The Structure of James Curleys House - Term Paper Example

Write a about each room in James Curleys House Introduction: The legendary home of great politician of Massachusetts, James Michael Curley is point of great discussion in architecture sector. This house is famous for its path breaking construction, its design as well as advanced planning of the entire model. In this paper the main objective is to critically discuss the structure of James Curley’s house with focus on the design as well as a brief about various program organized in this house over the course of years. The house is situated in Jamaica Plain, which is a residential Pond side; neighborhood off the Jamaica way and overseeing Boston’s largest freshwater body, this building is the two-and-a-half story, built with red-brick and was constructed in the year of 1915. There are 18 rooms in this building and the main characteristics of the house are brick, high ‘Georgian Revival-style’. (Rocheleau, 2011) Along with that, some other key features are symmetrical façade, central entrance in the ground floor, presence of pedimented portico and double hung multipaned windows. Structural Details of the House: Structural overview: The entire house is consisted of 2 full stories and along with that one attic story. The main building has parapet end walls and a big chimney on the northern side of it. There is another chimney on the southern end as well. There is a single roof which covers the main section of the house. The entire building is consisted of red bricks, with a quoin effect emphasizing the corners. There is a brick walkway and a small stair lead up to the front entrance. (Massachusetts Historical Commission, 5) The Main Entrance: The main entrance of the house from the western side featuring consisted of a pair of columns echoed by Ionic plasters. The door at the central point has some classical surrounding including of elaborated fanlights and sidelights. The rooms in First Floor: All the rooms in the ground floor are comparatively large in size. The windows of all the rooms in the ground floor are large, nine by nine in size with marble heads consisted of decoration. The division between the first and the second floor is distinctly marked by the stone string course. If one look at the windows of the rest of the house that is on the first floor and on the rear side are six by six in size with stone seals and Greek key motif lintels. The southern part of the house is comparatively broader and there are rounded bay windows on the each room of the first floor and also in the main elevation. The distinctive feature of the southern part is the presence of a dormer with a distinctly broken swan’s neck pediment and round arch window over and above each window on the gambrel roof. ((Massachusetts Historical Commission, 6) The dining room: The dining hall of this building is oval shaped in design, and the most significant part of this dining room is hand carved mahogany-paneled floor with marble Grecian columns. The ceiling is over 14 foot and the length of this dining room is almost forty feet. There is delicately designed Irish Waterford glass hanging on silver chains on the ceiling of the dining hall, which makes it looks more spectacular. (Massachusetts Historical Commission, 29) The Breakfast Room: The first exit from the main hall on the left hand side is towards the breakfast room. The Library: The entrance to the library which is famously known as the governor’s library is also from the main hall and the door was on the left hand side after the breakfast room and main saloon. The main characteristics of this library room are like fine marble sculptured figure of Moses pedestalled inside the room, presence of walking canes in the corner ivory handles, the French piece with the inlaid sword. Some other key features are old Barometer, the huge beautiful Venetian mirror and the Florentine marble Urn with its Gilt cherubs. All four walls of the library are cover with cabinet and filled with books to the ceiling. The Main Hall: The depth and beauty of the interior of the hall is something that everyone gets amused by. The colour of the wall is very much soothing and also in match with the effect of sunlight which can come inside the hall. Another great beauty of this hall is the Grand Stairway, which turns three times before reaching the top The rare side of the Building: The rare side of the building, on the eastern half is consisted of number of distinctive features. Some of those features are covered porch, presence of three bay window, multipaned leaded glass window and presence of an elaborately designed Palladian set of window on the big pedimented dormer. Most of the people believe that the most significant part of this house is the exterior details which are a great example of architecture of highest order. The great external design makes this house most significant of that particular locality and makes other inferior in front of this one. In terms of designing the house is absolutely perfect taking into consideration the surroundings of it. Presence of gut-out shamrock is a great symbol which makes this architecture more special. Those cut outs to some extent symbolize thumbs to multiple noses with finger spreading in every direction. (. Massachusetts Historical Commission, 29) Events in the House: In the year of 1956, Curley sold the house to the Society of Oblate Fathers for Missions among the Poor, an NGO which is working for the poor child. Later on in the year 1988, the City of Boston bought the mansion using money from the George Robert White Fund which is responsible for maintaining old heritage houses in the city. Since then, this house was less utilized as most of the time, as the administration preferred to use this as a ‘status-quo style’. Mathieson and Richard J. Dennis, stepson of James Curley realized that there is a need for a dedicated group who can best utilized the building for the betterment of the society as well as for the commercial purposes. Dennis in the year of 2010 created a group called the Friends of the James Michael Curley House to address the same need. The main objective of this group is to use this Manson as a community resource both educationally as well as economically. The group set a new vision for the Curley Mansion, and that is Museum by day, social center by night. They have also decided that “he house will continue to be owned by the White Fund, but the day-to-day management of the mansion will slowly be transferred from the city to the ‘Friends’.”(Sidhu, 2011) From then onwards the utilization of this Manson started to increase and the same is now far more easily accessible for the people of the city both in terms of educational purposes as well as to conduct any social event as well. References 1. Reports of Boston Landmark Commission on the potential Designation of the James Michael Curley House. Massachusetts Historical Commission 2. Rocheleau, Matt. Regular programming eyed for long-unused Curley House in JP. Jamaica Plain. Web; accessed on 22.7.2014 3. Sidhu Rishi. Historic Curley Mansion to Find New Programming. Jamaica Plain Patch. 2011. Web. 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