When Hamilton House opens for the season on June 5, visitors to the National Historic Landmark site in South Berwick, Maine, will be treated to a sight not seen for nearly seventy-five years: The house is proudly sporting its character-defining dark green shutters.
Shutters have been missing from Hamilton House since the early 1950s. When Historic New England—then the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities—acquired the site in 1949, contemporary preservation practice emphasized the importance of restoring a historic structure to its original appearance. Adhering to this standard, Historic New England removed later additions to the house, including east and west wings, a porch, and forty-one pairs of shutters. (This practice conflicts with our preservation philosophy today, which recognizes and values the evolution of a property over time.)
Removing these features restored the exterior of the house to its late eighteenth-century presentation but rendered it incongruous with the elaborate Colonial Revival interiors designed by its celebrated early twentieth-century occupants, Emily and Elise Tyson. To better align the house’s appearance with our interpretation of the site—which centers the Tyson family’s ownership and their personal expression of the Colonial Revival movement—Historic New England recently completed a multiphase effort to restore the house’s exterior. This work included a painting campaign that reintroduced the Tysons’ color choices, as identified by historic paint analysis.
When the painting campaign was completed in fall 2024, Historic New England staff determined that reinstalling the shutters would convey to an even greater extent the Tysons’ colonial revival inspirations for their home. And while we regret the removal of these additions three quarters of a century ago, we are incredibly grateful for the foresight of our Historic New England colleagues-from-the-past, who saved and stored the original shutters in an on-site barn. Our property care team located all but three of the eighty-two individual shutters—all in relatively good condition! The shutters were gently cleaned, scraped, and repainted before being rehung in April 2025.
Exterior restoration at Hamilton House allows Historic New England to leverage the site’s intact Colonial Revival plan to convey the story of the Tysons’ era and the history of architecture and design as an interpretation of local, regional, and national moods. Generous grants from the Davis Family Foundation and the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (sponsored by the Rebecca Emery Chapter, Biddeford, Maine) are supporting restoration of the site’s visitor center, a structure called the Garden Cottage. This delightful outbuilding, constructed of salvaged materials from an eighteenth-century home in Newmarket, New Hampshire, was added by the Tysons in 1907 as a place to entertain in their elaborate Colonial Revival garden. Work to restore the Garden Cottage, including roofing, window conservation, and exterior cladding repairs, will begin later this year.
Written by Katherine Pomplun, Institutional Giving Officer
Visitors can see Hamilton House’s new paint and shutters during our free, region-wide Open House this Saturday, June 7. Tours will be offered from 11:00 AM – 4:00 PM.
Shutter restoration at Hamilton House was supported by a Save America’s Treasures grant from the National Park Service as the final phase of the Hamilton House Exterior Preservation and Resiliency project.
Sign up to our newsletter for our latest news and events
