I was a history major and theater minor in college, but I didn’t want to teach history or write history books. Soon after college, I worked at Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum—a tourist “experience” more than a traditional history museum—where we had thousands of visitors some days. I started off dressing up as Sam Adams and throwing fake boxes of tea into the harbor, but eventually I became assistant manager. While I was working, I did graduate work in museum studies through the Harvard Extension School, and then toward a master’s in historic preservation at Boston University. Recently, a former BU professor sent me a card I had filled out in 1999 saying I wanted to run a historic house museum at SPNEA (which is what Historic England used to be called) someday, and that is exactly what I ended up doing! I worked at the Peabody Essex Museum as a collections manager before coming to Historic New England in 2007.
I take great pleasure in seeing the joy visitors experience at Beauport and Cogswell’s Grant. Both were once the homes of twentieth-century collectors—Henry Davis Sleeper at Beauport and Bertram K. and Nina Fletcher Little at Cogswell’s Grant—and while their approaches were quite different, the houses are both wonderful personal expressions of the owners. Visitors feel a real connection to the people who created these houses. Even people who perhaps got dragged along because someone else wanted to do a tour end up captivated—they come out of Beauport with their eyes like dinner plates and eager for more.
Perhaps the biggest challenge is opening and closing the houses each year. Because both were originally summer homes and don’t have heat, we have to carefully shut them down in the fall. The houses are filled with thousands of objects, all of which require careful cleaning and specialized handling when we reopen each spring. Staff and guides go through intensive training to do this work properly, working with our collections team. It’s meaningful work, and we all take pride in it, but it’s also very time-consuming and requires a great deal of care and attention to detail.
It’s hard to choose just one thing at Beauport, because the real magic lies in the overall effect of each room rather than any single object. In the spirit of Henry Davis Sleeper—who cared less about individual objects than about the overall impact of a space—I’d say the Golden Step Room. It was originally a loggia and later enclosed and features a remarkable central window, about eight feet long, that lowers into the wall on pulleys, opening the space to the harbor so you can see the rocky shoreline dropping into the sea. The room is filled with ship models, carvings, green ceramics, and light blue glass that beautifully complement one another. At sunset, the view is spectacular.
My favorite piece at Cogswell’s Grant is a portrait of Diantha Atwood Gordon. When I worked at the Peabody Essex Museum, I came to love portraiture and the paintings that surrounded me while I worked felt almost like family. This one is especially striking, especially since not much is known about the artist, A. Ellis—there are only ten or fifteen paintings attributed to Ellis. Nina Fletcher Little tried to learn more and didn’t end up finding much. In the process, though, she placed a request for information in Antiques magazine, and Diantha Gordon’s great-granddaughter responded, sharing stories passed down from her own mother (Diantha’s granddaughter), including one where, as a child, her mother locked her very strict grandparents in the privy.
At Beauport, engaging with the LGBTQ+ community has been especially meaningful. Highlighting Henry Davis Sleeper’s identity, flying the Pride flag at the gatehouse, and offering a regular Pride tour have all helped foster connection. The tour continues to evolve each year as we incorporate new research and perspectives. At Cogswell’s Grant, the story we share is really about the Littles’ collection, which is one of the most significant collections of American folk art in the world. Our farm history walking tour, however, connects the site to the broader story of Essex, including Indigenous history and the early colonial period. While many visitors come for the nationally recognized folk art collection, through the farm we really tell the Cogswell story and talk about how Essex and the site fit into broader North Shore history.
At Cogswell’s Grant, we’ll install and dedicate Stopping Stones in September to acknowledge the people who were enslaved at the site. At Beauport, we introduced a Take Your Time tour last year and are refining it this season. It’s a slower, two-hour version of the standard tour route, designed for visitors who want a more relaxed pace, whether for accessibility, extra time take to photographs, or simply a deeper experience.
Sailing in Gloucester Harbor is a must! You can take trips on the Ardelle or the Thomas E. Lannon, both schooners built by Essex shipbuilder Harold Burnham, whose work continues a tradition dating back to the seventeenth century. From the Ardelle, you can get unique vantage point on Beauport. The annual Gloucester Schooner Festival over Labor Day weekend is another highlight. We host events connected to the festival, including a Saturday evening house tour with fireworks and a Sunday morning garden picnic.
To learn more about these and other events at Kristen’s sites, visit HistoricNewEngland.org/Events.
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