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Six Famous Artists Houses (Where You Can Stay, Too)

Artists gravitate toward places that inspire them creatively, so you can often find artists houses among splendid scenery or in rural isolation.

Famous artists could often afford large houses, and some have since been transformed into inns and bed and breakfasts.

Artists Houses As Inns

Now every New England state has a house that an artist once lived in, but functions as an inn or an artists retreat.

At two of the artists houses described below you can actually practice your art in the same places Fairfield and Eliot Porter and Norman Rockwell found their inspiration.

So here we bring you six artists houses, one in each state (admittedly, we include an engraver and an architect as artists – but we think they’d agree). If you know of any artists houses where people can stay, please include them in the comments section.

Abel Buell Home

The Abel Buell Home

Abel Buell, apprenticed to a silversmith as a boy, learned his craft perhaps too well.

As a young man, he used his skill at engraving to alter the plates for five-pound notes to plates for larger denominations. Then he printed them. He got caught, and authorities cut off the tip of his ear as punishment.

An uncommonly ingenious mapmaker, he designed the first map of the United States in 1784 and colored it by hand. The map involves enough artistry that we’re putting his house on our list of artists homes.

The first map, by Abel Buell.

He was born in 1742 in Clinton, Conn., when it was called Killingworth. Today his home is a bed and breakfast called the Abel Buell House By The Shore. You can stay in one of two rooms, one with a queen-size bed, one with a twin.

33 Commerce St., Clinton, Conn.

Great Spruce Head Island

Great Spruce Head Island in Penobscot Bay (thanks, Google Maps!)

Fairfield Porter, born in 1907 in Winnetka, Ill., bucked the Abstract Expressionist trend during the middle of the 20^th century. He stuck to a representational style despite criticism from other artists. In his paintings, he made ordinary landscapes and interiors seem extraordinary.

Under the Elms by Fairfield Porter

His brother Eliot was a biochemical researcher at Harvard who took up photography as a hobby. Fairfield introduced Eliot to Alfred Stieglitz, who encouraged him to work harder. Eliot began to exhibit in Stieglitz’s gallery, and eventually he quit his job and pursued photography full time. The Sierra Club published a book of his photographs with quotations from Henry David Thoreau, and it did quite well. Eliot Porter published more books, and is considered the pioneer of the coffee-table book of nature photography.

When the boys were young, their father bought Great Spruce Head Island in Penobscot Bay and built a 12-bedroom summer cottage. The brothers and their three siblings spent summers on the island. Today, the Porters’ niece, Anina Porter Fuller, invites a dozen artists to spend a week on the island working independently in late June or early July. (Here’s her painting of the house.)

Great Spruce Head Island, Deer Isle, Maine

Fidelia Bridges Guest House

The Fidelia Bridges Guest House (thanks again, Google Maps)

Fidelia Bridges created exquisite images of nature in the 19^th century, though people have largely forgotten her. Except, at least, for those who stay at one of the most interesting artists houses, the Fidelia Bridges Guest House.

May, by Fidelia Bridges

She was born in 1834 in Salem, Mass., to Eliza Chadwick Bridges and Henry Gardiner Bridges. Her father died in China when Fidelia was 15, and her mother died three hours before the news of her husband’s death reached Salem. Fidelia’s sister auctioned off the family furniture and sold the house.

Eventually Fidelia got a job as a mother’s helper in New York, where she would later run a school and her own studio. She also worked as a governess to Mark Twain’s three children.

All the while she drew and painted, limiting her subjects to birds and plants.

She moved to Canaan, Conn., and lived quietly, drawing and painting for the rest of her days.

The Fidelia Bridges Guest House belongs to the Hawthorne Hotel in Salem, Mass.

18 Washington Square West, Salem, Mass.

Inn at Whitefield

Interior at the Mountains, by Emil Otto Grundmann

Emil Otto Grundmann was a German art professor and artist who came to the United States. He got a job as director of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where he founded the Boston School of art. He taught such artists as Frank Weston Benton, Charles Henry Turner and Edmund C. Tarbell.

Grundmann visited a friend in Whitefield, N.H., in 1879 to paint the White Mountains. He painted the lovely Interior at the Mountains, a view of the silhouette of the Franconia range through the window of his friend’s bay window. The interior includes ‘accessories of genteel tourism,’ according to Robert L. McGrath: a map of Europe, sculptures, prints of Roman monuments and wicker furniture.

Today you can be your own genteel tourist at the house, now the Inn at Whitefield.

381 Lancaster Rd., Whitefield, N.H.

Architect’s Inn Guesthouse

The Archietect’s Inn

George Champlin Mason designed a number of palatial homes in Newport, R.I., including one for himself.

Mason spent his early career trying to make a living as a landscape painter. He published a collection of engravings of Newport landscapes that promoted the city to tourists and vacationers.

Mason switched careers several times, first as a newspaper editor and finally as an architect. He began designing houses in 1858, eventually designing many of the summer mansions in Newport. He also helped found the Newport Historical Society.

After his death in 1894, Belmonts and Vanderbilts lived in his house. Today it’s an inn, known as the Architect’s Inn Guesthouse, decorated with period furnishings and offering fully interactive Murder Mystery weekends.

2 Sunnyside Pl #1, Newport, R.I.

Norman Rockwell Inn & Studio

The Norman Rockwell Inn & Studio

Before Norman Rockwell moved to Stockbridge, Mass., he lived in Arlington, Vt. There he adopted the themes of Americana that have endeared him to millions of his fans.

Rockwell was 49 when he bought a farmhouse in Arlington, Vt., in the fall of 1943. The move to the house, built in 1792, gave him a much-needed restart for his art.

He was more interested in diners, doctors’ offices and schoolhouses than in the landscape.

Today you can enjoy the Green Mountain scenery or the diners and schoolhouses at the Norman Rockwell Inn & Studio. You can even stay in his studio – or his barn. The inn also offers Rockwell Seminars during which acclaimed painters and illustrators give one-on-one instruction in Rockwell’s actual studio.

3587 River Road Arlington, Vt.

Images of artists houses: Emil Grundmann, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Otto_Grundmann#/media/File:Emil_Otto_Grundmann00.jpg; Under the Elms, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10887039

This story about artists houses was updated in 2019.

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Into the Trenchers: Seven Strange Facts About Dinner in Colonial New England

The colonists who first began settling in New England in the 1620s brought what furnishing they could from Europe, but they were largely on their own when it came to setting up housekeeping. As colonists sat down to dinner in colonial New England, they had functional, but primitive, surroundings.

A look around their dining room would bear little resemblance to what we see today – or even what colonists had just a few decades later.

A dinner in colonial New England: “The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth” (1914) By Jennie A. Brownscombe

1. Napkins Aplenty

If you looked around an early colonial home, the large supply of napkins would probably surprise you. Given the meager belongings of a typical colonist, it might seem they put on quite a show in accumulating an exorbitant supply of napkins. Not so. They had plenty of napkins because they ate much of their food with their hands. Napkins were vital.

2. Spoons Featured in Dinner in Colonial New England

When not eating with their hands, colonists dined with spoons and knives. Indeed, many recipes produced stewed and soggy meat – called spoon meat – ladled up and eaten by spoon. The New England boiled dinner still occasionally appears on a restaurant menu.

new-england-living-standards-john-winthrop

Portrait of John Winthrop, American Antiquarian Society.

The colonists barely even heard of forks. Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop had the first recorded fork in America, which he obtained in 1633. Doubtless he was the envy of many.

Most families had at least one silver spoon, but generally accepted wooden spoons as tableware along with knives of varying quality.

3. Salt

One essential element at every table during dinner in colonial New England was a salt cellar or “standing salt.” A container that held salt, it indicated where you stood in the pecking order of the house based on where you ate relative to the salt.

The salt cellar could be quite large and decorative or plain and simple. The colonists placed the standing salt near one end of the table where the heads of the household sat. Important guests sat “above the salt,” meaning near the table’s head. Children and less-revered guests sat at the other end of the table, “below the salt.”

4. Into the Trenchers

The colonists consumed most of their food from a trencher – a wooden dish carved out like a trench. A larger plate – pewter or wood – would hold the main meal, and individual portions could be distributed into trenchers.

An English trencher from some time between 1500 and 1700.

Trenchers were generally oblong or square, and people ate directly from them. But you wanted to be wary of who you sat next to during dinner in colonial New England. Diners generally shared a trencher with at least one neighbor. An early Connecticut church deacon received the cold shoulder from his neighbors when he carved enough trenchers so that each of his children could have one. It was deemed excessive and showy.

5. Dinner on the Board

Dining tables were often covered with cloths similar to table cloths today. But they were called board cloths, because tables were little more than a board laid across two sets of legs.

Creating smooth lumber was a difficult task for early colonists, so boards were often rough. In some cases, boards were created from crates received from Europe. In at least one case, a colonial family constructed a thick board with trenchers carved into the top.

6. Tankards, Cups and Porringers

Glass was a rare commodity among early colonists. A bottle might be considered such a valuable item that it was mentioned in someone’s will. Many people owned silver cups, though they were a luxury and not every-day ware. Southerners generally had more silver than New Englanders.

Fancy pewter tankard

Though the wealthier New Englanders had pewter in New England, they drank from wooden vessels. The normal beverage containers included tankards constructed like small barrels, hollowed-out wooden cups and leather cups fashioned to hold liquids during dinner in colonial New England.

For other uses, many homes had porringers, small bowls, to hold soups and stews. They often had handles so they could be easily drunk from. As for how people drank their beverages, they often had a single large tankard, a small bowl really, which they passed around the table at a meal and shared, refilling as necessary.

7. Have a Seat

Seating at the earliest colonial dinners was a luxury – and not a very luxurious one at that. People squeezed in together on benches placed alongside the board. When the benches filled, guests, and usually children, had to stand during dinner in colonial New England.

Colonists did enjoy one advantage to having so few implements: It made cleanup rather quick.

Thanks to Home Life in Colonial Days, by Alice Morse Earle.

This story about colonial New England dinner was updated in 2022. Images: Pewter tankard By geni – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3790239. Trencher By David Jackson, CC BY-SA 2.0 uk, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9977639.

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How the Greek Immigrants Came to New England

In 1860, U.S. Census takers recorded 328 Greek immigrants living in America. Among them were 40 young men and boys. They arrived after the Greek War of Independence, which had left them orphaned.

Michael Dukakis, son of Greek immigrants

They received college educations in the United States. Most succeeded in their adopted country, while a few others returned to their homeland.

The orphans were followed decades later by waves of desperately poor Greek immigrants looking for work. The later arrivals didn’t always succeed. But ever since those 40 orphans were brought here, the tiny Greek community has had a disproportionate impact on New England.

Greek-Americans have given us politicians, athletes, actors, scholars and architects. Red Sox first baseman and college football star Harry Agannis, the Golden Greek, was born in Lynn, Mass. And former governor Michael Dukakis and his cousin actress Olympia Dukakis were born in Brookline.

New England has more than a hundred Greek Orthodox churches, which sponsor Greek festivals throughout the year. Greek-Americans gave Manchester, N.H., the Puritan Back Room and the best onion rings in town. They also gave the Greek amphitheater at the University of Connecticut.

Most of all, they gave us the Greek diner, along with spanikopita, baklava, gyros, Greek pizza and the ubiquitous Greek salad.

The 1^st Greek Immigrants

The first Greek to land in America is believed to be a sailor named Don Teodoro, who came with Spanish explorer Panfilio de Narvaez in 1528. Indians killed him in Florida.

Lucas Miller

The Greek War of Independence brought autonomy to the country in 1832, but it also caused the massacre of tens of thousands of civilians. A Congregationalist missionary society, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, brought the orphaned sons of distinguished families to the U.S. for education and conversion to Protestantism.

Some of the orphans came with supporters of the Greek revolutionaries, such as Samuel Gridley Howe. Educated in the United States, they went on to enter the ministry, medicine, law, and education professions, or they succeeded in business.

Michael Anagnos married Samuel Gridley Howe’s daughter and followed him as director of the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston. Anagnos hired Anne Sullivan, who taught Helen Keller.

John Zachos became an educational pioneer, teaching freed slaves. Lucas Miltiades Miller served as the first U.S. congressman from Wisconsin. Evangelismos Aspostolides Sophocles taught Greek at Harvard. George Pericardis taught at Amherst College before amassing a fortune in New Jersey.

Then in the mid-19th century, a trickle of Greek sailors and merchants came to the United States. The merchants set up import-export businesses in American cities; the sailors worked on steamboats in the Great Lakes and Mississippi River.

The Great Wave

Lowell mills today

In 1890 came the first great wave of Greek immigrants. They were 90 percent male, extremely poor and looking for work. Most found it in the mills and factories of the Massachusetts cities of Lowell, Haverhill, Lynn, Boston, Peabody, Chicopee, Springfield and New Bedford.

The new Greek immigrants also settled in Nashua and Manchester, N.H., and in the Connecticut cities of Bridgeport, New Britain and Norwich. Between 1890 and 1924, more than 400,000 Greeks arrived in the United States. Many intended to return to Greece with their American earnings.

From 1924 to the end of World War II, the United States closed the door to immigrants. Only about a thousand Greeks arrived each year. And pressure increased on immigrants to assimilate.

World War II and the Greek Civil War devastated the Greek countryside, and once again the United States welcomed Greek immigrants. So from 1947-1967, 5,000 Greek immigrants arrived a year. Then in 1968, Congress relaxed immigration laws and an average of 11,000 Greeks came to America each year until 1979.

The postwar era was the golden age of Greek diners in America. The first diners originated in Providence, and soon Worcester, Mass., was manufacturing now-classic diners. Six hundred diners sprang up in the New York metropolitan area, many in Fairfield County, Conn.

Olympia Dukakis, daughter of Greek immigrants

In Connecticut, Italians had dominated the pizza business, but they started to retire after World War II. Greek families bought up the pizzerias, and by the late 1970s, 76 percent of Greek families worked in Connecticut pizza shops.

Greek Towns

According to the 2000 U.S. Census, the New York-Newark-Bridgeport area has the most people of Greek ancestry in the country, with 202,304. Boston-Worcester-Manchester ranks second, with 96,871.

Lowell has special importance to the Greek-American community. It had the first and most extensive Greektown. One of the first Greek churches in America was built there in 1906. By 1913 Lowell also had 30 Greek groceries. One of them, DeMoulas Market Basket, started in 1917 and now has 79 stores throughout New England.

The sons of Greek immigrants have also succeeded in politics. Paul Tsongas represented Lowell as a U.S. senator and later became a candidate for president of the United States.

Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, who also ran for president, was the son of a Greek immigrant who settled in Lowell. Likewise, Nick Mavroulas grew up in nearby Peabody and became a congressman from Boston’s North Shore. Ted Gatsas served as mayor of Manchester, N.H. And political commentator George Stephanopoulos grew up in Fall River, Mass., the son of a Greek Orthodox priest.

The New England community with the densest Greek-American population today is Nahant, Mass., with 5.3 percent. That makes it the ninth most Greek-American community in America. Next comes 16^th-ranked Peabody, Mass., with 4.3 percent. Dracut, Mass., follows as the 19th most Greek-American community, with 3.9 percent.

New England also attracts recent Greek immigrants to Massachusetts towns such as Raynham Center, West Falmouth, Watertown, North Lakeville and Arlington.

Photos: Miss Worcester Diner By Improbcat – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7813073. Harry Agannis By Vintage Card Traders, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2293374. If you enjoyed this story about New England’s Greek immigrants, you may also want to read about the region’s Portuguese immigrants here, or Italian immigrants here. This story was updated in 2022.

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The Glory Days of the Berlin Turnpike

In the early 1950s, the king of Connecticut’s roads was the Berlin Turnpike, lined with colorful kitschy roadside architecture. It was the main route from Hartford toward New Haven between 1942 and 1965.

The Berlin Turnpike also ranked as one of the great neon strips of the Northeast, featuring 20 traffic signals and at least 200 businesses. It had diners, dairy bars, hot dog stands, motels, drinking places, bowling alleys, dance halls, petting zoos and 32 gas stations.

People called it ‘Gasoline Alley.’

A typical Berlin Turnpike motel. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library postcard collection.

The road began as a turnpike in October 1798, when the Hartford and New Haven Turnpike Company formed. Then opened the next year, it was one of the first turnpikes to be built on as straight a line as feasible instead of on roads that already existed.

The state paved the turnpike in 1909 after bicyclists and automobile enthusiasts lobbied for better roads. In 1920 it was then upgraded as part of a continuous paved road between the borders of New York and Massachusetts. The Hartford Courant emphasized the benefit to fans of Harvard-Yale football: “Berlin Turnpike Officially Open, Splendid Stretch of Concrete Ready for Football Crowd,” read the headline. In 1942, the state added two lanes to the turnpike.

Makris Diner. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library postcard collection.

The Berlin Turnpike, A Model Road

During the 1950s, 40,000 people a day traveled between Hartford and Meriden.

”When it was going full blast, it was a model of what was happening on highways everywhere in the country,” George (Larry) Larned, a State Transporation Department historian, told the New York Times in 1987. ”It was bumper to bumper.”

Freda Farms dairy bar. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

On Oct. 27, 1965, Interstate 91 opened a few miles to the east. Traffic on the Berlin Turnpike dropped 75 percent.

The Wonder Bar. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library poscard collection.

The Wonder Bar. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library postcard collection.

Business dried up. Motels that once catered to middle-class tourists became hot-sheet shops. The Wonder Bar mysteriously burned down.

Olympia Diner postcard

By the 1970s, Gasoline Alley had turned into Death Valley or Torch Alley.

The turnpike since bounced back, now featuring big box stores amid the relics of its past glories like the Olympia Diner.

Hartford Courant writer Dennis Barone argued the Berlin Turnpike deserves designation as an official scenic road.

The Berlin Turnpike (1942) is our Via Sacra, and the Olympia Diner (1952) is our Triumphal Arch. Whereas covered bridges evoke the horrors of so many headless horsemen, eyes light up with fond memory or present-day joy at so much as a mention of the Pike.

This story was updated in 2023.

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When Mark Twain Bombed Giving New England’s First Roast

Mark Twain bombed in a very big way when he poked fun at America’s most august literary lights during a 70th birthday party for John Greenleaf Whittier. He later said he was never in his life so miserable as he was on Dec. 17, 1877, when he delivered an after-dinner speech that fell flat.

Whittier had achieved fame and honor as one of the five Fireside Poets, along with Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Cullen Bryant, James Russell Lowell and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. They had distinctly American voices, and they were called the Fireside Poets because their poems could be read and memorized by the whole family as they sat around the fire. Lowell, at 58, was the youngest of the group; Bryant, at 82, the oldest.

Several years before Mark Twain bombed in Boston, he looked like this.

Twain had achieved fame as a fresh new voice from the West — too fresh, it turned out.

Mark Twain Bombed

The Atlantic Monthly hosted the dinner in part to showcase the intellectual and literary firepower of its contributors. The magazine had invited 58 distinguished writers. Holmes and Longfellow were there, as was the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, then 74 years old and suffering from dementia. The Boston Daily Advertiser called the assemblage “without doubt the most notable that has ever been seen in this country within four walls.”

The Hotel Brunswick

Twain, who at 42 was much younger than the august group gathered before him, thought he’d have some good-natured fun at their expense. He launched into a story about a lonely old miner in southern California who’d been visited by three disreputable tramps: Mr. Emerson, Mr. Longfellow and Mr. Holmes. The miner described Emerson as “a seedy little bit of a chap, red-headed,” while Holmes was “as fat as a balloon” and Longfellow was “built like a prizefighter.”

John Greenleaf Whittier

Twain recounted how the poets quoted apposite selections from their own poetry at the miner, while drinking his whiskey and cheating at cards. “They swelled around the cabin and spouted,” said Twain. Then they fought and made the miner sing “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” In the end, he reveals the three tramps are imposters.

The humor lay in the pretensions of the drunken tramps. Mr. Holmes, for example, enters the shanty and exclaims, “Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul!” When served whiskey, he exclaims, “Flash out a stream of blood-red wine.” The miner tells him he’ll drink his whiskey straight or he’ll go dry.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

When the miner discovers the Longfellow imposter making off with his boots, he shouts, “Hold on, there, Evangeline, what are you going to do with them?” Longfellow replied, “Going to make tracks with ’em; because:

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime;
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Unsmiling

As Twain later told the story, 50 or 100 people attended the banquet.

“Mr. Emerson, supernaturally grave, unsmiling; Mr. Whittier, grave, lovely, his beautiful spirit shining out of his face; Mr. Longfellow, with his silken white hair and his benignant face; Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, flashing smiles and affection and all good-fellowship everywhere like a rose-diamond whose facets are being turned toward the light first one way and then another—a charming man, and always fascinating, whether he was talking or whether he was sitting still (what he would call still, but what would be more or less motion to other people).”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1868

They listened with attentive interest, he wrote. After the first 200 words, Twain began to expect laughter, but heard none.

Black Frost

“Now, then, the house’s attention continued, but the expression of interest in the faces turned to a sort of black frost. I wondered what the trouble was. I didn’t know.” He went on, he said, but with difficulty. In the end, he didn’t know enough to just give up and sit down.

His friend William Dean Howells also attended the dinner. Howells described the speech as “the amazing mistake, the bewildering blunder, the cruel catastrophe.”

William Dean Howells

“After the first two or three hundred words,” wrote Howell, “those Atlantic diners became petrified with amazement and horror. Too late, then, the speaker realized his mistake. He could not stop, he must go on to the ghastly end.”

Several days later, newspapers across the country reported on the speech. Many proclaimed it in bad taste. The San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin claimed sales of Twain’s books had dropped off, and it was even suggested he moved up his planned departure for Europe to avoid the negative publicity.

The Women’s Christian Temperance Union even weighed in, passing a resolution objecting to the number of boozy beverages served with the seven-course meal: Sauterne, sherry, Chablis, Champagne, claret and Burgundy.

Smart and Humorous. Or Not.

Twain wrote in his autobiography that he tried to forget about the dinner for years. In 1906, an acquaintance he called “Mrs. H.” wrote to him about it, saying her family found humor in his story about the miner.

Twain dug the speech out of his files, and found it didn’t have a single defect.

“It is just as good as good can be,” he wrote. He called it “smart” and “saturated with humor.” “There isn’t a suggestion of coarseness or vulgarity in it anywhere,” he wrote.

Several days later, he looked at it again and called it “offensive and detestable.’ And then he reversed his opinion again.

Whatever it was, the speech was memorable. It is still, to this day, being discussed by scholars and historians.

This story last updated in 2022.

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