The summer colony at Little Harbor in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and its relation to the Colonial Revival movement.

Abstract

The late nineteenth-century summer colony at Little Harbor in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was centered on the Wentworth Mansion (c.1753), a Colonial Revival icon which was purchased by John Templeman Coolidge in 1886. Other early houses were purchased, and new ones built. Among architects active at Little Harbor were the Bostonians Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow, Jr.; Edmund March Wheelwright; and R. Clipston Sturgis. Although most of the settlers were connected with Harvard University, they also included the artist Edmund C. Tarbell. The colonists, who were avid collectors of objects from a variety of cultures, promoted a wide range of artistic activities in Boston and influenced institutions such as the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Society of Arts and Crafts. Differing from other resorts and imbued with the ideals of Brahmin Boston, the colony displayed a gracious lack of pretension. Its architecture refutes certain long-held assumptions about American architecture, specifically the "shingle style" theories of Vincent J. Scully, Jr. His identification of the "shingle style", while calling deserved attention to shingled 'cottages' with open plans, created the misconception that they were stylistically distinct from Colonial Revival and Queen Anne style houses (for that reason, the term "shingled Colonial" seems more accurate). Moreover, the claim that plans became more rigid and formal after c.1883 is not borne out by the development at Little Harbor, most of which took place after that date. Supposedly distinct styles are combined and recombined throughout the period. The architectural activities of the Little Harbor colonists were not idiosyncratic, but were representative of the leading artistic currents of their day, most particularly with respect to Boston. The life created at Little Harbor and manifested in its physical environment was not a revival, but a real expression, of contemporary culture. This cultural ideal continues today in commonly-held assumptions about the American past. Insofar as the Little Harbor settlers represent the Colonial Revival movement, we see the American past through their eyes.