r

+
l

Fig. .Arhur Shurcli at Ipswich in a rare moment o relaxation from his bus profssional li.
Private collection.
Page 42 FalVinter 200O Old-Time New England
Elizabeth Hope Cushing
The Work of
"Our Own
Hands":
The Evolution of the Arthur A. Shurcliffs'
Summer Residence at Ipswich
No other residence i the landscape architect and his family better exressed the
unit i 'Jitness" and beauty in handmade objects so central to the Shurcli'
lif-and to the Arts and Crafts movement.
t is not surprising that when the
English Arts and Crafts move
ment leapt the Atlantic it landed
frst in Boston, Massachusetts.
Preexsting traditions of respect-
lD
handcrafted objects, preserving the
methods used to produce them, and safe
garding the historical past in which they
four
ished made this major New England
metr
opolis a natural stopping place. Such
te
nde
ncies were reinforced by well
trav
eled
Bostonians' kowledge of that
s
mall,
but
intense, English anti-industrial
p
lea
for a return to the purity of medieval
dcs
:on,
Customs, and handcrafts-first
.atic
ulated by art critic John Ruskin and
later
and
even more pervasively by
William Morris and his collaborating
artists, architects, and writers. Prominent
Boston native Charles Eliot Norton spent
time with Ruskin abroad; they counted
each other as lifelong friends. It was
N orton who was instrumental in bringing
the artistic tenets of the English Arts and
Crafts movement across the sea to Boston
when he returned in 1873 to assume his
post as the frst professor of fine arts at
Harvard U niversi ty. 1
In part the growing Bostonian and
national interest in preserving the histori
cal past was a xenophobic response to the
massive immigration beginning in the
mid-nineteenth century and bringing
thousands of European workers to meet
T'
- lme New England FalVnter 2000 Page 43
the relentless demands for industrial labor
in the United States. It was the first time
since the displacement and decimation of
the native population that descendants of
the earliest white settlers faced such a
rapid infux of people dramatically differ
ent from themselves.
At this transitional point in the cui',
tural life of the country, Americans, partic
ularly New Englanders, felt keenly the
passing of an essentially rural, agricultural
nation in its headlong rush toward indus
trialization. That transformation brought
with it urban crowding as a result of
immigration and population shifts and the
beginnirg of a dramatic reduction of rural
landscapes as cities careened out of con
trol and sprawled across the land. It was
natural that an aesthetic movement hear
kening back to simpler and ostensibly
purer times would appeal to a people with
an acute sense that life as they had known
it was slipping away The combination of
reaching nostalgically for an idealized past,
and glorifing the handmade ideals of less
complicated days intertwined and min
gled in the New England version of the
Ats and Crafts movement, interlaced as it
was with elements of the coexsting cul
tural imperative, the colonial revival.
Arts and Crafts took firm hold on
the American continent at the end of the
nineteenth century, beginning with its
fi rst exhibition in 1897 at Copley Hall in
Boston and reinforced by the establish
ment that same year of the Society of Arts
and Crafts, Boston. The society sought to
promote "artistic work in all branches of
handicraft,"2 according to its first presi
dent, Charles Eliot Norton, and the mem-
bership included painters, fne needle
crafters, jewelry makers, bookbinders,
stained glass makers, silversmiths, potters,
metalworkers, wood-carvers, and fu
ri
ture makers.
Aong those drawn to the philoso
phy of the Arts and Crafts movement was
Bostonian Arthur A. Shurcliff (1870-
1957; fig. 1). Bor Arthur Asahel Shurtlef
(he changed his name in 1930 in order, he
wrote, to conform to the ancient spelling
of the family name) at 9 West Cedar
Street, he was the son of loving and
devoted parents, Sarah Ann Keegan
Shurtleff and Asahel Milton Shurtleff an
inventor and manufacturer offne surgical
instruments. The Shurtleff home was
filled with literature, art, and music; each
of the five children was encouraged to
pursue a cultivated life, including a pro
found respect for history both familial
and national. Asahel Shurtleff taught all
the children woodworking in the fourth
floor workshop of the family home, a skill
his son, Arthur, honed for the rest of his
life. Various kinds of handwork were fos
tered, the offspring being encouraged to
fabricate for themselves as many of their
daily needs as possible.
Above all, however, the Shurtlefs
instilled a deep and abiding afection for
the natural world in their children. They
spent summers in rural communities sur
rounding Boston, including Wellesley
and, enduringly for Arthur Shurclif
Waverly (now Belmont), where they rent
ed the old Riddell farm, site of the
Waverly Oaks (fig. 2). These aboriginal
trees, made famous frst in the poetry of
James Russell Lowell, later became one of
Page 44
FalVinter 2OOO Old-Time New England

1
.] -t -
e e.+
*
l
t .

Fig. 2. A sketch o the Wverly Oaks by Arthur Shurclif in the autumn o 1890, when he was
twenty years old. Private collection.
landscape architect and land preservation
ist Charles Eliot's first successful attempts
to presere land for his newly formed
Metropolitan Planning Commission
(1891), a governmental organization he
augmented in 1893 by creating the private
Trustees of Public Reservations. The site
became so signifcant to Shurclif that
throughout his life he made annual pil
grimages to it, including a trip during
which he proposed to his future wife in
the
lower branches of one of the oaks.
Shurclif grew up spending every
u
nsche
duled moment exploring the vast
countryside surrounding Boston's urban
Core on foot and by bicycle. He canoed
and kayaked on the Charles River in ves
sels he designed and constructed himself
ca
mping H he moved along the flver.
Everywhere he went he carried a sketch
book and paints to record his observations
and the multitude of things that caught his
interest as he went along, aDCthCt l!eCDg
habit. His affection for and spiritual con
nection to the natural world were deep
rooted and intense; from early days he was
keenly aware C the rapid demise C! the
rural landscapes and farmscapes that
encircled the city.
Because the gifted and inventive
. youth was preordained to enter the family
business of Cod man and Shurtlef, after
graduating from English High School in
1889 Shurcliff enrolled in a five-year
course in mechanical engineering at the
Iassachusctts DstttutO COchDCICp. By
1894, however, his mind had changed
quite radically. "Heavens!" the twenty-
Old-Time New England FalVinter 2000 Page 45
four-year-old wrote in his joural after
visiting the mills at Lawrence, Massachu
setts, with his class. "Am I a mechanical
engineer? Am I to do such awful work?
How about the trees? How about the sky?
I have forgotten them all"3 (fig. 3).
Instead he bicycled straight to the
Olmsted ofces in Brookline, Massachu
setts; under the guidance of his newly.
adopted mentor, Charles Eliot, Shurcliff
eventually spent two more years at Har
vard University He apprenticed himself
immediately at the Olmsted, Olmsted and
Eliot firm in order to learn all aspects of
the profession before he set up his own
practice in 1904.4 During his training
there he aided Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.
in setting up the first four-year landscape
architecture school in the country at
Harvard University, where he taught until
the demands of his work forced him to
resign in 1906. Within the span of his long
and productive career he served as consul
tant to the State Highway Commission,
the Metropolitan District Commission,
and the Boston Parks Department and
maintained a steady practice of town
planning for Boston and more than
twenty-six of the surrounding commu
nities. He helped site and design planned
communities and worked on hundreds of
private estates.
In 1928 Shurcliff was chosen Chief
Landscape Architect for John D. Rocke
feller Jr.'s restoration of the small town of
Williamsburg, Virginia, and remained in
that capacity until 1941, his seventy-first
year. It was the largest single commission
of his prolific career; he was proud of his
association with Colonial Williamsburg
and of the myriad forms of landscape
design he did there. The skills required
of
him drew on both his professional back
ground in engineering and landscape
architecture and his avocational interest in
American history, handcraft, and the van
ishing way of life he had kown and
observed for years. It was the perfect syn
thesis of his skills and interests.
Long before he began his work at
Williamsburg, while still working for the
Olmsted brothers, Shurclif felt the need
for a rural retreat. With his 1905 marriage
to Margaret Homer Nichols of Boston
and Cornish, New Hampshire, and the
arrival of their first child in 1906, that
impulse took on a more urgent quality
(fig. 4). "Naturally" Margaret Shurclif
wrote later in her memoirs, "a landscape
architect required a summer home in the
country within commuting distance from
Boston."s And so it proved to be.
It happened that Margaret Shurclif,
an outstanding archer and crack tennis
player, was the perfect partner with whom
Shurclif might embark upon such a mis
sion. Besides her deep commitment to
political and social concerns, she was a
lifelong devotee of woodworking. Like
her husband, Mrs. Shurclif felt a keen
desire to provide a healthy and nurturing
atmosphere for their household, which
eventually swelled to six children, maids, a
cook, and a handyman. Mter their engage
ment the two immediately began planning
for and dreaming of a countr retreat.
They endeavored, Shurcliff wrote in his
journal, to "find some spot of land out of
town and put up (largely with our own
hands) a little house upon it."6
Page 46 FalVinter 2000 Old-Time New England
Fig. 3. An ardent amateur photographer Shurclifposed fr a selportrait in his bedroom at 9 Wet
Cedar Street. Like many MI scholars o the time, he I a day student. Private collection.
Old-Time New England FalVinter 2OOO
Page 47
Fig. . Margaret Homer Nichols Shurclifa tennis champion (bere a heart ailment Jrced her to
retire) and an avid archer plies her bow in this 1904 portrait. Private collection.
Page +8 FalVinter 2000 Old-Time New England
He started his search west of Boston
in the towns of Sudbury Weston, and
Concord, the last a favorite destination
because of the fact that his Transcendental
heroes, Emerson and Thoreau, lived and
died there. It is clear, however, that noth
ing struck his fancy for he wrote wistfully
to his wife, "How I do long for a place in
the country near Boston for you and me
and our dear little boy."7
The country had always been com
pelling for Shurcliff, not only because of
the extensive ramblings of his youth but
because the Shurtleff family spent a por
tion of every autumn in the White
Mountains of New Hampshire. Mter a
visit to the shore south of Boston in 1890
he ended his journal entry with an
emphatic "GI ME THE COUNTRY IN PLCE
OF THE SE SHOR.
"
In smaller letters, how
ever, he appended: "But I would like some
of the shore sandwiched in."B By the next
year the balance had distinctly reversed
itself "What is it that a mountain lacks,
and the sea possesses, I have not discov
ered," he wrote from the mountains of
New Hampshire, "but whatever it is, it is
something that means a good deal. I am
tire
d of the lake, because it is a paltry imi
tation of the sea."9 Later he added, "I think
that the mountains simply express
grandeur and strength-in contrast to the
exp
ression of infinitude and eternit in
the
sea."IO
One of the earliest projects of
Shur
cliff's private practice was the siting
a
nd layng out of the gardens and winding
drive
U a residence approxmately thirty
miles north of Boston at Ipswich, Massa
chusetts, then a relatively undiscovered
town near the ocean. The project was
undertaken in 1903 for one of the Shurt
leff family doctors, Frances B. Harrington,
the Harringtons having joined the second
small wave of seasonal residents, mostly
Boston doctors and their families, who
built summer homes along the upper end
of a sparsely inhabited, rutted clay lane
called Argilla Road. The unpaved byway
was the sole land access route to the mag
nificent beach and sand dunes of Castle
Neck, which stretch along the gently
curving shoreline of Ipswich. Unlike the
wealthy, highly structured "Gold Coast"
summer colonies on Boston's North
Shore, Ipswich residents resisted com
partmentalizing. According to North
Shore historian Joseph p Garland, the
town "has always been a place unto itself,
regarded by hardly a soul, native or other
wise, as having anything to do with the
North Shore."ll Frances Grimes, resident
of the summer colony at Cornish, New
Hampshire, where Margaret Shurclif's
family lived, once wrote of its residents,
"Unconventional they were, but also in a
way formal, with a chosen formality."
1
2
The same aura pervaded the Ipswich com
munity, a sort of relaxation within the
clearly defned boundaries of current
mores. One early Argilla Road resident,
Mrs. Joseph L. Goodale, described going
to a ladies' luncheon in nearby Hamilton
soon after her arrival on the street:
"During a lull in the conversation one of
the ladies asked the guests whether any of
them knew anything of a place called
DsVCh, and more especially a localit
known as Argilla Road, 'inhabited by
queer people whose children grow up
Old-
Time New England FalVinter 2OOO Page 49
barefoot and wear bloomers."'13
That characterization suited the
intrepid band who first settled there just
fne. It was a stalwart life on Argilla Road,
the clannish community choosing to cre
ate its own version of what Garland called
the "simple saltwater farm life."14 There
was no electricity, gas, or town water for
the early residents, and the general
Ipswich problem of mosquitoes and
midges was magnifed by the annual July/
August invasion of virulent greenhead
fies, whose favorite breeding grounds
were the very marshes below the drumlins
upon which the city folk had settled.
"Thank God for the greenheads," one
resident is quoted to have said, for their
unrelenting presence kept the place from
becoming popular as a summer resort.
|o
Among the inhabitants there was a
rich social life, checked only by the natur
al understanding among them of the dis
tinct, counterbalancing merits of solitude
and privacy In addition to numerous
sporting events, all-inclusive group activi
ties abounded, most of them terminating,
as Shurcliff once wrote, in "laughter and
ice cream."16 '%-gilla Road is a club,"
Shurcliff 's son, William, wrote later,
"inspired by landscape, held together by
friendship, and prospering without
dues."17 The community placed large
emphasis on creating a wholesome and
joyful atmosphere for adults to reenergize
themselves, but most importantly for chil
dren to grow and thrive in.
During an early site visit in 1904,
Dr. Harrington pointed across the
marshes (the entire area being unfettered
by sight-obstructing trees at that time) to a
completely bare drumlin down the road
and suggested that his landscape architect
might wish to buy it and construct a sum
mer home for himself "It's called Skim
Milk Hill because it's such poor pasture
land; y ou could probably buy it cheap,"
the doctor suggested.1 8 Shurclifhesitated;
he was not married at that time, and he
did not see the need for such a large tract
of land. In addition, the six-thousand
dollar price seemed too large for his slen
der, carefully tended pocketbook.
He continued his quest westward of
the city, but the Ipswich drumlin lingered
in his mind. Mter a visit to the Harring
tons in August of 1906 Shurcliff wrote his
wife that Dr. Harrington "still wants us to
locate at Ipswich and I got the feaver [sic]
again, but on mature thought still think
that the fare, distance (R, and distance
from the station) is too great for poor folk
like us. However I do wish to glory we
had a place of our own."19 His reservations
were subsequently overcome. ''fter
much deliberation," Margaret Shurcliff
wrote, "we decided ... that Argilla Road,
Ipswich was the place for US."20 They
asked Shurcliff's friend from childhood,
Bill Robbins, now a doctor in Boston, if
he would care to purchase the property
jointly and divide it into two lots. Dr.
Robbins and his wife readily agreed, and
the next step was to separate the land into
equal parcels.
Skim Milk Hill commanded a mag
nificent view of the Ipswich marshes
pierced only by the Castle Neck River,
which wound its way through the exten
sive wetlands, and by a few small, rounded
islands punctuating the narrow estuar
Page 50
FalVinter 2000 Old-Time New England
Only one half of the property, however,
aforded a panorama of the magnificent
Castle Neck sand dunes approxmately
two miles distant; therefore Shurcliff
drew up a plan allowing for one plot to
include the northeastern half of the hill
with its superior view and the other on the
southwestern half, with more land
(includi' ng an enormous gravel pit at the
base of the hill along Agilla Road) as
compensation for the lack of vista. A third,
small piece, fronting the road, was set
aside as a hayfield. A coin was tossed, Dr.
Robbins won the northerly portion, with
its view, and the deeds were signed on the
spot. "During his entire subsequent life,"
Shurcliff's son, Sidney, later wrote, "my
father would never state, or even hint, as
to whether or not he got the site he really
wanted."21
Robbins purchased the extra hay
feld, for his parcel did not have one, and
in those days a growing family often kept
its own cow to provide milk. A each of
these close-knit families produced six
children, three boys and three girls of
approxmately the same ages, feed for a
cow was no small consideration. In subse
quent years Shurclif not only bought that.
hayfield but went on to purchase several
tracts of marshlands and a small island in
front of his house. Ultimately he owned
nearly 160 acres of/and. In 1935 he pur
chased a tract of upland and marsh next to
the Robbins place with his two sons,
restricting the deed "in such a way that no
one, not even myself can ever build a
house or other structure on the land, thus
to prevent such structures from encroach
ing on the loveliness of the meadow land-
scapes," he wote.22
Once the original plot had been
subdivided Robbins sought the expertise
of their mutual childhood friend, the
Boston architect Robert Bellows, who
designed a modified Swiss Chalet for the
Robbinses' half of the hill. The Shurclifs,
on the other hand, began an adventure in
building that continued in varying forms
throughout most of the rest of their lives.
In doing so they fulflled the commitment
they had made the second week of their
engagement when they decided to "put up
(largely with our own hands) a little
house" in the countrside.
The dwelling they constructed was
sited facing southeast, an old New
England technique to concentrate the
warming efects of the sun but adopted in
this case to maxmize the view of the
marshes. A the years passed the structure
went from a raw "shack" standing on a
bare hilltop to an integrated part of the
landscape, cresting the hill yet nestled into
its surround and embodying the farm
stead ideal Shurclif carried close to his
heart (fg. 5). Over the decades the house
and grounds were in a constant state of
evolution as the Shurcliffs made addi
tions, added outbuildings and enclosed
large areas for use as gardens, orchards,
and lawns. They frst surrounded these
spaces with wooden fences and later with
shingle-capped walls of glacial boulders
and stone which served to unif and har
monize the manmade and natural ele
ments of the grounds.
Within this haven the two wood
workers and some family members
designed, cared, and built all the interior
Old-T
me New England Fall/nter 2OOO Page 51
PLAN Nv.l
I
7
w
J
r

l
IR\ AN
- ~ - - ~=. = ~ ~ ~ "
\
1
1^ .LT1 :
.^
.
>
w
/
I

M41E
r
!
I
j

' 1
t
t
|
|
l
t
l \1F7.m||
l
C/PDE
I
l
~ - ~ ~ ^ ~~ ~ ..
Fig. 5. Ti plan shows the earliest configuration i the "shack" at Ipswich, a year after the project was
begun. Drwing by Abiail Campbell-King based on a plan drawn by Sarah Parsons Shurclif.
Private collection. Plan drawn by Sarah parsons Shurclifand published in House Beautiful,June
1929. Courtesy House Beautiful.
paneling, furniture, and accoutrements
for the house. In doing so they expressed
their commitment to the Arts and Crafts
ideal and identified in their daily lives
"with the patient beginnings that are the
foundation of expressive life," as contem
porary sculptor Adelaide Sproul has
expressed it.23 Shurcliff had joined the
Society of Arts and Crafts, Boston in 1901
and three years later explained what a
handcrafted article meant to him in an
article for Handicraft, the organization's
monthly journal. In order to be worthy, he
wrote, the object must combine a useful
purpose with "a magical property of
bringing to our minds happily the person-
ality of the [maker]." When this union is
achieved the article is "in a class wth a liv
ing organism which is beautiful to behold
and which is, at the same time, struc
turally fit to pursue a physical exstence."
This sort of product, Shurcliff concluded,
constitutes "a line of connection which
holds us upon the one hand to tlie wagon
and on the other to the star."24 Here lies
the essence of this unique summer
dwelling, for although the Shurcliffs lived
authentically wherever they were, that
quality manifested itself most clearly in
the Ipswich environment they created.
Margaret Shurcliff remembered that
'hur and I drew endless plans for the
Page 52 Fall/inter 2000 Old-Time New England
smallest and cheapest house we felt would
be practical for our family" The sixty-by
twenty-four-foot-wide structure was
designed, she said, "after the style of
shacks in the south,"25 topped by a cedar
shingle roof and sheathed in country pine,
planed inside and rough on the exterior.
1 time went by this raw boarding, coated
in linseed oil and exposed to sun and
weather, shaded to a "dark reddish, almost
black color," according to daughter Sarah
Shurclif in a 1929 article she wrote about
the place for House Beautiul. Two brick
chimneys were incorporated in order to
accommodate the stoves used for heating
and cooking. ''With the aid of hindsight I
now realize it would have been much
cheaper in the long run, and we could
have been more comfortable, if we had
indulged in larger quarters and better
equipment at the start," Margaret Shur
cliff later wrote. In typical, frugal fashion,
however, they did not. Mrs. Shurcliff
elaborated upon their economizing:
kerosene lamps and candles sered for
lighting, and for cooking they used a
Florence stove "which occasionally bathed
the ktchen in thick black soot and was
always a trial. Another economy was our
hot water supply. This consisted of a small
oil lamp under a well-insulated boiler.
We
never had enough water and it was
never hot. "2
6
The Connolly Brothers, Contrac
tors, from nearby Beverly Farms, built the
Original structure for one thousand dol
lars, beginning during the thaw of 1908
when the ground was soft enough to set
the concrete piers Shurclifhad cast in the
basement of the family's Boston home. In
the spring, for an extra one hundred and
ffty dollars, Connolly Brothers con
structed a combination cow shed and
carpentry shop. That summer a little
screened summer house appeared, over
looking the marshes (fg 5.).
There was no getting around the
need for a water source, and one was soon
discovered at the base of the hill. The
issue was how to bring that supply to the
top. The high, modem cast-iron wnd
mills used by neighbors were, unsurpris
ingly, anathema to Shurcliff's aesthetic
sensibilities. Demonstrating, perhaps,
what his wife called "his general aversion
to doing anything the conventional way,"27
Shurcliff pulled out an 1896 sketch he had
drawn of the eighteenth-century windmill
on Nantucket and fashioned a smaller
rendition for his own hilltop. For two
hundred and fifty dollars Connolly
Brothers constructed his old-fashioned
version, although the price did not
include either the gears or the sails (fig. 6).
Shurcliff set about making the patterns for
the entire set of gearing and eventually
oversaw its installation. Margaret Shurclif
sewed the canvas sails. In his autobiogra
phy Shurcliff stated with obvious satisfac
tion that the mill supplied their water for
over thirty years. Mrs. Shurcliff whose lot
most often fell to tending it, wrote less
sanguinely about the experience. "In the
ory the mill was a great success. It was pic
turesque and it pumped water into our
tank at the top of the house." Yet, she
added, "From my point of view it seemed
like more of a responsibility than all of the
children lumped together."28
Because the entire hill was devoid of
Old-Time New England FalVinter 2000
Page 53
Fig. 6. Te windmill designed b Arthur Shurclifthe plans were drawn from an 1896 sketch of the
eighteenth-centur mill on Nantucket Island. Private collection.
Page 54 Fallinter 2OOO Old-Time New England
foliage the Shurcliffs embarked immedi
ately upon a tree-planting campaign. Over
the years many hundreds of trees were
planted all around the property first in an
efort to mask the hill from the street
below and then to create both a windbreak
and a setting for the house. Specimen fruit
trees were added within the garden walls,
and flowering shrubs-especially Shur
clif's favorite, lilac-abounded. One of
the outcomes was the realization of an
Olmstedian tradition: when the enor
mous groups of trees lining the driveway
reached maturity, motorists did not drive
up a bare hill to confront the house and
fens but instead moved up a dark conifer
ous and deciduous column to the crest of
the hill where, directly ahead, they met a
breaktaking view of the open marshes and
river. A view of the house, situated at the
highest point, appeared only as one began
to angle left to reach the top of the drum
lin. The well-known English Ats and
Crafts garden designer Gertrude Jekyll
called such a landscape "the nearest thing
to a road-poem that anything of the kind
can show. It is full of a sympathetic
mystery that inclines the mind to open
wide in readiness to receive any impres
sion that may be presented. The trees
meet overhead; the light coming through
is dim and green .... What will the next
reach disclose?"29
By 1909 split-rail fences were being
ins
talled to create the series of enclosed
garden areas (fig. 7). The Shurcliffs added
a wooden piazza, later replaced by a per
gola with a bluestone patio below. Shur
cliff
was frmly committed to the reuse of
fo
und objects and discarded architectural
elements in his private life, particularly
throughout the years of building at
Ipswich. The new pergola posts were old,
octagonal, wooden water pipes dug up in a
Beacon Hill neighbor's backy ard when
the Boston subway system was being
excavated. A flat marble slab with the
points of the compass incised into it (one
of many devices installed to measure the
sun) formerly marking the piazza steps
was now incorporated into the stone
paving of the pergola floor. Grapes were
trained around the post and up over the
top (fg. 8).
Shurcliff created most of the garden
ornament that appeared around the
grounds. Sometimes it took a utilitarian, if
somewhat fanciful, form such as a bird
house using an old wagon wheel for its
frame. or the summerhouse weathervane
depicting a ship under full sail. Concrete,
touted by Te Crafsman as early as 1909 as
the only "ft" ornamental material for
American gardens, first made its appear
ance at Ipswich in 1910 when Shurclif
formulated two large pots and two bird
baths for his gardens (fig. 9).
A the demands of his professional
practice grew his leisure moments receded
exponentially In aJune 1913 joural entry
he recorded wearily, "I tured in before
the sunlight had faded away and Margaret
read to me 'How to Live on Twenty-four
Hours a Day"'30 A few days later he added,
"The country is fine, the air cool and clear,
the children well and therefore to bed at
8:30 to rest a little from the strenuous life
(too urgent and overdriven) of the past
Spring."31 These pressing demands
seemed to increase Shurcliff's reliance
Old-Tme New England Fall/nter 2000 Page 55
Fig. 7. Te front after the frst series o split-rail fnce was installed. In the background is the wind
mill that supplied all the family water for thirt years; in the freground are three o the six children,
Sidney, Wlliam, and Jack, in one o the many devices created by Shurclif for hauling his fmily
about. Private collection.
Fig. 8. The easter facade o the house with it pergola posts made o reccled, old wooden water pipes
salvaged from Boston. Private collection.
Page 56 Fallinter 2000 Old-Time New England
Fig. 9. A the fnces evolved over the years so did the decorative elements, including the 1910 concrete
pots designed and executed by Arthur ShurclifHi second child and first daughter Sarah Parsons
Shurclifgrces one o them about 1913. Private collection.
upon his Ipswich retreat as a place of
respite and renewal and to focus his mind
on the preciousness of his home and fam
ily life. Mter one particularly taxng day his
journal entry reads, "I found another apple
blossom-half its petals blown away by the
wind-and I took it to Boston with me to
look at upon my desk. To Ipswich again at
six 0' clock to see green fields, the river, and
my Margaret, Sidney, Sarah, William, Jack,
and Elizabeth-better than apple blos
soms; like apple blossoms and fine
apples"32 (fg. 10). His son William wrote
in 1952, "In spring he took children on
countless little walks to admire the apple
blossoms, picking out the most beautiful
trees, most fragrant blossoms, lifting us
deep into the tree foliage. Nearly always,
on return home, he handed Mother a
small bouquet, or possibly a wreath."33
The Ipswich house was to be not only a
sanctuary for adults but also an open play
ground and unrestricted atmosphere for
children, where the family could grow and
thrive in a healthy country environment
and where they could bring their friends to
share in the pleasure of recreation and
spirited fun.
Margaret and Arthur Shurcliff fos
tered an appreciation of handcraft in all of
their children by teaching them carpentry
and encouraging them to produce for
themselves their daily needs and desires.
The Shurc1iff hilltop constantly bustled
with activity, including woodworking
classes for neighborhood children. The
Old-Time New England FalVinter 2000 Page 57
Fig. 10. Shurclifderived enormous pleasure from providing a healthy and happy environment for
hi children to play in. Here he joins his own and neihborhood children at day's end in Ipswich.
Private collection.
technical was inextricably linked to the
aesthetic component for those who
sought to create the material necessities of
their environment, and Arthur Shurcliff
made certain that his children were
exosed, by demonstration and through
emulation, to those tenets of the Arts and
Crafts movement he had chosen to incor
porate into his own life. In this respect his
ideas resembled those of the New York
and Ipswich artist Arthur Wesley Dow
(1857-1922), whose Japanese-inspired
woodcuts reflected the simplicity inherent
in the Arts and Crafts movement. "Teach
a child to know beauty when he sees it, to
create it, to love it, and when he grows up
he will not tolerate the ugly" Dow wrote.
"In the relations of lines to each other he
may lear the relations of lives to each
other; as he perceives color harmonies he
may also perceive the fitness of things. "34
The house and exterior spaces grew
and changed as needs prevailed. The bur
geoning household necessitated building a
new wing on the main body of the house
in 1913, and with the birth of the sixth and
last child, a final major addition was
required. The "Forecastle," as the space
was christened, attached to the northwest
comer of the house.
A more spaces of the compound
became enclosed for a vegetable garden, a
Page 58 FalVinter 2OOO Old-Time New England
small orchard, and flower gardens, the
Shurcliffs created outdoor rooms, impor
tant components of the movement. These
spaces permitted one to move naturally
from the interior of the house to the exte
rior and provided what historian David
Streatfield calls "an important transitional
space in a continuum of exerience from
the interior of the house through the gar
den and out into the landscape," in this
case to the sweeping view of the marshes
spreading to the horizon (fig.11). 35 They
moved and shifted buildings to provide a
courtyard and garden rooms and laid and
relaid paths as these changes took place.
By 1927 the capped-stone-wall building
campaign had begun as a way of complet
ing the enclosed formations Shurcliff so
loved. Incorporated into this new and
architectonic wall system were a forge for
metal crafting, a tunneled entrance into
the complex that drew one from light to
darkess to the light of the inner court
yard, and a stone tower (fig. 12).
Inspiration for the enclosed court
yard formation that eventually emerged
on the developing Ipswich property can be
found in Shurclifs youthful wanderings
in the countryside and in the trips he took
to rural England, a place he admired and
looked to in his restoration work. "The
unfading memory of England is of farms
and cottages, ... " he wrote in a 1915 arti
cle for Landscape Architecture, "merest
glimpses of whitewashed houses, quaint
dooryards, orchards, felds and meadows,
remain fxed in the memory."36 He
described in detail We Farm in Rowsley,
Derbyshire, and praised what he termed
the U-shaped and hollow-square forma-
Fig. 11. Tis view shows a small porion i the sweeping vista i marshland visible from the Shurcli
propert. Shurclilater added the tiny chapel in order to fame that view. Private collection.
Old-Time New England FalVnter 2OOO Page 5
v'
tS2
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Fig. 12. By 1929 Shurclifhad created the full-blown farmstead he had envisioned, including an
enclosed courtyard and intimate garden rooms. Plan drawn by Sarah Parsons Shurclifand published
in House Beautiful,June 1929. Courtesy House Beautiful.
tions of its farm buildings. Careful exam
ination of their positions, their uses, and
their relation to the courtyard led him to
conclude that ftness to its situation is a
major key to the farm's success: "Its archi
tecture is appropriate to its use and
harmonizes with the buildings of the
neighborhood," he wrote.37
Even earlier, in 1903 after his frst
trip to England, he described in Gustave
Stickley's influential Arts and Crafts
magazine, Te Craftsman, the Ann Hibbs
farm at Rowsley. Here he made careful
note of the farm's south-facing'position
and the hedges enclosing house and
grounds. Praising the "organic ftness" of
the landscape there, Shurcliff offered his
frm belief in the innate goodness and
purity of living on the land, remote from
modern life.38
Sarah Shurcliff's 1929 House Beauti
ful article gIVes an excellent idea of j
ust
Page 60 FalVinter 2000 Old-Time New England
how well the house now snuggled into the
landscape. Lush plantings, spilling over
. fower beds and off pergolas, combined
with the enfolding wall system to produce
a totally encompassing atmosphere (figs.
13-15). Shurcliff spent years converting
the little house on top of the bare, bald
drumlin of Skim Milk Hill into a integral
part 0, the landscape and combining this
amalgamation with his own personal ver
sion of Arts and Crafts unity. The house
gradually became one with the landscape,
its sheltered gardens unifing it wth the
sun-penetrated, windswept hilltop into
which it nestled. In 1927 he added a tiny
chapel to the grounds, meant, he always
said, for quiet contemplation. His eldest
son Sidney, the only child who followed
his father's profession, believed it was
"built primarily to enframe the view from
the house."39 In a 1980 interview he stated,
"lmy family set a high value on the view
of the marshes, and my father did every
thing he could to enhance the various
views in that direction including balus
trades in the foreground, the chapel and
the planting of pine trees on the distant
islands"4 (see fig.ll).
All the while the Shurcliffs were
developing the exterior spaces, the
indoors was evolving as well. The interior
of the house--dark, cool and consisting
entirely, in form and content, of natural
elements made by hand-reinforced even
more deeply the simple, sturdy aesthetic
of the Arts and Crafts movement (fg. 16).
Fig. 1. This photograph of the back of the house i one of si images that illustrated Sarah Parsons
Shurclij's June 1929 article Jr House Beautiful Magazine. In it she describes the evolution oj the
Shurclifsummer residence. Courte House Beautiful.
Old-Time New England FaIVinter 2OOO
Page 61
Fig. 14. Sarah Shurclifdescribed the perola as (built to shade the path which leads from the stone
gate by the tur-around to the doorard.) Courtes House Beautiful.
The Shurcliffs together followed their
own interpretation of this ideal. They rev
eled in the ingenuity of their handiwork,
pursued the Emersonian ideal of looking
to one's own land for creative inspiration,
and relied upon native materials to pro
duce their designs. From the interior skin
to the entire contents of the house, they
sought to produce with their own hands
as many of their daily needs as possible, to
live "the art that is life."41
Slowly the walls changed from
exposed studding to paneled and crafted
spaces, the living room paneling a combi
nation of discarded eighteenth-century
pew doors from King's Chapel, Boston,
which became the fireplace surrounds,
and paneling Shurcliff himself executed.
Beginning in 1923 Shurcliff designed and
carved a series of wooden door latches
and door handles for various rooms in the
house. Some were simple and functional;
others displayed the more whimsical side
of his nature, including dolphin and
whale latches.
The Shurcliffs crafted almost all of
the furniture within the house, marked
with the makers' initials and the dates the
pieces were made. Athough Margaret
Shurcliff's designs became sturdy but
attractive, she wrote in her memoirs that in
her early single days "all my carpentry
models were designed for use and strength
only. Arthur Shurtleff on the other hand
couldn't design a toothbrush holder with
out finishing it off with a delicate mould
ing [sic]; or a footstool, with a slight slant
to the legs. More than anything else I
worked to please him. The charm and
interest added by the influence of Arthur
Page 62 FalVinter 2000 Old-Time New England
were undeniable and I realized my own
crudeness. . . . I was content to remain a
brawny hard worker. This I would have
remained if Athur had not frmly stepped
in, some years before we even so much as
spoke of a future together."42
The old nursery, tucked at the for
mer back of the house, was transformed
into t
h
e front entrance after a door was cut
to the enclosed courtard on the north
side of the house. Here Shurcliff showed
his sense of humor, for running along the
top of the closet wall in this room is a false
set of carved wooden "books," the titles
representing Argilla Road in-jokes poking
fun at his neighbors' foibles and interests.
Alcohol in the Home "by Josie H." is a nudge
at the confirmed teetotaler Mrs. Frances
Harrington. In quite the opposite vein,
Grapes and Their J(uses) refers to Dr.
Joseph Goodale's home-brewed wine,
made from his own grapes.
By far the most fascinating room in
the Shurcliffs' summer home is the
library, which Shurclif called the "winter
kitchen," probably because it was the
room used for weekending after the
household had decamped to Boston for
the winter and before they returned when
school was finished for the year (fig. 17).
Winter days would find the family shovel
ing paths, coasting, skating, or walking the
frozen marshes. At day's end, William
Shurcliff wrote, the winter kitchen, cozy
and warm, awaited them with soup and
hot chocolate simmering on the coal
Fig. 15. The summerhouse, built a year after the original house was constructed. It served Jr a quiet
place to enterain friends. Coury House Beautiful.
Old-Time New England FalVnter 2OOO Page 63
Fig. 16. The interi0 designed, carved, and installed by Arthur and Margaret Shurclif(sometimes
with help from the children and a carpenter), rilected petctly their love of the simplicit of natural
wood and their emphasis on sturdy but attractive furiture, also designed and built by them. Tis view
shows their living and dining area. Private collection.
burning stove.
The room is the complete summa
tion of Shurcliff's handwork ideals. Its
finish work, done between 1923 and 1929,
included a string course around the room
in the form of a Greek key. He and his
friend, Langdon Warner, a neighbor and
curator of Asian Art at Harvard's Fogg
Museum, made ornate knobs for the
bookcase cupboards which had grape
clusters carved at the top. The four-by
four framing members became columns
with carved capitols. Bats and owls sered
as entablatures. It was not until 1933 that
Shurcliff added an iconographically sig
nificant and deeply sentimental element
to the decoration. In the end corner of the
bookcase, beneath an owl entablature, he
placed a carved mother pelican, represent
ing Margaret Shurclif feeding the six lit
tle babies at her feet, one for each
Shurcliff child (fg. 18).
Arthur Shurcliff 's moments of
repose shrank proportionately to his
growing success as a landscape architect.
Particularly from the time he began his
great work of garden restoration and
recreation at Colonial Williamsburg in
1928, he traveled frequently and allowed
himself little respite from his labors.
When he did take time off it was almost
invariably to go to Ipswich; this could take
Page 64 FalVinter 2OOO Old-Time New England
Fig. 17. The librar, also called the Wnter Kitchen, with its detailed carving and set, dark lighting.
Private collection.
the form of a few days in the summer
months, but sometimes it was literally as
little as ten minutes in the of-season,
when he would take a train up to Ipswich
and ride his bicycle to the house so that he
could catch a glimpse of a setting sun or
check the progress of some new project.
At their home in Ipswich Arthur and
Margaret Shurcliff effortlessly put into
practice the elements that motivated every
aspect of their life together, reflecting as it
did the beauty ingenuity, and peacefulness
which they were able to create and main
tain there. In the fifty-year evolution of the
house and grounds, Shurclif through his
jourals and correspondence, painted a
multidimensional portrait of a person who
achieved satisfaction and spiritual renewal
from the creative process, a process
which he was intimately involved not only
as architect and designer but also as engi
neer, carpenter, woodworker, mason,
metal-worker, horticultural consultant,
and appreciative client. ''bove all," his son
William concluded, "he tried to create a
feeling of comfortable understanding-an
enduring and growing fondness-for
one's sUIToundings."43
For his grandson Charles Hopkin
son Shurcliff an architect, watercolor
painter, and landscape architect in his own
right, the Ipswich house is the perfect
reflection of his grandfather'S Transcen
dental idealism. A Transcendentalist
himself and probably the closest philo
sophically to his grandfather's vision of
the natural world, Charles Shurcliff
depicts the house and grounds as Arthur
Old-Time New England FalVinter 2OOO Page D
Shurcliff's personal vision, a kind of "see
ing" that evinces "the participation with
the universe (where one loses all self and
becomes part of the universe)-a reli
gious, lifelong journey Architecture and
landscape architecture . . . may be a record
of this seeing and union with the cosmos,
where all things are invested in meaning."
For Charles Shurcliff this confrms that
"the architecture and landscape . . . seem a
penultimate example of this seeing and
religious journey. Note the continual rip
ping apart and re-doing to achieve the
rightness; the whole its parts as an
organic entity responding to all the natural
forces"4 (fig. 19).
The Ipswich home was Shurcliff's
shelter and refuge. It stands as a tribute to
Fig. 18. A detail oj a column
in the Wnter Kitchen oj a
mother pelican feding her six
babie, carved by Shurclif in
loving rerence to his wif
and children. Courtesy Ross
Harris, photographer
the life he and Margaret Shurcliff built
together for their own satisfaction and as a
safe and happy harbor for their family
Above all, it remains not only a fascinating
reflection of Shurclif's inventive genius
and his ability to create a charming and
highly individualistic environment but as
tangible evidence of his own unusual,
complex, and multidimensional interior
landscape.

Elizabeth Hope Cushing is a landscape
historian and a candidate for the Ph.D,
in the American and Ne England
Studie Program at Boston Universit.
Her dissertation topic i a critical biog
raphy oj Arthur A. Shurelif
Page 66 FalVinter 2OOO Old-Time New England

arage

TurnArouna

Coverea
aage
/
. Wl
n
d 1
o no.V
VbUbMT LN
0eIe.
Fig. 19. The compound as it appears today; drawing by Abigail Campbell-King based on a plan
drawn by Sarah Parsons ShurclifPrivate collection.
OTS
1 . The intense socialist elements of the English
P and Crafts movement were never inte-
grated into the American version.
2. Society of Arts and Crafts, Boston, Papers,
1897-1924, Archives of American Art,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C.
3. Arthur P Shurclif (then Shurtle),
Jourals, vol. III, Aa. 15, 1894; private
collection.
4. He remained in the Olmsted ofce even
after the untimely death of Charles Eliot
at age 37, one year after Shurcliffjoined
the Lm.
5. Margaret Homer Shurclif !vc/yuy:
(Taipei: Literature House, Ltd. , 1965), 57.
6. Shurcliff (then Shurtle), Courtship
Joural, Feb. 9, 1905; private collection.
7. Shurcliff (then Shurtle) to Margaret H.
Shurclif, July 15, 1906; prtvatc collection.
8. Shurclif (then Shurtle) Journals, vol. I,
Sept. 26, 1 890, 284; private collection.
Old-Time New England FalllWnter 2000 Page 67
9. Ibid., vol. H, Sept. 8, 1891, 36; private
collection.
10. Ibid., vol. H, Sept. 12, 1891, 54.
1 1 . Joseph E. Garland, Boston's Gold Coast: Te
North Shore, !>0!>2> (Boston: Little
Brown and Co., 1981), 87.
12. Frances Grimes, "Reminiscences," in
A Circle oFriends: Ar Colonies oCorish
and Dublin (Keene, N. H. : University
Art Galleries and Keene State College,
1985), 67.
13. William A. Shurcliff, "ACasual History of
the Upper Part of Argilla Road, Ipswich,
Mass., since 1 897" (Typescript, Apr. 1,
1952), 22; private collection.
14. Garland, Boston's Gold Coast, 90.
15. Sidney Nichols Shurcliff, Upon the Road
Arilla (n.p.: by the author, 1958), 9.
16. P Shurcliff (then Shurtleff), "Ipswich Log,"
Aug. 30, 1913, 18; private collection.
17. \P Shurcliff, "Casual History" 47.
18. Ibid., 74-75.
19. A. Shurcliff (then Shurtleff) to Margaret
Horer Shurcliff (then Shurtleff), Aug. 6,
1906; private collection.
20. M. Shurcliff Lively Days, 57.
21. S. Shurcliff Upon the Road Arilla, 82.
22. Arthur Shurcliff, Autobiography oj Arthur A.
Shurcl!f 1870-1957 (Cambridge, Mass. :
Arthur Asahel ShurcliffII and Sarah
ShurclifIngeifinger, 1981), 31.
23. Adelaide Sproul, "The Egg and I," Fine
Woodworking March 1981.
24. A. Shurcliff (then Shurtleff), "Differences in
Presents," Handiri, February 1904, 237.
25. M. Shurcliff Lively Days, 57.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid., 45.
28. Ibid. , 58.
29. Gertrude Jekyll, Home and Garden (London:
Longmans, Green and Co., 1901), 49-50.
30. A. Shurcliff (then Shurtleff), "Log," June 9,
1913, 8.
31. Ibid., June 13, 1913, 10.
32. Ibid. , June 2, 1913, 6.
33. \P Shurcliff to the author, Mar. 18, 1995.
34. Quoted in Frederick C. Moffatt, Arthur
Wesle Dow (Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1977), 62-63.
35. Moffatt, Arthur Wesle Dow, 37.
36. A. Shurcliff (then Shurtleff), 'f English
Farm Group," Landscape Architecture, April
1915, 120.
37. Shurcliff, "English Farm Group," 123.
38. A. Shurcliff (then Shurtleff), "The Grounds
of an English Villager'S Cottage," Te
Craftsman, April 1903, 9.
39. Melanie L. Simo, 'f Interview With Sidney
N. Shurcliff, 1980" (Watertown, Mass.:
Hubbard Educational Trust, 1992), 14.
40. Sima, "Interiew. "
41. P and Crafts reformer William Price sub
titled his periodical Te Artsman "the art that
is life."
42. M. Shurcliff, Lively Days, 47.
43. \P Shurcliff, memorandum to the author,
Jan. 19, 1994.
44. Charles H. Shurcliff, ''What are the Major
Influences on Whitley (both archite
,
cture
and landscape)," memorandum to the
author, Dec. 10, 1992. Whitley is one of
the many names given to the property over
the years.
Page 68
FalVinter 2000 Old-Time New England