April 13, May 11, June 8
"Letters From Home" The House Museum Alliance of Downtown Boston announces its spring 2012 tour series, “Letters from Home” featuring correspondence from five of Boston's downtownhouse museums. For these special tours, the Paul Revere House, the Otis House Museum, the Nichols House Museum, the Prescott House, and the Gibson House Museum will draw on their rich collections of personal and business correspondence to illuminate life in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries and exhibit materials rarely seen by the public. The tours will be held from 12 to 4 p.m. on April 13, May 11, and June 8. Visitors will enjoy a twenty minute mini-tour of each house, focused on letters and other correspondence from the museums’ collections. Tickets are $20 which provides admission to all five houses for the special tour and can be purchased at any participating museum in advance or on the day of the tour.
Visit www.historicnewengland.org to buy tickets online.

"Letters from Home" Tour Locations

The Paul Revere House, 19 North Square

The Otis House Museum, 141 Cambridge Street

Nichols House Museum, 55 Mount Vernon Street

Prescott House Museum, 55 Beacon Street

Gibson House Museum, 137 Beacon Street

Some past events:

September 15, 2010: Amelia Peabody, Her Life and Works - the story of the last of the Grand
Dames. Slide show/talk by Glenda Mattes. Amelia Peabody was born a Boston blueblood, maintained the family home in the Back Bay, but chose to live most of her life in Dover where she nurtured horses, hogs, sheep, cattle, dogs, art and the land. Her legacy endures in the good works of her lifetime and in those which continue through the work of her foundations.

Glenda Mattes was the curator of the Sawin Museum in Dover, MA, from 1999 until 2009. An exhibit, "Amelia Peabody, Her Life and Works," at the Sawin Museum (October 2008-June 2010) became the basis of this slide show about the life of Amelia Peabody (1890-1984). Her love of history grew from her work on her own family history over the last 30 years. Now retired, she was a Medical Technologist and real estate broker. She now lives in the Back Bay with her husband, Don

July and August, 2010: Walking Tours of the Back Bay led by Executive Director Charles Swift.

May 11, 2010: Victorian Architecture in Boston’s South End. Both the Back Bay and the South End of Boston were built on made land. What other similarities do these two neighborhoods share? South End Historical Society Historian John Neale talked about the architectural history of South End, which immediately predated the Back Bay as Boston's most fashionable neighborhood.

January 19, 2010: The Gibson Family. Talk by Charles Swift, Executive Director, highlighting new research on Gibson family history and the museum’s photography collection.

November 15, 2009: Victorian Flower Arranging with Donna Morrissey. Donna Morrissey is a Master Flower Show Judge and former Chairman for Judges Council of National Garden Clubs. She is a Senior Associate of the Museum of Fine Arts and a Floral Designer and Design Instructor at the MFA. Donna is a member of the Garden Club of the Back Bay and Wareham Garden Club. She is a popular presenter of Floral Design Programs and Workshops and has her own floral design business, Chestnut Hill Celebrations.

Refreshments will include assorted fine teas, iced tea, mint lemonade, petite tea sandwiches, fresh fruit, mini scones, tea breads and tea cookies.

June 16, 2009: Back Bay Alleys Walking Tour. William Young, Senior Preservation Planner with the City of Boston Environment Department, leads a walking tour of Back Bay alleys.

April 16, 2009: America's Kitchens. Talk and book-signing by Historic New England Curator Nancy Carlisle. Nancy Carlisle, a curator for more than twenty years at Historic New England, works with some of the most important historic kitchens in the country and has written and lectured widely on the material culture of domestic life.

America’s Kitchens, a new book by Nancy Carlisle, highlights New England hearths, detached kitchens on southern plantations, Spanish colonial kitchens of the Southwest, elaborate nineteenth-century kitchens in the Midwest, and middle-class open-plan homes of 1950s suburbia to tell the story of this important room. The book traces technological developments such as the introduction of the cast-iron cook stove, the efficiency of the Hoosier cabinet, and the impact of the frozen food industry to suggest how these innovations have transformed kitchen work and changed women’s lives.

February 11, 2009: The Gibson House and 19th Century Building Technology. Gibson House Museum Executive Director Charles Swift is the featured speaker at this program hosted by the Gibson House Museum. Mr. Swift will talk about the evolution of building technology in the Back Bay from 1859 to the present, using the Gibson House Museum as a case study.

The Gibson House has essentially been preserved as it appeared during three generations of Gibson family occupancy (1859-1954). It can be considered a sophisticated mid-nineteenth-century “machine for living.” Through the years, as building technology advanced, the Gibson family either replaced or retrofitted systems, often abandoning older systems in place. This “system layering” reveals the sequence of advancing building technology in everyday domestic life at the Gibson House.

December 10, 2008: The Art of the Personal Letter: A Guide to Connecting Through the Written Word. Lecture by Back Bay resident Margaret Shepherd, author of more than a dozen books on calligraphy, letter writing and conversation. Ms. Shepherd will talk about her latest book, The Art of the Personal Letter, followed by a book signing and “question and answer” period. In an age where much of our communication is by way of e-mail, where does letter writing fit in? On display will be some of the personal letters of Charles Gibson, an inveterate letter writer.

April 23, 2008: “Growing Up in Boston”: reminiscences by John W. Sears. To many John Sears is the consummate Bostonian. He has lived on Beacon Hill in the shadow of the State House for almost his entire life. He has spent many years in public service, serving as Boston city councilor, state representative, chairman of the Metropolitan District Commission, sheriff of Suffolk County, and chairman of the Massachusetts Republican Committee. In 1982 he ran as the Republican candidate for governor against Michael Dukakis.

Mr. Sears’ youth overlapped with Charles Gibson’s later years. The Beacon Hill and Back Bay of his childhood in the 1930s and ’40s were beginning to show signs of the social change which inspired Mr. Gibson to preserve his family home as a museum. This evening offers a very special opportunity to share in Mr. Sears’ unique memories of those bygone times.