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We have chosen an elegant hotel in Back Bay, close to Boston Common. An orientation walk will take us to Copley Square, where we will see the neo-Romanesque Trinity Church and the Boston Public Library, in Renaissance Revival style, with murals by John Singer Sargent. The following morning we will visit the Museum of Fine Arts, for an illuminating introduction to American painting and the Boston tradition, with some time for the European and Asian collections. A walking tour in the old residential district of Beacon Hill features the Adam-influenced interiors of handsome brick mansions such as the Harrison Gray Otis House and the Nichols House as well as a visit to the venerable Boston Athenaeum.
A highlight of our stay is the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the personal art collection of a legendary grande dame of Boston society, housed in her atmospheric Venetian palazzo. Although famed for its old master paintings, the collection spans many centuries and civilisations, from Asian to American art. We continue to Cambridge, north of the Charles River. After walking around the mellow brick quadrangles of Harvard Yard, we will visit the Fogg Art Museum and admire the exquisite glass flowers of the Ware Collection.
A day’s excursion will feature Gore Place, an 18th-century country mansion and landscaped estate at Waltham, on the Charles River. At nearby Lincoln, we will visit the Federal-style Codman House, set in magnificent grounds, and, by contrast, the Modernist Gropius House. We hope to include drinks at a private home. Lunch is planned in the historic town of Concord, where there are poignant reminders of the first armed resistance to British rule.
In the 19th century the peaceful Rhode Island colony of Newport, with its typical clapboard houses, was to become the summer resort of the fabled rich, who built opulent mansions overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. We will visit two of these ‘cottages’, The Breakers, home of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Marble House, inspired by the Petit Trianon. In Newport itself we will be shown the Redwood Library, founded in 1750 and Hunter House, a fine Georgian colonial town-house. We plan to have lunch at the New York Yacht Club.
Our final day features historic Salem, associated with the China trade in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. After a short walking tour, we will concentrate on the magnificent collections of the revitalised Peabody Essex Museum, founded in 1799. It is considered the premier museum in the United States for maritime art and Asian export art and also has a fine display of American decorative arts. The latest attraction is Yin Yu Tang, a late Qing dynasty merchant’s house from southern China, recently installed at the museum. |
