The Crane Estate cont.
At the turn of the 20th century, Boston’s North Shore from Beverly to Gloucester was a smart summer resort where prominent Bostonians,Washington diplomats, and wealthy Midwesterners mingled while enjoying the ocean breezes and the good life.
| The First House By the late 1800s, across the United States, pioneering financiers and industrialists, like Richard T. Crane, Jr., had made immense fortunes. These suddenly rich men eagerly sought ways to establish themselves as the new American gentry. While yachts, motor-cars, and horses supplied minor outlets, the score was really being kept in houses. In 1909, the Cranes hired the Boston firm of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge to design their mansion – an Italian Renaissance villa of more than 60 rooms with stucco finish and a red-tiled roof. The landscape was just as grand, linking the estate’s cultivated grounds with its magnificent natural surroundings (a fashionable design concept of the time). Crane worked with the Olmsted Brothers to lay out the Italian Garden, the maze, and the bowling green over the next several years. Leading landscape architect Arthur Shurcliff created the 160-foot-wide, half-mile-long Grande Allée – dramatically connecting the house to the ocean – and brought to life Mrs. Crane’s vision of an elaborate, sunken Rose Garden, which would boast 600 varieties of the flower.
Photos: Top to Bottom: The Italian Garden in its splendor, c. 1915. The half-mile-long Grand Allée, c. 1930. The original house, an Italian-style villa, c. 1915. |
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