it as a farm. By the 1840s, they started showing the old mansion to the public. This was one of America's first historic houses open for tours! It showed a growing interest in American history and old buildings.
In 1863, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem about Governor Benning Wentworth's marriage to Martha. It was a colorful story that became part of local legends.
Later, in 1886, John Templeman Coolidge III and his wife bought the property. They renovated and expanded the mansion. They worked with William Sumner Appleton, who started the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. This group helped save many old buildings.
Coolidge was a wealthy artist and collector who used the mansion as a summer home. He studied art in Paris and was friends with famous painter John Singer Sargent. Many important guests, like Sargent and art patron Isabella Stewart Gardner, visited the Coolidges at the mansion.
Photos from the early 1900s show the house filled with antiques. In 1954, Coolidge's widow, Mary Abigail Parsons Coolidge, gave the mansion to the state of New Hampshire.
Exploring the Mansion: Inside the House
From the outside, the mansion looks very different from other grand houses built in the 1700s. Back then, rich people usually preferred houses that looked perfectly balanced and even. The Warner House, where Governor Wentworth first lived, is a good example of this balanced style. The John Paul Jones House, built around the same time as the mansion, also shows this preference for symmetry.
The mansion's odd look comes from how it was built: by moving and joining together old buildings and adding new parts. To make it look more uniform, the outside was covered with wooden boards called clapboards. The inside was finished with plaster and fancy woodwork, typical of high-end homes of that time. A carpenter named Neal, who lived in the house as a servant, did this work.
We don't have many family papers from the Wentworths, so we guess how each room was used. But the rooms clearly show different levels of importance. They are divided into three main sections: one for formal events, one for family life, and one for servants' work. Each section had its own entrance and stairs.
Governor Wentworth likely copied the style of large, important houses from Europe. He might have known about the huge Wentworth Woodhouse mansion in England, which was expanded in the 1730s and 40s. Wentworth was also a member of the Anglican Church in a region where most people were Congregationalist. This connected him more to British culture. Some people who didn't like him even called him a "Spanish grandee" because of his fancy European style.
The formal style he copied usually had grand public areas like a large hall and a fancy "saloon" (a big living room). Smaller, but still fancy, rooms were called drawing rooms. Even smaller, very private rooms were bedrooms or studies. These rooms were usually found in balanced, grand buildings. At Little Harbor, Wentworth used this idea of different levels of rooms, but he fit them into the uneven buildings he had.
The Formal Entertainment Wing
The part of the house closest to the water seems to be made from another reused building. It has a tall entrance hall (called a vestibule), a grand "saloon," and a long room with two smaller rooms, plus attics.
The main door to this wing is very fancy, with decorative columns (called pilasters) and a triangular top (a pediment). This shows it was the most important entrance. This door doesn't face the water directly. Instead, it faces the old docks and original driveway, making it easy for guests arriving by land or water.
Inside, the vestibule has a fancy staircase with railings (called balusters) and built-in benches. These benches were for servants to wait on, before doorbells were invented. They also gave visitors a place to sit while waiting to see the governor.
Above the doors in the vestibule, there were gun racks. When filled with flintlock guns, they made an impressive display. This reminded visitors that the governor was in charge of the colony's army (the militia). Even when the Coolidges owned the house, these racks held ten muskets with bayonets. People believed these guns were captured from the French fortress of Louisbourg in Canada.
To the right of the vestibule are the mansion's largest rooms, facing the water. Both rooms have very high ceilings, rich woodwork, and tall windows. They also have built-in corner cupboards, which were likely used for serving drinks like punch. This shows the rooms were used for entertaining.
The first room is square. In England, it would be called a "saloon," but in New England, it was probably a "parlor" or "great parlor." Today, it's known as the Council Chamber. People used to believe Governor Wentworth held his council meetings here.
However, there's no proof that his council ever met here. They usually met in taverns in town. Still, the room feels important. The gun rack in the vestibule and a large portrait of Benning Wentworth, painted in 1760, add to this feeling. The original portrait is now in the New Hampshire Historical Society, but a copy hangs here. It's huge, 7 feet tall and 4 feet wide, with a big gold frame. It shows Benning life-size, but it looks even bigger because it hangs high up.
In the portrait, Wentworth wears a fancy blue silk coat with gold trim, silk stockings, and a powdered wig. Behind him is a red curtain, which was a symbol of power and authority. This red color is also used in the room's curtains and chair seats, matching the style of the time.
The portrait also shows a classical column, suggesting Wentworth was educated and refined. Beyond him, you can see a vast countryside, hinting at the huge amounts of land he was gaining.
The most impressive part of this room is the fireplace. It's a very fancy British-style fireplace with carved figures (called caryatids) and rich floral carvings. It's a copy of a fireplace from Houghton Hall in England, which was the huge country home of Sir Robert Walpole, Britain's first prime minister. By copying this fireplace, Wentworth was showing his connection to the highest levels of British government.
This room also had two "beaufaits," which were like fancy sideboards or corner cupboards. Only one original remains, but the others were copied in the 1960s. Their presence shows the room was used for entertaining.
Even though there's no proof the council met here, the room was set up in the 1980s to look like a meeting place. It has two tables with red cloth and chairs. Modern American and New Hampshire flags are in the corner.
The next room in this formal wing is long and narrow, with tall windows overlooking the water. It doesn't have a fireplace, suggesting it was used mostly in warmer weather, perhaps as a summer parlor. Its two sideboards confirm it was for entertaining. Its long shape and two small side rooms suggest it might have been a ballroom for dancing. The small rooms could have been for playing cards or as cloakrooms.
This long room has original wallpaper with a fancy rococo pattern and glitter. It was likely added in the late 1700s or early 1800s.
The Family Living Wing
From the main entrance hall, a short set of steps leads up to another part of the house. This section was for family life. It includes a nice parlor, an everyday parlor, and a smaller entrance hall with stairs. These rooms feel less grand than the formal wing, with lower ceilings that were easier to heat.
The parlor has bold, raised moldings on its lower walls, painted sky blue. This style might have been a bit old-fashioned for Wentworth, who was in his 50s. Or it might have been a nod to the similar moldings in the Warner House, where he lived for 17 years. The fireplace wall is fully paneled with marble around the fireplace opening.
The parlor walls have original red-on-yellow wallpaper with a large pattern. During restoration, it was found that this wallpaper might have been in another room before. The room also has a harpsichord, a musical instrument that has been in the house for generations. It dates from 1779-1785, meaning it was brought in by Martha's second husband, Michael Wentworth, who loved music.
Off the parlor is a small, lockable room with shelves. This "china room" is a larger version of the locked cupboards found in many fancy Portsmouth houses of that time. The shelves likely held expensive items like tea, sugar, alcohol, and fine china. In Wentworth's day, tea was very expensive, so keeping it locked up made sense.
Since dining rooms weren't common yet, meals might have been eaten in different parlors. So, a large china room made sense for keeping the best dishes safe from the busy kitchen. This room, which might seem strange today, fits perfectly into how the house was organized for different purposes.
The family entrance has an outer and inner hall with stairs. It's protected from winter winds and storms. This entrance is hidden from the docks and main road, guiding visitors to the formal entrance instead. The woodwork here is simpler, as it was a more practical area.
Behind the stairs is a small room with a small fireplace. It might have been a study or office. A deep closet next to the chimney has a window that "borrows" light from the entrance hall. This led to a story that the governor used it to "spy" on guests. But the closet is too narrow for the governor, and the window was likely just for light in a dark space.
Beyond the stair hall is a back parlor. In Benning's time, this was probably an everyday living room. It has paneling and decorative columns around the fireplace, but on a smaller scale than the grander rooms. In houses with two parlors, these rooms were used daily for sitting, talking, sewing, and informal meals, especially in winter when a fire might burn all day. Dedicated dining rooms were just starting to appear in England and wouldn't be common in New England until the late 1700s or early 1800s.
Today, the back parlor in the Wentworth–Coolidge Mansion is set up with furniture from the early 1800s to show how it might have looked if it became a dining room during Michael and Martha Wentworth's time.
Above these three main rooms are three bedrooms. They have simpler woodwork, with the fanciest bedroom above the parlor and plainer ones above the other rooms.
The bedroom above the parlor has pieces of the same large red-on-yellow wallpaper as the parlor below. It's decorated with fancy yellow fabric for the bed canopy, curtains, and chair upholstery, showing the high-end style of the era.
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The Service Wing for Daily Work
The back part of the house was the service or support wing. Steps here also follow the slope of the land, but the ceilings are even lower than in the other wings. These rooms include a large kitchen with a big cooking fireplace, a few small side rooms, and a brick-floored room likely used for food storage or as a dairy. There's also a small French-style "potager" or stewing kitchen with iron cooking pots built into a brick counter, but no chimneys.
The stew kitchen is thought to be connected to John King, a French tavern keeper whom Governor Wentworth hired to visit the mansion a few times a week to shave him, dress him, and cook. This type of kitchen is very rare in New England and is more common in places with French influence, like New Orleans. The stew kitchen has a door to the back parlor and a pass-through to the main kitchen.
Behind these is the main kitchen. It has a table built around a central post, which might be from an earlier use of this part of the mansion. There are two small rooms, perhaps pantries, at one end of the kitchen. The large fireplace, two ovens, and French stew kitchen gave the house plenty of space for preparing big meals for entertaining.
Upstairs in this wing are various rooms of different sizes, with the plainest woodwork in the house. These were likely servants' rooms and work rooms.
This back service wing has its own entrance and staircase, hidden from the family entrance and the main road. This meant that visitors would naturally go to the formal entrance. This setup also meant that servants and enslaved people coming and going from the barns and fields wouldn't cross paths with the family or guests. This separation was unusual for the time, but it fit the governor's desire to show his high status.
When the Coolidge family owned the house, they built a new carriage house (which still stands) and a new driveway. The old approach along the water was no longer used. Today, visitors use the Coolidge-era driveway, which makes the service entrance the most obvious door. This changes the original impression of the house.
There are two more wings added in the late 1800s or early 1900s. At the back, beyond the kitchen, is a simple service wing added by the Coolidges. At the water end of the house, off the long formal room, is a guest bedroom with windows overlooking the water and its own stairs to a basement bathroom. Today, this room displays items from the Coolidge era.
Outdoor Spaces and Views
The outdoor areas also hint at how the property was used. There was a large garden and a roof deck.
A map from 1812 shows a garden over an acre in size. It was a long rectangle, stretching from the house south to the road, with orchards on one side and the dock on the other. The map shows paths dividing it into six sections. We don't know exactly what was planted, but it could have been vegetables, herbs, or flowers. Most of the site is now covered with trees. If anything remains from that garden, it might be the lilacs around the house today. The mansion is traditionally believed to be where lilacs were first brought to New Hampshire. Their abundance here is why the lilac was chosen as the state flower in 1919.
The garden on the map likely existed during Benning Wentworth's time. We don't know if the governor was interested in the new naturalistic garden styles popular in Britain. His formal, straight-lined garden suggests not. However, one feature hints he might have known about them: a roof deck.
Above the best bedroom was a flat roof deck. You could reach it by stairs from the family wing. When open to the air, it offered amazing views of the garden, orchards, farm fields, the water channel, islands, and out to sea. This kind of view was part of the new landscape garden movement in Britain. At the very least, Wentworth and his guests could enjoy the scenery.
This is the earliest known roof deck in New England. In a shipbuilding city like Portsmouth, it was probably easy to find workers who knew how to build and maintain it using tar and ropes. But the harsh New England weather eventually took its toll. At some point, the roof deck was covered with a gabled attic to shed snow and rain. Leaks might explain why the wallpaper in the bedroom below was damaged.
The way the mansion's spaces are organized, its architectural details, and clues about social and political life help us understand that this seemingly random house actually follows a clear, important arrangement, despite its unusual outside appearance.
Today, the house is open to the public in summer. Tours usually start at the kitchen door. This gives visitors a different experience, moving from the less important work rooms, through the family rooms, to the impressive formal rooms. This is very different from how important guests would have experienced the house long ago.
Drift Contemporary Art Gallery
An old barn on the historic site was turned into a visitor center, event rooms, and offices in the late 1990s. Around 2000, it became a gallery for local modern art in the summer and an art school in the winter. After the gallery manager retired, it was empty until 2013, when the Drift Gallery moved in. It now runs as a private gallery in partnership with the mansion. The gallery has shown works by many modern artists, including Robert Wilson. It also has educational programs, like a week-long day residency, honoring the art community that John Templeton Coolidge started in the late 1800s.
Images for kids
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Engraving of the fireplace in the stone hall at Houghton Hall
