While most of New England has suddenly decided to care about basketball, the rest of the world is anxiously checking the post (I have watched too much Bridgerton) for news of my upcoming book, Boston and Beyond: Discovering Cities, Habahhhs, and Country Chahhhhmms! Yes, it IS a lot of pressure. Thank you. I feel very seen, as the popular kids tweet. But as a mid to low-ling creative with no clout or influence, I can honestly say it actually feels pretty breezy and mostly fun. This is a creative phase similar to what happens a year or so after a woman gives birth. All she sees is the joy in what she’s created—swaddled, cooing, adorable, and perfect. All memories of the shock and awe campaign that is pregnancy and birth have melted into the ozone. It’s a wonderful amnesia that tricks a woman into going “I’d like to have another” just like it does an artist who says, “Struggle? Stress? Debilitating self-doubt and anxiety? I don’t remember any of that! What should I make next?”
It was a privilege to get the opportunity to do this particular book project, my first combining my photography and writing. I don’t take that for granted, and I’m very excited to get to talk about it. As “pub day” (also something the very, VERY cool kids tweet) approaches in August, I’m sharing tasty, teaser morsels (dipping sauce sold separately). One of those delicious bites is Beauport, The Sleeper-McCann House in Gloucester, Massachusetts. I know. The house’s designation alone is a bowl full, much more than one bite. But believe me when I say, this place lives up to its oddly hyped name. And PS: It’s as good an incentive as any to name your own home. You don’t have to be in the private jet tax bracket to give your modest 2-bedroom ranch house in Tucson a name like Rivendale Vistas or Estate Paradiso or Valhalla.
Henry David Sleeper was a 29-year old Bostonian when he first set foot on the rocky, moody stretch of Gloucester’s Eastern Point in 1906. Sleeper was there as a guest of his good friend, A. Piatt Andrew, an up and coming economist at Harvard University. Andrew was one of those people who knew where the real “scene” was happening. In the early 1900s that happened to be Eastern Point, an enclave about 36 miles from Boston populated with artists, scholars, and other bohemians who, it turned out, were pretty wealthy and so could afford to be eccentric. Sleeper wasn’t wealthy (yet), but he was unusual in that he possessed a keen interest in design, architecture, and antiquarian artifacts. It was a passionate hobby that ultimately became his career, putting him on the map as a preeminent figure in interior design with clients that included Hollywood celebrities and American luminaries such as Isabella Stewart Gardner, at least one Vanderbilt, and Henry Francis DuPont.
At the turn of the twentieth century, interior design was one of those professions that didn’t seem like an actual thing. A friend told me that she read about someone who was a professional mediator and counselor specifically for couples dealing with home renovations. If you have ever spent more than fifteen minutes with your partner in the bathroom fixture aisle at Home Depot, you know a mediator for couples undergoing home renovation probably makes bank and is entitled to every. last. penny. In fact, Home Depot should set up a small office somewhere near customer service and hire one of these people to be on site. The divorce rate would plummet.
Back to that fine spring day in 1906 with two friends and a slew of unclaimed real estate. Sleeper surveyed the roiling Atlantic, breathed in the bracing, briny air, and was a deeply smitten kitten. He was taken with the location, the wild, uncultivated geography of the Massachusetts coast; with the creative and social freedom found in this artists’ community, and, as the rumors go, with the mad fit economic professor, A. Piatt himself. He purchased land next door to Andrew and in 1907 broke ground on what would eventually become his living masterwork of art and innovative design.
Beauport was modeled after an Arts and Craft style building—wide porches, pointed window arches, wooden fittings, stone and shingle materials—that was popular during the turn of the twentieth century. By 1908, Sleeper began to use the 22-room home overlooking the ocean as a cheery summer retreat, which he shared with his mother. As the decades unfolded Sleeper grew Beauport into a 10,000 square foot mansion with over 40 rooms, each one bearing its own highly original character, style, atmosphere, and aesthetic flourishes.
Suddenly Sleeper’s penchant for collecting and salvaging all sorts of interesting materials had a serious outlet. One of his first purchases for Beauport was paneling taken out of an eighteenth-century home in Essex, Massachusetts, slated for demolition. He would amass many items and elements in this fashion: entire doorways, fireplaces, and furniture. Sleeper even acquired a set of Gothic windows from a church. He fit them into the room in such a way that you would never have guessed they weren’t part of the original build. In later years he worked closely with a carpenter named Frederick Poole who was routinely tasked to design elements to fit into specific spaces. Poole built an octagonal table for an octagon-themed room after Sleeper failed to find his own antique table. Additionally, Sleeper made many clever adjustments that allowed him to keep the look and feel of spaces consistent. He installed electric light bulbs concealed within punched tin hanging lanterns.
Though he had an interior design business office in downtown Boston, Sleeper often used Beauport as a kind of showroom space for prospective clients. Every item in the home told a story and visitors had the chance to see how Sleeper might make similar fantasies come to life in their own spaces. When Sleeper wasn’t working in or on Beauport, he made the beautifully eclectic house an epicenter of lavish gatherings and ornately-staged parties for his artsy-richie-rich friends and neighbors.
Unfortunately Sleeper passed away from complications due to leukemia in 1934. He had no heirs. The home was eventually sold to Helena Woolworth McCann, the heiress to the Woolworth Department store fortune. Henry Francis Du Pont, a client of Sleeper’s, but also his friend, counseled McCann to keep the rooms and artifacts completely intact so not to depreciate the value of Beauport. She agreed, modifying one sitting room slightly to incorporate some of her own design tastes. Beauport eventually passed out of the McCann family in the 1940s and into the stewardship of Historic New England, the oldest and largest regional heritage organization in the nation that manages preservation, restoration, and conservation of historic properties all over New England.
Beauport is simply a marvel. There is so much beautiful eye candy of all varieties, you hardly know where to look. Sleeper’s revel in delight and his uninhibited playfulness are so palpable you feel like you’re getting some kind of aesthetic contact high just moving from room to room. And all of it—from a row of books to a display of colored bottles--is curated, selected, and placed with love. This is what makes Beauport so special and memorable: you can feel Sleeper’s passion for design and well-made objects in every 1nook and cranny. You can almost imagine what it must have felt like to be a guest at Beauport, trailing behind your charming host with your mouth slightly open while Sleeper throws open door after door opening up to each room that is more fantastical than the one before it, drawing you into his own personal Wonderland.
Literally. You can take a special “Nooks and Crannies” tour of the house. The day I visited a woman on the tour mentioned to her friend that she had taken that tour and it was loo-ooo-ooong. She might still be on it.
Book news!! How exciting!
I loved all the background and commentary about Sleeper and his exquisite house. Some of those pictures looked like drawings. Like I couldn't believe it was a real place.
His story made me feel a little sad. He spent all this time creating this beautiful house/art exhibit only to die prematurely. It reminds me somewhat of writing, actually. We build these word castles with the secret hope they'll outlive us, and be something to remember us by when we're gone. But what remains is only a tiny sliver of the person who created them.
Sorry! That got a bit dark... I've been thinking a lot about this kind of stuff. Just your standard, "Oh shit, my life is half over and I'm actually gonna die someday" crisis.
Love this. Excited for pub day, too! 💕