Kragsyde

This isn’t Architecture Wednesday but this house is, without a doubt, one of my favorite houses, ever. One that existed for a time, then it didn’t, and then it was resurrected. I first posted about it in May 2013, but have since found more photos of the original and of Kragsyde II, and more information about the original owner.

The original Kragsyde, built on Smith's Point at Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts in 1883, was commissioned by George Nixon Black, Jr. and built by Peabody and Stearns, and is generally regarded as the zenith of "Shingle Style," a subtype of American Queen Anne architecture. Rambling, haunting and evocative, the beautiful house was set high on a dramatic headland; Nixon and his family occupied the house every summer from May until October to the end of their lives.

Kragsyde's footprint followed that of broad "V", with the massiveness of Kragsyde hidden, its broadest facades facing the ocean but that wasn’t done specifically for the views but for the house to be able to capture the cool sea breezes since the three-and-a-half-story main house faced the Atlantic Ocean; a secondary wing was set at a 45-degree angle. The house's most dramatic feature was a massive arch that formed a Porte cochere and supported the loggia, or open porch, and glass-enclosed billiard room above. Guests arriving by carriage would be dropped off under the arch, enter through the front door, and climb an interior stair to the main floor, which featured formal rooms for entertaining.

Service rooms and the kitchen were located on the ground floor, and a service stair kept the servants out of sight. A dumbwaiter carried food from the kitchen to the butler's pantry on the main floor. A piazza, the length of the house faced the ocean, and a covered section cantilevered out over the rocks. The parlor was surrounded on three sides by the piazza and an L-shaped covered porch. Stairs led down from the loggia to a series of terraces.

The second floor contained bedrooms for the Blacks and their guests while the third floor contained bedrooms for servants. The terraced landscape surrounding the house was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed Central Park in New York City and the Biltmore Estate gardens in North Carolina.

Separating the service court from the front of the structure was a wing dominated by a massive arch. Within the arch was an entrance into the house on one side, and access to a billiard room on the other. A single room, with windows on three sides, was situated above the arch along with a private loggia. Stairs from the loggia led down to the property below helped to add length to the structure.

Kragsyde was, gulp, destroyed in 1929 following the death of George Nixon Black Jr, in 1927, when the new owners who considered the iconic late-19th-century shingle-style masterpiece outdated chose to tear it down.

But then came Jane Goodrich and resurrection.

Goodrich first saw Kragsyde in a book when she was a child. She found it again, in the same book, as an adult, and showed her husband, Jim Beyor, a builder. They became ‘fascinated with that era of seaside life’ and set out to find the house, only to discover it was long gone; that was when they decided to build a replica.

Luck was with them and they found the original blueprints for Kragsyde in the Boston Public Library, where they had been deposited by a professor at Northeastern University, Wheaton Holden, but they needed his permission to see the plans. Goodrich called him from the library basement and said, ‘I’m going to build Kragsyde’ and he said, ‘Fine.’

Even with plans in hand, finding affordable seafront property proved difficult. A two-year search finally took them about 200 miles north of the site of the original, to Swans Island. The setting is correct for the style: a rocky shore with views of Mount Desert Island and the ocean.

Kragsyde’s twin is identical in almost every way and is a large house by even today’s standards. It has 13 principal rooms and, like the original, the new Kragsyde has a library with a reading porch; a large parlor opening onto a covered porch, or piazza; another piazza, this one open; a dining area; 4 large bedrooms; a kitchen; and 10 servants’ rooms on the third floor. Kragsyde is a 6,000-square-foot house with 4 chimneys and 13 fireplaces, and it is sheathed with 130,000 square feet of shingles that named the style.

It is hard to say what such a house would cost when Goodrich and Beyor began the build; some say it would have been upwards of $800,000 in 1988 dollars. But since Beyor is a builder, he and Goodrich took on construction of Kragsyde II by themselves, working on it nights and weekends for six years, and built the home for less than $200,000, which included the cost of the two acres of seafront property.

Beyor’s skill and experience have made the construction of the house possible. He bought all the lumber from a mill, not from lumberyards, thus saving nearly half the cost, and personally milled it all himself; he also built all of the windows. He used no shortcuts; he used no structural plywood. Instead of using plywood in the floors, as is common, he used seven-eighths-inch boards.

There are a couple of differences. The floorplan was flipped to have the piazzas face the sea and the exterior walls are 6 inches thick, instead of the 4 inches in the original. The foundation is poured cement, not stone as in the original, although it will be sheathed in stone.

Other than that, it’s the same glorious house brought back to life.

Jane Goodrich has since written a book about the house and their experiences called The House at Lobster Cove:

“Coup de foudre, the French say, literally “bolt of lightning” but meaning love at first sight. How better to describe the instant when a chance meeting alters a life? For who can ever expect the sudden place, or glimpse, or turn of the page that will change everything? I first met Kragsyde in an old box of books my father brought home. I was barely a teen, and paid little attention to the text or the title of the book, but the photographs and drawings gave me goose bumps. These were the most beautiful houses I had ever seen. Not impossible fantasy castles, nor the monotonous ranch-style structures of my own time. Shingled and playful and shaggy, like a favorite dog, full of mysterious rooms placed at odd angles. Fanciful windows I longed to peer from, deep cool porches, turrets with pennants flying from spires, promising endless summers. And the names: Grasshead, Sunset Hall, Wave Crest, Seabright. I studied them all, but even then my eyes could discern the masterpiece: Kragsyde. With its fantastic arch large enough to drive through, its beautiful stones, its romantic perch above the sea, this was the pinnacle. Completely beguiled, I clipped the photograph from the book and pasted it into a scrapbook. The sepia photo, held in my hands for the first time, was both a daydream and a seed.”

For me, one of the most interesting things about the house is George Nixon Black. As Goodrich and Beyor researched, and then built, Kragsyde II, she thought she might uncover something about him that was nasty or cruel, and she never did.

The George Nixon Black she discovered was a gay man living in an era where coming out wasn’t even a concept and yet she believed Black’s sexual orientation was an open secret. In his will, Goodrich found further evidence of both his goodness—he gave liberally to his former servants and to charitable causes—and his gayness—he left a large portion of his estate to his longtime companion, Charles Brooks Pitman, with whom he lived happily for 34 years.

She tracked down Black’s letters and documents, and with the same determination that allowed her to build that grand house, shingle by shingle, brick by brick, Goodrich reconstructed the story of George Nixon Black.

On the ceiling of Goodrich’s office at Kragsyde, she has painted the constellations—a furry great bear, a scaly dragon, a muscular Hercules.—arranged exactly as they would have appeared on the night of July 11, 1842, when George Nixon Black was born. It was in that office that she wrote, by hand, The House at Lobster Cove:

“If you’ve built your own space, it’s a little like living inside a giant piece of art that you made. Remember when you were little and you would make your own fort? That’s the same feeling.”

So, whatever happened then to the site of the original Kragsyde house that was unceremoniously demolished? Well, three subsequent homes have been built upon its foundations: in the 1930’s a stuccoed house built by Boston lawyer Pierpont Stackpole sat on the site, but it, too, was demolished in later years.

In 1975, a home dubbed The General's House was built, and like the original, it featured a wing with Porte cochere set at a 45-degree angle to the main house. It was built for Georges Doriot, founder of American Research and Development Corporation, and his wife Edna.

In 2014, a fourth Kragsyde was built upon the original's foundations, and still exists to this day, though for me it holds none of the charm or mystery or allure of the original.

This is the current home sitting on the site of the original Kragsyde, Manchester-By-The-Sea. A midcentury modern take on the original.

Kragsyde

Kragsyde: The original

This isn’t Architecture Wednesday—that comes later today and is a completely different house than this—but this house is, without a doubt, my favorite house. Ever. One that existed, then it didn’t, and then it was resurrected.

This is Kragsyde, built on Smith's Point at Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts in 1883 and demolished in 1929. It was commissioned by George Nixon Black, Jr. and built by Peabody and Stearns, and is generally regarded as the zenith of "Shingle Style," a subtype of American Queen Anne architecture. Rambling, haunting and evocative, the beautiful house set high on a dramatic headland was famous in its day and was published several times both in Europe and America. Nixon and his family occupied the house every summer from May until October to the end of their lives.

Kragsyde's footprint followed that of broad "V", with the massiveness of Kragsyde hidden, its broadest facades facing the ocean. Peabody and Sterns did this to not only allow for the view, but also to capture the cool sea breezes within the house.

Service rooms, and the kitchen, were located on the ground floor; the main floor contained the parlors for entertaining and the dining room. Adjacent to the dining room was a service pantry and stairs to the kitchen; food was raised to the pantry via a dumbwaiter system. Leading from the parlor and dining room were broad porches and decks. Separating the service court from the front of the structure was a wing dominated by a massive arch. Within the arch was an entrance into the house on one side, and access to a billiard room on the other. A single room, with windows on three sides was situated above the arch along with a private loggia. Stairs from the loggia led down to the property below helped to add length to the structure.

Kragsyde was, gulp, destroyed in 1929. But then came resurrection.

Goodrich & Beyor

Jane Goodrich first saw Kragsyde in a book when she was a child. She found it again, in the same book, as an adult, and showed her husband, Jim Beyor, a builder. They became ‘fascinated with that era of seaside life’ and set out to find the house, only to discover it had been demolished. That was when they decided to build a replica.

Luck was with them; they found that the blueprints for Kragsyde in the Boston Public Library, where they had been deposited by a professor at Northeastern University, Wheaton Holden, but they needed his permission to see the plans.

Jane Goodrich: “I called this man at 6:30 in the evening from the library basement. I said, ‘I’m going to build Kragsyde.’ He said, ‘Fine.’

Even with plans in hand, finding affordable seafront property proved difficult. A two-year search finally took them about 200 miles north of the site of the original, to Swans Island. The setting is correct for the style: a rocky shore with views of Mount Desert Island and the ocean.

Kragsyde’s twin is identical in almost every way, and is a large house by even today’s standards. It has 13 principal rooms and, like the original, the new Kragsyde will have a library with a reading porch; a large parlor opening onto a covered porch, or piazza; another piazza, this one open; a dining area; 4 large bedrooms; a kitchen; and 10 servants rooms on the third floor. Kragsyde is a 6,000-square-foot house with 4 chimneys and 13 fireplaces, and it is sheathed with the kind of shingles that named the style-about 130,000 square feet of them.

It is hard to say what such a house would cost to have built today; it would have cost some $800,000 [in 1988 dollars when the house was finished] by Goodrich`s estimates. But since Beyor is a builder, he and Goodrich took on construction of Kragsyde II by themselves, working on it nights and weekends for six years, and built the home for less than $200,000, which includes the cost of the two acres of seafront property.

Beyor’s skill and experience have made the construction of the house possible. He bought all the lumber from a mill, not from lumberyards, thus saving nearly half the cost, and personally milled it all himself; he also built all of the windows. He used no shortcuts; he used no structural plywood. Instead of using plywood in the floors, as is common, he used seven-eighths-inch boards.

A couple of differences? The floorplan was flipped; the exterior walls are 6 inches thick, instead of the 4 inches in the original. The foundation is poured cement, not stone as in the original, although it will be sheathed in stone.

Other than that, it’s the same glorious house brought back to life.

Kragsyde II

Peabody & Stearns

Inspirational House: Kragsyde

Grand 1880s Home Rising in Maine