SAUGUS — The historic Boardman House, built in 1692, hosted an open house event, letting visitors explore all aspects of the house.
One of the historic sites in Saugus, the Boardman House, is a bit of an “unknown gem,” according to guide Jim Bennett, for lovers of history.
Having been owned by Historic New England since 1914, and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961, the house previously belonged to the Boardman family until 1911.
In 1914, the house was sold to William Sumner Appleton, and according to the Historic New England website, this was done under “questionable” means.
Abigail Stewart, Regional Site Administrator for Historic New England, said the acquisition of the house by Appleton was being researched more, as he had essentially purchased it out from under a family of Italian immigrants who were living in it prior.
“It’s this really tricky question of ‘whose history are we preserving?’” Stewart asked.
“We’re trying to figure out how to tell the story of those who lived here, and the story of this house coming into the Historic New England family…but then also…telling that full story,” she said.
Bennett said that “historic preservation and nativism went hand in hand,” “it was a desire to conserve heritage, but conserve heritage in an environment where a lot of people were moving in, who from the point of view of the old Yankees, they didn’t think they appreciated it…I think there was a fear — a really unreasoning fear — that they wouldn’t care for these properties.”
Bennett added that after the sale of the house had gone through to Appleton, all of the windows of the house had been smashed with rocks.
After purchasing the house, Appleton and his society, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (now Historic New England,) worked to restore the house to its original condition, removing anachronistic furnishings which did not match the time period and storing them in the attic of the house.
As you step into the house, you are greeted by painted walls in the parlor room, with a large beam of wood stretched across the low ceiling, painted white.
The paint that is in the parlor, Stewart said, although no analysis has been done to confirm its age, is likely from the 20th century.
“William Boardman was a furniture maker — he was a joiner — and woodworking was his bread and butter. This is what he was super excited about,” Stewart said.
Stewart said that the beam would have been left unpainted back in the 17th century, as it would have been a sign of opulence to show off to guests.
“It would’ve been whitewashed in here,” she said.
Stewart described the parlor room as one of the finest rooms in the house, and said that the house is constructed and held together by mortise and tenon, a building technique which employs wooden blocks which fit together like pieces of a puzzle.
While structurally the house remains mostly unchanged, the original windows, which were casement windows, were swapped out for more modern windows.
For Bennett, one of the things that makes the house special is that all areas of the house can be seen by visitors. A particularly striking feature of the house being the hearth which is so large one can stand up in it, and when looking up its creosote-caked sides, are greeted with the blue sky.
“This is the sort of thing you don’t get to see in a lot of these old houses,” Bennet said, “you go into most of these old houses, and they have ‘restored’ the house, which means often they block this off, so you couldn’t see it even if you wanted to, and then, they certainly wouldn’t let you into the chimney stack. I think that’s a lot of fun.”
While the main areas of the house are carefully considered with regard to their detail and ornamentation, other lesser-seen areas of the house, like the cellar and attic, often had an unfinished quality to them, as guests would likely never be in those areas — “nobody ever comes down here, so why would you ever bother doing that?” Bennet said in the cellar of the house.
In certain areas of the house, you can still see that it is adorned with many of the originally built materials, including clapboards from the 17th century affixed with hand-cut nails, and the original skirt board of the house.
Bennett said that one of the other historic sites, the Iron Works, makes for a lovely compare and contrast with the Boardman House. Where the Iron Works House focused on restoration, the Boardman House is maintained as it was.
“You come in here, and a lot of people look around, and say ‘oh wow, you’ve let it fall apart’, right? When in fact, we haven’t let it fall apart, we have preserved it, without restoring it. I think that requires an explanation, and once people get the explanation, then they understand — ‘wow, this is actually a very significant property here in Saugus, Massachusetts,’” he said.
Bennett said that the house is full of “mysteries,” largely in part due to their preservation philosophies of the time, which were essentially, “if it came later, it doesn’t really matter, so we don’t have to document it as well. They were only concerned with the oldest version of the house.”
While the house is available for the public to visit throughout the warmer months and into the fall, the open house event marks the first of its opening for the year, Historic New England surely hard at work to get it into tip-top shape from the oft-harsh winter weather.
Despite the old age of the house, it is still being properly maintained and preserved for the edification of the public.
