Robert Treat Paine Estate

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paine, Robert Treat, Jr., House
(U.S. National Historic Landmark)
Exterior view
Exterior view
Location: Waltham, Massachusetts
Coordinates: 42°23′16.61″N 71°13′53.21″W / 42.3879472, -71.2314472
Built/Founded: 1866
Architect: Henry Hobson Richardson; Fredrick Law Olmsted
Architectural style(s): Shingle Style
Added to NRHP: October 07, 1975
NRHP Reference#: 75000291

[1]
Governing body: Local
A small portion of the extensive grounds.
A small portion of the extensive grounds.
The Great Hall.
The Great Hall.

The Robert Treat Paine Estate (109 acres) known as Stonehurst, is a country house designed in collaboration between architect Henry Hobson Richardson and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. It is located at 100 Robert Treat Paine Drive, Waltham, Massachusetts. Since 1974 the estate has been owned by the City of Waltham, and is believed to be the only residential collaboration by Richardson and Olmsted that is open to the public.

[edit] History

Today's house began in 1866 when Boston lawer turned philanthropist Robert Treat Paine, Jr. (1835-1910) and his wife Lydia Lyman Paine commissioned architect Gridley James Fox Bryant to build a mansarded Second Empire summer house in Waltham. The house and its site were paid for by George Lyman, Lydia’s father and owner of an adjacent summer residence, the Lyman Estate. This original house, however, proved too small for the Paines and their seven children, two of whom died before the Richardson addision was ever contemplated.

Thus in October 1883, Richardson and Olmsted made their first visit to the property to discuss relocating the extant 1866 Second Empire house, and designing both the surrounding grounds and a large Richardsonian addition to the house. Discussion continued until July 1884, when Olmsted and Richardson produced sketches, and agreed on a new house site high atop a rocky ridge with sweeping views to the southeast. In the spring of 1885, construction began on the new addition while the Paine family traveled to Europe with Phillips Brooks, a family friend and pastor of Trinity Church in Boston. When Richardson died prematurely at age 47 in April of 1886, the commission was close to completion. The terrace and some interior finishes were completed over the summer.


The house was the original headquarters of Thinking Machines, which rented the house from the city in the 1980s. Some of the first large-scale parallel computers and RAID disk arrays were designed in the house.

Episode #2104 of This Old House featured a tour of the estate.

[edit] References

  1. ^ National Register Information System. National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service (2007-01-23).
  • Margaret Henderson Floyd, "H. H. Richardson, Frederick Law Olmsted, and the House for Robert Treat Paine", Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Winter, 1983), pp. 227-248.

[edit] External links

v • d • e
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
National Park Service logo