Guy Lowell Archives - Lost New England

Carrie Tower, Brown University, Providence, RI

February 9, 2018December 20, 2016 by Derek Strahan

The Carrie Tower at Brown University, around 1906. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The tower in 2016:

Located at the northwest corner of the Front Green at Brown University, the 95-foot tall Carrie Tower was built in 1904 and designed by architect Guy Lowell. It was donated by Paul Bajnotti in memory of his wife, Caroline Mathilde Brown. Her grandfather, Nicholas Brown, Jr., was the school’s namesake, and her father, Nicholas Brown III, was a politician and diplomat. Because of her father’s career, she spent much of her childhood in Europe, and through her travels she met Paul Bajnotti, an Italian diplomat. The two were married for 16 years, until her death in 1892, and the tower was dedicated to her memory, complete with an inscription at the base that reads, “Love is Strong as Death.”

Today, very little has changed in this scene. The Carrie Tower is still standing, as is Robinson Hall in the distance to the right. However, the clock no longer functions, and the chimes have not been used in decades. The base of the tower was restored in 2011, but it is still in need of restoration, including the interior staircase. Because of this, it is closed to the public, as are the underground tunnels that once connected the tower to the John Hay Library on the left, and Manning Hall to the right.

Spring Lawn, Lenox, Mass

February 9, 2018February 18, 2016 by Derek Strahan

The Spring Lawn estate on Kemble Street in Lenox, around 1910-1920. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The building in 2015:

Spring Lawn was one of many summer “cottages” built in the Berkshires in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when towns like Lenox were popular resorts for the wealthy during the Gilded Age. This mansion was built in 1904, replacing The Hive, which had been the home of Charles and Elizabeth Sedgwick and the site of Elizabeth’s prestigious school for girls. Her students included Ellen Emerson, the daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson; Mary Abigal Fillmore, the daughter of president Millard Fillmore; and Jennie Jerome, the mother of Winston Churchill.

The school closed after Elizabeth Sedgwick’s death in 1864, and the property changed hands several times before being purchased by New York businessman John E. Alexandre, who demolished the old house and built Spring Lawn, as seen here. It was one of the first buildings designed by noted architect Guy Lowell, who later went on to design the New York State Supreme Court Building, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Charles River Dam in Boston.

Alexandre didn’t have much time to enjoy his new house, though. He died here in 1910, and it was sold to another prominent New York City resident, Mrs. Arthur F. Schermerhorn, who renamed it “Schermeer.” The house was later owned by the Lenox School for Boys and Bible Speaks College, and it has since gone through a number of other owners. As of the 2015 photo, the house is vacant, but in 2013 the owners announced a plan to restore the historic home as part of a proposed 14-building resort on the property.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2)

February 9, 2018January 19, 2016 by Derek Strahan

Another view of the Museum of Fine Arts, taken around 1909-1910. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The view in 2015:

It’s hard to tell, but the Museum of Fine Arts is still there; it is just mostly hidden by the trees in the median of Huntington Avenue. As mentioned in the previous post, this was the second home of the museum, after it outgrew its first permanent building at Copley Square. Since it opened in 1909, this building has steadily been expanded, with the most recent addition opening in 2010. From this angle, though, not much has changed. Even the trolley tracks in the foreground are still there; most of Boston’s trolley lines were replaced with buses in the mid 1900s, but Huntington Avenue’s line is now the E Branch of the MBTA Green Line

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1)

February 9, 2018January 19, 2016 by Derek Strahan

The Museum of Fine Arts on Huntington Street in Boston, around 1910-1920. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The museum in 2015:

This view of the Museum of Fine Arts really hasn’t changed much in the past century, although it is hard to tell with all of the trees blocking the view in the second photo. The Museum of Fine Arts had been established in 1870, and its first permanent home was opened at Copley Square in 1876. The original building soon became too small for the museum’s growing collections, though, and in 1899 they purchased this plot of land on Huntington Avenue, a little over a mile west of Copley Square.

The new museum was designed by architect Guy Lowell, who deliberately designed it so that it could easily be expanded as the museum grew and as money became available. Since then, it has grown substantially beyond its original 1909 footprint, and is now over 600,000 square feet in area. One major addition was the West Wing, now the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art, which was designed by noted architect I.M. Pei in 1981, and the most recent was in 2010, when the new Art of the Americas wing was completed. It is now one of the largest art museums in the United States, with an internationally-significant collection of nearly half a million works from around the world. Much of their collection has also been digitized, and it can be viewed online through their website. At least one of their works, an early photograph by J.J. Hawes, is featured in this blog post about Arlington Street Church.