In an era before government-sponsored welfare, wealthy late 19th-century idealists like Robert Treat Paine personally took on some of the most difficult societal problems. Paine was exceptionally dedicated to the task, pioneering organized charity, affordable housing, cooperative loan and building associations, clubs and institutes for the working class and even the peace movement. 

 Working with some of the most important artists and intellectuals of late 19th-century America, architect Henry Hobson Richardson, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, and Reverend Phillips Brooks, Paine left an architectural legacy as well as a philosophical one: from hundreds of low income homes in Roxbury to some of our most memorable icons of American design. 

 Ann Clifford, the curator of Paine’s country house, Stonehurst, will explore the ideology behind Trinity Church in Boston, Stonehurst in Waltham, and social institutions established by Robert Treat Paine.

Copies of the new guidebook by Ann Clifford and Thomas M. Paine, Stonehurst: The Robert Treat Paine Estate: An American Masterwork by H.H. Richardson and F.L. Olmsted, will be available to purchase.

This event is FREE and open to the public.

Boston Public Library, Copley Square, Mezzanine Conference Room, 700 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02116

Info:  617-859-2226 / www.bpl.org

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Waltham Public School Programs

Waltham third-graders playing on Glacier Rock

Because Stonehurst is municipally owned, its relationship with the local public school system is unusually close.  School programs are presently offered to the entire third-grade class of the Waltham Public School System and to several Waltham high school classes. 

"Shaped by Nature" Third-grade School Program

This school program uses historical artifacts, documents and the the city-owned site itself to teach timeless ideas about our relationship to the natural and built environment.

Stonehurst teachers visit each classroom beforehand to excite students about Lily Paine, a child who once lived in complete harmony with nature at this earth-friendly house in Waltham built of boulders from its hilltop site.

Lily's father Robert Treat Paine, was a housing reformer. Her family loved the natural world and believed that all living things are shaped by their environment. They hired architect Henry Hobson Richardson and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted who shared their love of nature to design their country home. Within and without, Stonehurst has strong connections to the earth.

Looking through the lens of history at sundials, life cycles, vernal pools, open space and architecture designed for healthy living, students learn that habitats for humans--like all organisms--provide for their basic needs.

These "old" ideas that are so powerfully expressed at Stonehurst are forward looking even today.

A collaboration between the Waltham Public School System, the Friends of Stonehurst and the City of Waltham, Jeannette A. McCarthy, Mayor.