Designed by Henry Hobson Richardson and Frederick Law Olmsted, Stonehurst the Robert Treat Paine Estate, is the only museum devoted to these two pioneering figures in American architectural and landscape design history. At Stonehurst, these close friends and collaborators forged a uniquely American architecture by focusing on the intimate, almost seamless integration of the natural and man-made worlds. Richardson and Olmsted, like Winslow Homer, Emily Dickinson and Mark Twain, were among the great artists of the post-Civil War era who asserted cultural independence from Europe by cultivating an aesthetic deeply rooted in the American landscape.

In 1883, Robert Treat Paine, Jr. and his wife Lydia Lyman Paine commissioned Richardson and Olmsted to design a great addition to their summer house in Waltham, Mass. The Paines were a socially minded family. Robert Treat Paine founded building and loan associations and institutes to improve the quality of life of the working class. Stonehurst embodied the ideals the Paine family held dear and to which they believed every American had a right: an abundance of healthy, clean air and a spiritually uplifting and restorative environment. The Paine family grounds appropriately became a public park in 1974, when descendants donated the 109-acre estate to the City of Waltham

The Designers

Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886)

Richardson’s career as 19th century America’s greatest architect was launched when he won the commission for the new Trinity Church (1872-77) in Boston’s Back Bay, thanks in part to Robert Treat Paine, the head of the building committee. Then and now, the church was considered a masterpiece of 19th century sacred architecture. At the time of the Stonehurst commission in 1883, Richardson was at the apex of his career, and his work won him international acclaim. He had designed a number of churches, public buildings and private residences, and he was working on such diverse projects as the Allegheny County Buildings (1883-88) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Marshall Field Wholesale Store (1885-87) and the J.J. Glessner House (1885-87) in Chicago, Illinois. Richardson’s fluid, open-plan interiors, structural innovations and his ability to adapt the architecture of diverse cultures to the needs of a modern industrializing society earned him the reputation as the first of America’s great modern architects, before Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan.

Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903)

During his prolific forty-year career, Frederick Law Olmsted defined the profession of landscape architecture and designed some of America’s most treasured parks including New York’s Central Park, Brooklyn’s Prospect Park and the U.S. Capitol grounds. At the time of the Stonehurst commission, Olmsted’s major work in progress was the Emerald Necklace (1878-95), a great chain of parks, parkways and playgrounds in Boston. Olmsted and Richardson lived and worked within a 10-minute walk of each other in Brookline. In addition to Stonehurst, their numerous professional collaborations included the New York State Capitol (1876) in Albany, the Back Bay Fens (1880) in Boston, the Oakes Ames Memorial Hall (1879-81) and the Ames Gate Lodge (1880-1881) in North Easton, Massachusetts. Olmsted, like his patron Robert Treat Paine, believed in the restorative powers of the landscape to counteract the debilitating forces of the modern city.

The House

The Commission

In 1866 Robert Treat Paine, Jr. and his wife Lydia Lyman Paine commissioned architect Gridley J.F. Bryant to build a mansarded Second Empire summer house in Waltham, Mass. The house and land were given to the couple by George Lyman, Lydia’s father and owner of the nearby summer residence The Vale, or the Lyman Estate. With seven children, the Paine home proved to be too small. In October of 1883, Richardson and Olmsted made their first site visit to the Paine property in Waltham to discuss relocating the 1866 house and designing the great addition and surrounding grounds.

Discussion for the design of the house and grounds continued over the winter and spring of 1884 between Richardson, Olmsted and Paine. By July, Olmsted and Richardson produced sketches, and agreed on a new location for the Second Empire house on a high ridge with a sweeping view to the southeast. In the spring of 1885, with a revised set of plans, most of the addition was constructed under Richardson’s supervision while the Paine family traveled to Europe with Phillips Brooks, the Pastor of Trinity Church. When Richardson died prematurely at age 47 in April of 1886, most of the commission was complete. The terrace and some interior finishes were completed over the summer. The cost by contractors Miller & Ladd was just over $36,000.


The Exterior

Richardson and Olmsted masterfully integrated architecture and landscape at Stonehurst. Richardson utilized natural materials for his addition: weathered shingles and uncut glacial boulders from the site. The south tower disguises the point where the two houses meet.

Olmsted also used glacial boulders from the site for the curved terrace and integrated native woodland plants and trees. Regarding the terrace Olmsted later wrote, “I have never done any of the kind that I liked as much.” The overall design effect of Stonehurst is earthbound and organic.

Richardson and Olmsted were inspired by the magnificent, sprawling rocky outcropping in the south field. Scraped smooth by the course of the glaciers, “Glacier Rock” dominates the sweeping view from the south terrace. The curves of the towers, terrace and hillside reflect the shape of this natural monument.

On the monumental east facade, Richardson, a father of the Shingle Style, experimented with the decorative qualities of shingles. He applied courses of saw-tooth and fish-scale shingles and created the graceful, organic form of the flared gable over his signature Richardsonian Romanesque arch.

Pleased with his new surroundings,
Paine wrote to Olmsted on June, 4 1892:

“I wish if you were here, you would give us a call & see how beautifully the terrace & grounds & rock are about the house—whose site you selected with a taste which is confirmed as each year we come out to be more delighted.”

The Interior

“The central living hall…is the culminating domestic space of Richardson’s career.” ~James O’Gorman.

Richardson designed the Great Hall and Summer Parlor as large, multifunctional living spaces; inglenooks and screens subdivide space while allowing the free flow of air and light.

Richardson created the uninterrupted open space in the Great Hall by suspending the ceiling with a truss and iron tie rod, held in place by a nut in the summer beam.

The abundance of hand-carved woodwork demonstrates Richardson’s fondness for the Arts and Crafts movement in England. The interior of Stonehurst is the “pinnacle achievement of Shingle Style architects and craftsmen.” ~Leland Roth

Richardson was inspired by non-western design sources for the terra cotta red walls and stenciled Japanese ancestral symbols in the Great Hall.

The magnificent hand-turned and carved staircase seems to “pour down into the room like a mountain cataract.” ~Henry-Russell Hitchcock

The open-plan, earth tones, natural woodwork and horizontal banks of windows of Richardson’s interiors would influence Frank Lloyd Wright and other followers.